Dhatri Navanayagam asks students in Oxford what they think of the controversial new plans to lower the age for mandatory sex education in schools.
Join the debate by posting your opinions using the comment form below.
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Fashion Forward
Cherwell’s Antonia talks to fashion editor Emma-Lucy to find out about what’s hot, what’s not and what’s completely and utterly unacceptable.
Agree? Disagree? Let us know!
OUSU candidates fined again
A breach of OUSU election rules has led Jake Leeper’s slate to lose 10% of its publicity budget.
The punishment amounted to a fine of £21.
The ruling follows an incident when four messages were sent out to members of the facebook group of Nishma Doshi, a candidate standing for the position of Graduate Women’s Officer on Leeper’s slate.
The messages were all sent within an hour and included an open advertisement for Leeper’s slate, in which people were encouraged to visit the candidate’s website.
An official
complaint was lodged with Ollie Linch, the Returning Officer, on the 12th November.
Election regulation h)2 states that, “Candidates may not send facebook messages via their facebook group.” A further regulation prohibits the sending of group emails. The messages were sent to 34 people, of whom 16 were involved with the campaign already.
Ed Moores, an agent for Leeper’s slate, defended Doshi’s actions. “We accept that Nishma is guilty of breaking h)2 and C6a) but we feel that the misdemeanour is minor due to the number of people that received the facebook message and is mitigated by Nishma’s immediate and well intentioned apology.”
In his ruling the RO said, “This flagrant, repeated breach cannot go unnoticed. Unlike the breaches in Moores v. Mason and O’Connell-Lauder v. Leeper (2), this is clearly a direct and egregious occurrence of electoral malpractice.”
This is the most recent of several fines received by OUSU candidates in this election campaign. Previous breaches have been largely associated with quotations in student papers.
Oxford academic promises £1m to charity
Dr Toby Ord, a post-doctoral research fellow in Ethics, has pledged to give away £1m to charity before he retires.
The promise accompanies the launch of a new society called Giving What We Can this evening at Balliol.
Members of the society are to publicly vow to give at least 10% of their future earnings to charity. Ord has already persuaded Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge, the famous moral philosophers, to make the pledge.
The pledge reads, “I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good in the developing world. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from today until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to fight poverty in the developing world. I make this pledge freely, openly, and without regret.”
Through his donations of £10,000 a year, which will target fighting poverty and disease in the developing world, Ord calculates he can save 500,000 years of healthy life for some of the world’s poorest people.
Ord currently earns £33,000, but has capped his wages at £20,000. He expects to earn £1.5 million until his retirement at 65, based on average earnings of an Oxford don.
He plans to be able to afford the donations by continuing to budget as he had as student. “My student years were not extravagant, but were immensely enjoyable, with the chief enjoyments such as reading beautiful books and spending time with my wife and friends costing almost nothing.”
He described how he felt all he was giving up was a few luxuries, “I thought that I would make a relatively small sacrifice to help so many people, but it has turned out to be no real sacrifice at all: the sense of engagement in the project of making the world a better place is worth far more to me than some new gadgets or a slightly larger house.”
Part of Giving What We Can’s aim is to encourage those who donate to charity to consider whether their donations could be doing more good with other charities. The society intends to use research from the World Health Organisation on aid effectiveness. Although they do not promise to find the best charity, they hope to find ones which are particularly effective.
Their website argues, “It turns out that there is a vast discrepancy between the most effective and least effective programs, and donors can do much more with their donations if they give them to the more effective programs: it is the difference between saving one live and saving a life every day for your career.”
Ord believes also believes that “while it is unclear whether it is better to save one person’s life or to cure two other people of blindness, but other things being equal, it is clearly better to save a thousand lives than to cure two people of blindness and many of the choices are like this.”
Should sex education be compulsory?
