16 luglio 2021
On July 16, 2021, the newspaper "Il Giorno" shared the reflections of the Legal Representative of the Paritaria School S. Freud on the issue of the importance of sex education in the classroom.
On the page “Piazza Lombarda. The challenges on the table; school and society ", Dr. Daniele Nappo explains how Italy is one of the seven European countries in which sex education is not part of the school curriculum.
In a new perspective, the education system should make the subject interesting and not "censoring", "sentimental education" and not just purely physical and sexual. Make sex education compulsory at school.
Italy is one of the seven European countries in which sex education is not part of the school curriculum, perhaps because it has always been the subject of political, religious and ideological conflict.
In the absence of a ministerial path to follow, each school can decide whether and how to deal with the subject: some involve willing teachers, others adhere to external initiatives or associations. In essence, however, self-management is determined with an evident disparity in training.
According to UNESCO, the school system plays a key role in teaching sex education. The standards for sexuality education in Europe suggest a so-called holistic vision, which encompasses not only the simple prevention of health problems, but also focuses on a characteristic of physical and emotional life as a positive and not dangerous element, but a source of satisfaction and enrichment in intimate relationships (…) Certainly the school is a place dedicated to the learning and education of students, and the new school could make the subject interesting and not "censoring".
Recently, the Ministry of Education has clarified that extra-curricular school activities concerning sensitive issues from an ethical or religious point of view must be previously authorized by parents, but it certainly cannot be enough to solve the training gap on the subject.
There is no legislation, or a clear reference framework, and each school uses the methodology it deems appropriate. In a context therefore in which sexual education is absent, incomplete, approximate, the vast majority of Italian adolescents get information on the internet, helping to fuel the confusion and false myths about sexuality. The substantial aspect of the problem is also that sex education at school must not be limited to providing technical information to young people on how sexual intercourse takes place or how diseases are transmitted or on how to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Today girls and boys need a sentimental education much more than a sexual one (...) in a future, hopefully near, it would be important to include sex education as a curriculum subject and consider it an exam subject. Programs should be treated in a multidisciplinary way, in other words by multiple teachers from different points of view they should not be optional, building a project that gives answers to the changing life situations of teenagers
Dott. Daniele Nappo
Legal Representative S. Freud Private School
