| Sex education, STIs and politicians make a toxic combination Should our response to the rising number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) be a call for more ignorance, as one MP appears to believe?Woody Allen, in the movie Annie Hall, tells a joke about how two elderly (probably Jewish) women are at a Catskill Mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." That's how I feel about sex education in Britain's schools. Over the bank holiday weekend, an MP, Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Peterborough) in response to media reports of a rise in the number of STIs (sexually transmitted infections) in teenagers, said on Twitter that the problem was too much sex education. He tweeted on 26 August:V disappointing news on STD rates in Pboro. No doubt our liberal friends will tell us we need MORE sex education – as it's worked so wellPredictably (although perhaps not to Mr Jackson), when it was further circulated on Twitter it led to a flurry of comments from people agreeing and – mainly – disagreeing with him. As far as I can tell, at first he chose not to respond but after some time he lashed out on Twitter, saying:Touched a raw nerve with shrill intolerant pro sex education Lefties who don't like debating the issues. Wonder why not?On 27 August he said, Re. Sex education Memo to sad tedious sex obsessed Leftie weirdos – do please tweeting me [sic] You're confusing me with someone who's interestedand thenLeft are simply unable to debate issues without personal abuse and vicious shrill denunciation. Important we keep them locked out of powerThe irony of tweeting an insult (even truly sad, tedious, sex-obsessed Leftie weirdos don't identify themselves as such) then complaining about insults led to a flurry of comment on Twitter, on blogs and even on the BBC. On Twitter everyone's tweets are public and accessible and it seems that all the tweets that had been directed at Mr Jackson – all that the bloggers could find – are entirely civil (certainly by parliamentary standards) and seek to debate the issues. It is therefore hard to see what he was objecting to when he made his complaint on which he enlarged in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph, where he also said that:"I wanted to engage in intelligent debate but was met with a barrage of crude, personal abuse. I am always keen to hear from my constituents but these people were generally not even from Peterborough and were only interested in making personal attacks."This repeated assertion had all the ingredients needed to infuriate people who use Twitter – rather like poking a wasps nest – who felt not only that they were right (cue cartoon), that he was failing to engage with them, that he falsely or unfairly accused them, but also that they had caught him in that alleged falsehood. None of these blogs, except perhaps one, was particularly rude, as opposed to critical, and there is no evidence that they were emailed or tweeted to him. There are some important issues behind all this.First, it is not clear whether the rise in reported STIs reflects a genuine rise in incidence or is an artefact of more widespread testing (leading to more true positives being picked up). This has been covered by Mark Easton at the BBC and by Dr Petra Boynton, and no doubt elsewhere, so I will not pursue that further here.Second, there is the question of whether we have too much sex education or too little. I would say we have too little and of poor quality. This is also the view of young people themselves, who report that sex education does not tell them what they need to know or does not reach them in time. There is surely merit in providing sex education before children are sexually active, and before the pubertal "giggle factor" and the "schoolyard fable factory" prevent information being readily accepted.There is international evidence that "school-based sex education improves awareness of risk and ways to reduce it. It increases the intention to practise safer sex and delays rather than hastens the onset of sexual activity". There is also evidence of this from the UK. Hell, sex education has even been reported to work in Peterborough! Other countries seem to do it better (sex education that is). For example in the Scandinavian countries and Holland, which can hardly be described as puritanical, and where sex education is delivered early and clearly (and where the media is more supportive of it), the rate of teenage conception (and teenage abortion) is much lower than in the UK. The age of first intercourse is also delayed relative to the UK. It seems that providing information equips boys to resist peer pressure and girls better to resist boy pressure. It also makes the use of effective contraception more likely when sexual activity does begin.I agree with Anne Widdecombe. I will repeat that. I agree with Anne Widdecombe – and Stuart Jackson – that there is a problem with the over-sexualisation of young people by our media more widely. I agree with them that this is unhealthy. No doubt it contributes to the earlier onset of sexual activity and also causes misery to girls (mainly) as they feel expected to conform to the sexualised body images portrayed in the media. Given that this is the society we have (and it is impossible to uninvent the internet, movies, teen magazines, TV, etc) we have two approaches to tackling this problem that could be used in combination. First, we can try to roll back the normalisation of portrayals of women as mainly or primarily sexual objects. We can for example regulate – or self-regulate – so that so-called family newspapers do not portray women in topless or sexual poses, and that such objectification and soft porn is