‘Sex ed helps young people make healthy choices’
Kat Wall, OUSU VP for Women
The UK still has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe. With 42,900 conceptions amongst under-18 year olds last year something must be done to make sure young people understand the ramifications of pregnancy, the responsibilities of having a child and how to prevent unwanted or unplanned pregnancies from happening in the first place. As Gill Frances, the chairman of the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy said, “Evidence shows that sex and relationships education helps young people…make healthy choices when they eventually do become sexually active.”
It is not only because of unplanned pregnancy rates however, that children should learn about sex from a young age. The prevention of disease is also of concern with Chlamydia at its highest peak to date. Teaching young people who may be sexually active to practice safe sex is important. Giving young people an understanding of the contraceptive options available to them and encouraging a dialogue about how to prevent the transfer of STI’s is to the benefit of the population in general, as well as to the children we are teaching.
The government’s proposals also include relationship education within the new sex ed curriculum which may remove some of the pressure for young people to rush into sexual activity. Providing advice and guidance on relationships alongside sexual education may also provide those young people who lack good role models at home to gain an understanding of what a healthy relationship is. This may also assist in helping to prevent abusive behaviour; children will learn younger that they do not have to stay silent and that certain kinds of behaviour just aren’t acceptable.
The fact that this programme is not hetronormatively biased is also a great sign of progress. To teach about sex in the context of a variety of relationship settings, whatever the gender mix, allows for the development of non-judgemental and free discussion. This may reduce the stigma around being gay at school, and ensure that whatever kind of sex young people practice, they will do so safely.
Children often do not receive adequate education on sex and relationships from their parents, largely because full information is not provided due to a lack of medical knowledge, life experience or embarrassment. Having a wide-ranging education in school on these issues should help to combat current levels of ignorance, unsafe practice and such high levels of unplanned pregnancy.
‘These classes fail to teach children anything’
Ben North, History, Magdalen
The issue of making sex and relationships education mandatory for all 15-year-olds skews and obscures to a dangerous degree the wider, more important issue of deteriorating sexual health among Britain’s young people. The behaviour of parents in removing their children from sex education classes is certainly irresponsible and misguided. ‘If this is the case, then bring in these mandatory reforms and be done with it’, you may reply. The issue is not as simple as this. There are two important factors which override any benefits that such a change may bring: the dire state of sex education generally, and the scarcity of political capital that exists in this area of reform.
Why force children to go to classes which fail to teach them anything? A recent NHS survey found that only 11% of respondents saw school or college as their main source of information about STIs, while television programmes and adverts were the two most popular authorities. This coincides with an alarming rise in infection rates; chlamydia rates almost tripled between 1998 and 2007. The fact that people find a thirty second advert more helpful than a qualified teacher indicates a fundamental failure on the part of schools to provide clear, neutral and thorough advice on sexual health.
The issue of misguided parents is merely ancillary to this fundamental problem of poor sex education – currently less than 0.1% of parents withdraw their children from classes. I would like the needs of 99.9% of families attended to first.
Sex’s continued status as a taboo subject means that as much as a breath from politicians that broaches the issue of educating about sex can whip up storms of controversy. Current developments in sex education reform emphasise the extent to which the vast majority of young people are at risk from chances of reform being dashed by the stifling effects of this taboo.
A recent government review has produced recommendations that will help tackle such shocking statistics as seen above. Despite the wide-ranging nature of the review, it is parents’ right to choose which has been focussed on in the media – this is the aforementioned skewing and obscuring at work. Educational reform will do far more to tackle sexual health problems among young people, which will consequently erode arguments in favour of parents’ right to choose. The fundamental problem is being confused with its ancillary; we have to get the education right first.
Stop making sex a taboo subject
The government’s new plans regarding sex education should be welcomed with open arms. Given rising rates of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and underage sex, it seems ludicrous that such a move has not been implemented sooner. I attended a Catholic high school and while we did receive sex education, it was nervous at best. Teachers tread the fine line between doing what they feel will protect their students and arm them for the realities of sex and relationships and the moral precepts of the school. Making it a legal obligation to teach sex education at this age means that teachers need not fear reprisals because of faith.
