Sorry Squiggle.  I do find it hard to believe that any teacher would agree to presenting something like that.  I'd love to know who made a decision to include it in the curriculum.

Renton do you have children of your own?

My sister has three pre-teen girls
I spend most of my time with them - lil one calls me "Dad" (don't get me going now )

Tayto, the curriculum has a strong emphasis on healthy choices, relationships, not being pressured etc. etc. but is also set against the reality that some yp will have underage sex, just like they did in my, (our?) day and to teach them how to keep themselves safe from STDs and unwanted pregnancies. It also has the additional benefit of making children aware that sexual abuse is not okay and that if anyone is doing something to them that they don't want then to tell someone. That imo, is a good thing, I, for one, would not  want to go back in time on this.

Lets just raise them to be well rounded people who know basic right from wrong and in that way will make the right decisions based on decency and good nature
Leave the horrors til they are 13+

I've only got this far into the thread. I must say that I strongly disagree.

Why must a 9yr old know that though?

Me too The streets today are not the streets 'we' knew say 20 or even 10 years ago. Everyone has the right to parent as they see fit, but I don't think it's a clear case of 'teach them the evils' or 'give them a childhood'.

Handled correctly, I think there can be a happy medium.

Fair point. It's each to his own I suppose. We have always tried to answer questions honestly and in a way they understand. But also I think we took incidents and used them as examples perhaps when questions were not asked.

Don't think anyone would disagree with that as an ideal

Sorry, long post coming up, but this is something I feel passionately about.  From my own experience with my daughter, I think the younger children have sex education the better.  I was always honest with her when she asked questions, but on a couple of occasions when she was very young and asked particularly detailed questions, like someone else said, I told her I would explain when she was a little bit older.  I tried to preserve as much of her innocence and childhood for as long as I could, but no matter what you do yourself, you can't prevent children from being told things you would rather they didn't know from friends.  When my daughter was 8, she came home and told me the graphic details of a website that one of her classmates had shared with a group of friends. She had clearly seen VERY hard porn.  I can't imagine how much confusion this child caused to the other children by the way she mis-described what she had seen.  I had to explain a lot more to my daughter than I would have wanted at that age to correct and explain the things she had been told.  When she was almost 10, my daughter was at a party at another friend's house, and when she got home, told me that a group of boys and girls had been watching a porn website.  The parents were in another room, presumably oblivious to what was going on.  A number of girls in my daughter's year at secondary school had become sexually active by the time they were in Year 8, and by the time they reached Year 11 (15-16 years old), she said that the majority were sexually experienced.  The same goes for drink and drugs, although certainly at my daughter's school, it seems as though alcohol is much more popular.  This isn't happening at a run down, inner city school - she goes to one of the top grammar schools in the country, and girls from her school are generally thought of as being 'frigid' by students from other local schools..  The school has drummed sex education into the girls relentlessly from Year 7, and they've had the usual lesson putting a condom on a cucumber; they have also been taught that sex should be part of a loving relationship, and that promiscuity is not to be encouraged.  At least some of this has worked, because I'm not aware of a single girl getting pregnant at the school in the six years that she's been there. 

I work with a number of primary and secondary schools in a London borough, and am familiar with all of the sex education programmes used in most schools.  Sex education does start at an early age, but is done in a very gentle and age-appropriate way.  I have never heard of a school that would consider teaching about penetrative sex to six year olds, and would agree that, if that really was the case, it is probably too young.  The lessons which people tend to think are controversial are usually taught in Years 5 or 6, and parents are always informed in advance, and have the opportunity to look at the videos which their children will see beforehand.  Whilst parents can't withdraw their children from the biological elements about human reproduction, they can withdraw them from the relationships/contraception type lessons when they are told about masturbation and having sex.  Many schools teach these lessons separately to boys and girls.  The number of parents who do withdraw their children from these lessons is tiny - maybe on average one child in each year per school.
But unfortunately some children DO start having sex in primary school.  In one of the schools I work with, a couple of years ago, the headteacher heard a noise coming from the toilets during lunchtime, and found four children indulging in extremely intimate acts with each other.  This was a primary school, and the children were in Year 5. 
I don't think it is ever too early to begin sex education and if it saves one unwanted pregnancy it must be worth it.  Whilst there are exceptions, I think generally that if parents seriously think that their children haven't tried drugs or sex, or been drunk by the time they get to 15 or 16, they are living in a fantasy world.  All you can do is to make sure children get as much sex, drugs, and alcohol education as possible to help them to be aware of the pitfalls.

Christ i don't think i can concentrate that long to real it all

Maybe you should...it's a very interesting argument against your opinion.

4 sons 1 daughter...no drunks..no drugs..no babies! (aged 17-26)
Good parenting..good fortune?? You decide!
Generalisation is a no no in or house! Individuality is!

Those are the things that scare me growly lol Mine are young and will grow into  teenagers. i am well aware they are going to try these things before they are legal (ie 16/18) and there isnt a great deal you can do to stop them, (well there is but it wont work)  all you can do is try and educate them before that happens so they stay safe, my point was my eldest is almost 8, she doesnt play out in the streets etc (whole other debate there i think)  so i feel that she doesn't need that kind of information yet as she is always supervised.

The basics of alcohol makes people silly are about it for now i dont think anymore is necessary  for a few years, yr 6/7 is a good 'starting' point imo as they will only learn mis-information from friends at this age if not given the facts.

parenthood eh? should come with warnings! lol

very good post Growly, very interesting

Ok i waded my way through your post Growly - very interesting and some very disturbing things going on.

"Probably" too young ???