marketed as such. So, for example, magazines like Zoo and Nuts should be available to adults and displayed and sold as such. I have supported cross-party campaigns on this led by the Fawcett Society and Object, but I am not certain whether Mr Jackson has done so. Second, we can equip young people for the world as it exists rather than as we would wish it to be. The curious thing about those who believe in Victorian values is that the Victorian age was a golden era for the sexual exploitation of women and the abuse of children.Evan Harrisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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Let's hear it for archaeology | AC Solomon Including archaeology in the curriculum might fire learners' interest in ways that conventional history can't always doHistory matters. Michael Gove wants to shake up the school history curriculum and instil "narrative British history" in students. With the very different figures of Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama both reportedly on board, the big question is: what kind of history will it be? Despite their differences, these scholars seem united around teaching narrative history. The thornier issue of using it to teach "Britishness" will be debated at a conference this week. But whatever prevails, it seems school history will still comprise "historian's histories".Perhaps that's another reason why school history is still perceived as boring. My school history was, as one Ciffer puts it, about "maps and chaps". One might add "laws and wars" and "lords and hordes".Of course it's changed (televisual treatments? Add Mary Seacole and stir?). But there are other exciting routes to the past. History is about inquiry as well as narrative. How histories are built is as important as the story, and no historical discipline demonstrates this better than archaeology. Yet, it features little in the debates. Perhaps that's because, despite sterling efforts by Tony and the Time Team, most people don't really know what archaeologists do, or what archaeological histories are.Despite being a history devotee, I fled from it as my undergraduate major and switched to archaeology – though in an early fit of professional disillusionment I pressed one of my professors on what archaeology was "for". He replied that it provided the best liberal arts education available. I'd go further: it's a gateway to many worlds of scholarship (including "hard" science) that offers an encompassing and gripping account of the human journey in time.Archaeology isn't digging; or rather, when it is, it's very much part time. It's history from the ground up; a method for building knowledge, moving from the often cryptic material traces of yesteryear – be it bones, stones or cannon balls – to historical narratives. The real work, and fun, is in the post-excavation interpretation process.Because archaeology is multiple histories entwined – social, economic, political, cultural, technological, religious – it involves engaging with many disciplines for tools to apply to the questions. My work on hunter-gatherers takes me into anthropology, geology, zoology, art history, literary/cultural studies theory, sociology, analytical chemistry and "history" (using texts and archival materials). Archaeological research has practical, holistic and problem-solving dimensions and range that I never found studying history.The immediacy of sitting in remote painted caves, excavating the bones of the long-dead or just holding a handaxe, has endowed me with a powerful sense of what history means. There's something about what Sylvia Plath called "the thinginess of things" that is different from discourses in historical documents. There is a poetry of the past that, for me, is uniquely triggered by direct encounters with the material products of mentalities that are truly "other", yet also humanly shared. This is more than "What does it feel like to be a Roman centurion?" (decontextualised history, according to David Cameron). It's about how we can even begin to know that, and about the mirror it holds up to our own historically bounded awareness. In some ways, historical narratives are only journey's end.A prevailing paradigm in archaeology emphasises cognition and "mind". Like most archaeologists, my research is interdisciplinary, using texts (recorded myths, accounts of indigenous medicine, historical records) and art and artefacts to understand both the cultural and historical consciousness that shaped past peoples' ideas and actions.The artworks I study were almost certainly magic things, never the commodities that "art" implies today. Among them in my research area are images of European soldiers and settlers that situate the later examples in world history. My work takes me from an enchanted world of spirits and supernatural happenings to studying global economic and political transformations. As historians, anthropologists and scientists all in one, we can be tellers of compelling, different stories: new narratives that would enrich the curriculum, as Clive Gamble has suggested.It's a dull child who can resist the romance of archaeology. It has a fascination factor that the Horrible Histories have to rather contrive. Cheap hook aside, using archaeology more as a thread in the history curriculum might fire learners' interest in ways that conventional history can't always do. It's probably even possible to do "an archaeology of Britishness" – but aren't there more interesting questions?• AC Solomon posts on Cif as ACSoloArchaeologyArchaeologyEducation policyMichael GoveHistory and history of artAC Solomonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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