For example,
Sex education: two elected officials:
Controversy in Friborg
Two elected officials want to remove the exemptions from sex education – Sex education: two elected officials
Each year. Furthermore, dozens of Friborg students are exempt from workshops approaching sexuality. For example, MEPs ring the alarm: what if among them hid victims of domestic abuses?
A Friborg motion requires the abolition of exemptions for sex education lessons.
Getty Images/Maskot
- Sex education courses remain dispensable in the majority of French -speaking cantons.
- Friborg records each year between 40 and 100 exemption requests for these courses. sex education: two elected officials However, A motion requires their abolition.
- The two elected officials believe that sex education is an effective prevention tool against sexual abuse at home.
- An association of parents of students is concerned about the possible disappearance of exemptions. Therefore, judging that parents remain the “first educators” of children.
Abolish them. For example, sex education lessons To leave no student on the tile? However, The idea is not unanimous in French -speaking Switzerland. Moreover, Following a motion From Alexandre Berset (Les Verts). Meanwhile, Savio Michellod (PLR), Friborg could join the still relatively closed club of the Latin cantons where these courses are compulsory. In addition, Apart from Geneva. Nevertheless, Neuchâtel, all offer parents the possibility, under certain conditions, to obtain an exemption for their child.
Their proposal is on the table of the State Council, which should provide him sex education: two elected officials with his response. Consequently, It had been formulated in reaction to a previous UDC motion. rejected last October, which wished to inform parents better about the content of sex education courses and lay ideological “safeguards”. In Geneva. other conservative attacks against sex education – which notably claimed the right to exemption – have just been swept by the Grand Council.
Sex education: “same value” as a math course – Sex education: two elected officials
“Far from us the idea of removing the importance of the educational part brought by the family. but it is not up to parents to unilaterally decide what is taught or not to their children,” summarizes Alexandre Berset. Sex education being an integral part of Romand study plan (PER)“She has objectively the same value as a math course. which no one would contradict relevance,” says her colleague Savio Michellod, one of sex education: two elected officials the few to fight for this file in the ranks of the right.
At a time when One in ten French would have suffered sexual violence during his childhood (Editor’s note: there is no major study in Switzerland)prevention would be “extremely important”. continues the PLR deputy, who also chairs the management committee of the Veveyse orientation cycle. Depriving children of sex education is “taking the risk” that possible victims are prevented by abuse parents from accessing. a speech space.
Alexandre Berset adds: “I am wary of families who want to make sex education taboo. Their children are potentially those who would make the greatest benefit of these courses. ”
Very minority exemption requests
The Friborg Schools receive between 40. 100 exemption requests per school year, informs us the sex education: two elected officials Directorate of Health and Social Affairs (DSAS). A “confiscation of knowledge” which worries the green deputy: “If. among these exempt children, a handful live horrible situations at home, we are not allowed to leave them aside.” Would exceptionally keep the right to be exempt “the children who have experienced a situation of abuse themselves. for whom such a course could awaken painful trauma”, specifies Savio Michellod, however.
As a comparison, 161 requests were received by the Vaud school for the school year 2023-2024, “which represents less than 0.4% of the 41,000 students concerned”, analyzes Marie Torres, head of the health and prevention promotion unit in schools. The directions having only recently started to aggregate these statistics, difficult to say if these exemptions are always more requested. “However, we believe that the number of requests is generally stable.”
Broken trust in Friborg?
In Friborg Lands. the Berset-Michellod motion caused the “deep concern” of the Federation of Parents of Parents of Friborg students (FAPEF), for whom parents must remain “the first educators” of children, especially for a subject “as delicate as sexuality”. This would have nothing obscurantist. Deleting the right to unsubscribe a student would flout the principle of subsidiarity and risk “breaking the bond of trust between school and families,” said Isabelle Colliard, secretary of the FAPEF.
“The vast majority of parents ignore the existence of this exemption,” she adds. During a discussion with the cantonal doctor, we suggested that the school communicates this right more broadly to parents. We were then told that it was unthinkable, for fear that too many parents will use it. ”
This argument does not convince Alexandre Berset. sex education: two elected officials who wonders about the representativeness of the FAPEF “compared to the diversity of existing points of view among Friborg parents”. In any case, “it is not at all the return I have on the part of professionals in the field. If the suspicious parents vis-à-vis sex education had taken the courses as they are given today. perhaps understanding and acceptance would be greater today. ”
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