“Learning about contraception, abortion and homosexuality should only allow children to make informed decisions; not indoctrinate them”
The right of the parent to withdraw their child from learning about these topics seems to me to be a strange idea to cling to. While it is true that a parent may wish their child to hold a certain morality regarding these issues, it is surely their responsibility to instil these in the child based on the impartial information the child receives. When a child learns about the political parties of the United Kingdom as is the case in some religion education syllabuses, it does not mean that the child will declare they will become politicised. In the same way, learning about contraception, abortion and homosexuality should only allow children to make informed decisions; not indoctrinate them.
Some fear that educating students about the methods of contraception and abortion will lead to moral degradation as children are told that they can do as they please without consequences. The problem with such a view is that it seems to be based on a complete fallacy that children are currently all innocent and never have sex or engage in anything outside the moral precepts held by such groups. This clearly is not the case and given that the young people of the United Kingdom are having underage sex, it seems ridiculous to think that keeping them ignorant of the dangers and realities associated with this does anything to help them.
“The advent of the internet has led to an explosion of easily available pornography, which propagates unrealistic images of sex and indeed the human body”
If we refuse to give information to our children on such matters, they will seek it in other places. The advent of the internet has led to an explosion of easily available pornography, which propagates unrealistic images of sex and indeed the human body. The whole issue seems to come down to the maintenance of a taboo. The younger generation routinely break the sexual taboo that still exists and clinging doggedly to the fear of a sexualised society will do nothing to halt this or help guide children through the minefield of the adult words of ‘sex and relationships’. I would prefer children to be educated in school rather than through hearsay and nervous whispers.
Too close for comfort
After an eleven-hour flight from Chennai to London on an economy seat with a man snoring like a Neanderthal seated next to you, the virtue of patience tends to lose its appeal. The last thing I wanted to do was stand in an overcrowded immigration queue for an hour lugging hand luggage that weighs a ton. That said, I must admit it was one of the most amusing sixty minutes I’ve spent in an airport. A group of middle aged Indians travelling on a tour package formed an unruly little circular blob in what was otherwise an orderly queue to the immigration post. The immigration officer, appalled by this uncouth behaviour, came down and requested them to fall in line; which they did for about five minutes, before returning to the relatively circular, loud cluster. A second officer who tried reasoning with the elderly ladies came to the realisation that even the fear of being rebuked by authority wasn’t going to win a battle against years of tradition: a tradition that celebrates a strange conception of personal space.
“It is part of our historical tradition that influences how we view space and privacy”
The roots of such a tradition can be best understood by spending a day in a typical Indian household: a large group with representatives of three generations living under the same roof. It has long been the norm in Asian cultures that the woman marries into a family. Newly-weds stay with the husband’s family and live with his parents, brothers and their children. In such environments, personal space is a liberty that is seldom enjoyed. Everyone is in everyone else’s way and nobody is ever alone. As an Indian, I lived in such a household when I was growing up, and now that I live alone, I miss the sense of chaos and disarray that constantly consumed our lives and unintentionally gave each individual a sense of purpose and responsibility. We shouldn’t be quick to assume that this phenomenon is purely a result of financial difficulty. Joint families can be seen in households at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. It is part of our historical tradition that influences how we view space and privacy.
“It’s very similar to ants sprawling over a piece of candy”
This idea of personal space or absence thereof has a spillover effect in the public sphere. If you have ever had the privilege of taking a public bus in India, you would realise that, given the loads they carry, they defy every scientific principle. People cram into, onto and hang off the sides of buses, until there is no part of the body of the bus that can be seen other than the front windscreen. To put it in perspective, it’s very similar to ants sprawling over a piece of candy. What’s interesting is that this isn’t just because of inefficient public transport. Even if there are empty seats in front and behind where you are sitting, a traveller usually occupies the seat next to you, and starts a conversation. You grow so accustomed to close proximity that its absence can seem strange.