When i was pregnant with my third my first who was then 4 inisting on knowing how the baby got in there and would not be fobbed off with anything less the facts...I've always thought that if kids are old enough to ask the questions they're old enough to have the answers

"Probably" too young ???

Yes, probably.  I think it's generally too young for that level of detail, but bearing in mind that there ARE 9 year olds experimenting, whether we like it or not, there is a need to educate children from a much earlier age than I would like to think necessary.  It isn't necessary to show young children a hard core porn film to explain penetrative sex; it can be done in a very gentle way.  I've never seen anything in any of the education materials which are used for primary school children which shows two people actually having sex. 

In contrast, the only sex education I ever had at school was given when I was 15 by a very elderly grey haired lady called MRs Edwards.  She told us that we should NEVER think of going on a date until we were 18, and of course we should take our mothers with us on the first few dates.  She also told us that if we ever did anything as intimate as sitting on a boy's lap, we must put a telephone directory on his lap first to avoid possible contact between private parts.  By that time, three girls in my year had been permanently excluded for getting pregnant.  Interestingly, it was the same school that my daughter now goes to

Given that nowadays girls as young as 9 start their periods then they should be told whats going on!

Yes, that's a good point.  They need to have fairly detailed knowledge to understand properly why they have periods.  Unless they have a father like mine, who told my mother that no-one knew why women had periods - it was a great mystery   And being incredibly naive, my mother believed him

Yeah when it happens. Every child is different, it's not a one rule suits all subject. Everyone matures at a different pace not only physically but mentally too, some kids will be mature enough to learn about the birds and the bees and take it all on board, where as another child of the same age could be freaked out by it or even decide to go try things out.

The only way to teach kids these things in life is to know the child that way you know how much info to give and how to phrase it to suit them

I think society as a whole is being hijacked becos of the few  - seriously i have never known any nine year olds "experimenting" and if they are they are in a severe minority that does not justify wholesale education to the extent i am hearing.
Some are more advanced - some are not and i agree this needs to be done carefully - but as for full on sex instruction for anyone prior to senior school (to me) is not only morally wrong but unecessary

Well as I said in my first post, sadly a small proportion of children of 9 DO experiment.  The example I gave was unusual, but not unheard of.  Most primary headteachers I know have come across a few examples of very inappropriate behaviour between children from a very early age.  When my daughter was at infant school, in Year 1, there was outrage among several parents because a little boy in her class had asked her best friend to let him touch her knickers and for her to touch his willy.  Children in Year 1 are either 5 or 6 years old. 
Sorry, but I find it morally unacceptable NOT to start some form of sex education from the start of junior school at the latest.

I agree SOME form - defo
Full on tits - bum - willy NO

They don't get that

As I said in another post, none of the sex education programmes used in schools in England and Wales use particularly explicit images for primary school children.  None of them show images of real men in states of arousal, or show real people having sex.

Is their dad not around, and have taken on some of the dad type stuff?

SAZZ - he hardly ever sees them - maybe once a week

ermm...  my son sees his dad every other weekend... so, once a fortnight.

But I'd still be against him calling my brother Dad!

I thought that must be the case Renton, the way you talk about being so involved

my daughter is 16 in september and none of the above has happened, we are very open with each other and talk about all the above

Hay Renton. Like you i spend alot of my time at my sisters she has 2 girls aged 3 and 10 and a boy 2. In this day and age and knowing what i got upto when i was a teen, the area which my sister lives and the attitude my 10 yr old niece has is very worrying!!! For me i think its a good idea to install children about my nieces age with knowledge of consequences and talk about these difficult subjects.
I see enough druggie drunken losers in the pub i work in. I do not what to see my niece in the same state!!!

I think if you can be absolutely certain of that, then you're very lucky and in a minority.  My daughter is 17 and has always been very open about what she and her friends get up to.  If some of her friends' parents knew what I do about their sweet 'innocent' daughters, they would be horrified.

Coming at this from a different angle.......I was the only one in my class that never got to see the sex education programme

My parents thought it was inappropriate(primary seven) age 12, for our English friends  .........so never signed the consent form .. 

I have never felt so embarrassed , or out of the loop as I did then .
Needless to say when I questioned what it was about........Things were exaggerated out of all proportion, and I was left feeling much worse than I would have felt if I'd actually seen it

certain to a degree yes i am, she is so into her sports she is anti drugs and alcohol, i've let her try drink at home and she's not fussed, as for boys she's not into them much either  she's that determind to get into loughborough university she seems to have wiped everything else out *which i do worry about* but my parents say i should think mself lucky *think are thinking about me *

Yep!  Thats how I feel.   I think to do things the way I am doing them is a lot more difficult than it appears.   It requires me to try to not freak out when she does tell me something that I instinctively want to go mental about.   To pick my battles very very wisely... and when we do disagree about something that I can support it with reasons she understands.

God.. its sooooo hard though.

Whereas... some of my daughters friends mums think its easy.   They tell their daughter she will not do x, y, z... and she doesn't.

Only she bloody well does... and not only x, y, z but the whole alphabet. 

Right now I just want to get her through the next couple of years without anything irreversible and avoidable happening....   and then maybe I will be able to sleep at night!

I remember when i was young i started out anti drugs but then after careful *cough* consideration decided i can not form a opinion on something until iv tried it. Needless to say the next few years are a bit of a haze Now knowing the dark side to drugs and the people on them, selling them and generally around them i am increadiby anti drugs and i openly share my experiances with others so they too know its not all good times.

omg I shouldn't laugh.... but I just imagined the kind of ramped up over dramatic stuff they would be telling you!