Balancing Faith and Sex Education

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for the University of Birmingham student paper ‘Redbrick.’ The original is available here.

Learning about sex, con­tra­cep­tion, abor­tion, sex­u­al­ity and sta­ble rela­tion­ships is an undoubt­edly nec­es­sary part of children’s school edu­ca­tion. What is less cer­tain is the posi­tion reli­gious val­ues should take in this. Some argue that chil­dren should learn about these impor­tant issues with­out being influ­enced by ‘out­dated’ reli­gious val­ues. Oth­ers main­tain that schools with a reli­gious ethos should be able to at least tell stu­dents what their reli­gious faith teaches on these matters.