A few years ago, a friend of mine from Toronto took up an internship at the Hindu, a daily that is circulated largely in South India. While pitching ideas to the editor, he thought it might be interesting to reflect on the intimacy between Indian men, particularly the tradition of holding hands in public. Having been accustomed to the idea that men holding hands outside a funeral setting meant they were homosexuals, the Canadian presumed that India had a tradition of open-mindedness and tolerance to homosexuality that was unexpected in an Asian country. For the Indian man, however, the act of holding hands or putting an arm round another’s shoulder is not ‘intimacy’ in the traditional western sense. It is a consequence of ‘brotherly love’ that is enshrined even in the Indian national pledge.
The next time you happen to see an Indian taking a seat next to you on a train, which it is relatively empty, or when you find someone standing very close to you in a supermarket queue, take a moment to reflect on how even these mundane and annoying experiences are filled with clues of what living in India is like. Often these hidden clues can give you invaluable tools to understand what life is like on the Indian subcontinent.
Carnage UK night brings disorder after criticism
One man was arrested and two were warned for drunken behaviour during Thursday’s Carnage UK ‘Doctors & Nurses’ pub crawl in Oxford.
The three men were told to leave the city centre, but one returned to the area afterwards. As a result, he was arrested.
Two students were also seen urinating against the University Church on High Street at around 10.30pm. A student at Magdalen described the situation, “We were walking down High Street and saw two students wearing Carnage T-shirts who were pissing against the wall of the University Church. My friend went up to them and told them to resp
ect the Church as a place of worship. They gave an insincere apology but were quite embarrassed.”
This incident follows OUSU’s condemnation of Carnage UK events during Tuesday’s council. The motion criticising the company was put forward in the wake of a national scandal as a Sheffield student was caught urinating on a war memorial during a pub-crawl.
The events have prompted concerns about their impact on relations between students and locals, given the number of students involved and their presence on the streets. Carnage UK has also been accused of encouraging binge drinking.
Between 900 and 1,000 students took part in the event this week, their route passing through Anuba, Po Na Na, Mood, Que Pasa, Escape and The Regal.
One first year participant from Worcester College described the event as “fun” with “nice people”, however complained about the queues and the difficulty of getting into Regal.
Police spokesman Dave Parker commented on the night, “It passed pleasingly quietly and was just like a normal night in Oxford.” 35 voluntary stewards and 22 police officers were stationed to keep an eye on the revellers.
Getting To Know: The Wychwood Warriors
Ling Low joins the Wychwood Warriors, Oxford University’s historical re-enactment society, for early morning battle practice.
Review: The School for Scandal
First performed in 1777, Sheridan’s comedy of manners is as relevant within the context of today’s celebrity culture of gossip magazines and racy tabloids as it is when set in the parlours of its original period, giving the audience a wonderfully humorous insight into the predecessors of OK! and Closer magazines. The essence of the play invites criticism of society’s love of scandal and this is well portrayed in this production.
Will Spray is brilliant as Sir Peter, an aging bachelor who has recently married under the impression he was assuring his happiness by tying the knot with a young, innocent girl from the country, and who is now doubting his wisdom in marrying at all. His wife, Lady Teazle, drives him to distraction in her frivolous quest for acceptance within the fashionable circle. The audience is drawn in during Sir Peter’s soliloquy and shares his embarrassment at the actions of his wife and the fact that, despite all her faults, he is still charmed by her. His interaction with Sir Oliver and Rowley evokes a superb sense of an ‘old boys club’ and the vast, encompassing statements on the topic of marriage provide humour throughout.
Nevertheless, this is not a production without flaws. The duo of Crabtree and Backbite seem to do little more than raise the volume level on stage by about 20 decibels while making stilted, flamboyant motions. On the whole, however, even this serves to illicit a little grin from an audience. Overall the supporting cast are solid; I particularly enjoyed Hannah Ilett’s Mrs Candour, who struck just the right tone of warmth to her gossipy tirade.
Generally speaking, this production left me wishing desperately that the director had sought to find some way to vary this performance from the masses of previous productions of Sheridan. However, I can definitely recommend it as an enjoyable way to peruse through an evening and temporarily sate the frustrated English student of every friendship group.
Three stars