A mother in the UK has lashed out at a UK school after it reportedly taught her 8-year-old daughter about male masturbation.
Coleshill Primary School in the UK city of Birmingham is said to have shown its Year 4 (3rd Grade) pupils an online cartoon about male puberty covering the topics of erections, being “horny” and masturbation.
The decision has reportedly provoked the ire of parents, with one mother expressing her fury at the school for showing her 8-year-old daughter the video.
According to a report by the Daily Mail, the woman said that her daughter was left feeling distressed after seeing the video, which was reportedly produced by American-based sexual education organisation AMAZE org.
The video — titled Top Signs Boys are in Puberty — discusses the changes young men go through in their teenage years, with the production briefly touching on wet dreams, spontaneous erections, masturbation as well as the feeling of being “horny”.
“I am very angry about this because I don’t want my eight-year-old daughter being taught about masturbation and wet dreams,” the irate parent reportedly said. “It is far too young”
Fearing that her position on the topic may be “old-fashioned”, the mother is then said to have approached other parents, many of whom reportedly echoed her views.
“I didn’t know if I was being old-fashioned, and I spoke to other parents who felt exactly the same way,” she said. “More so the dads. They were the angriest of all.”
“They are too young,” she repeated. “Let them be children because once they know about it, they will start experimenting.”
Commenting on the controversy, the school’s principal, Matthew Edwards, has said that the video has now been removed from the Year 4 course, saying that the few seconds spent on the issue of masturbation within the three-minute video was not meant to be the focus of the lesson.
“It is not our intention to sexualise our children whatsoever,” he said. “Advance notice is given to the parents prior to the teaching of those units and we have reacted on this one particular resource by not using it.”
“We are still teaching about puberty but not that content,” the senior school official reportedly went on to confirm.
This is far from the first time that sexual education curriculum has been put under the spotlight in Britain, with controversy over the age-appropriateness of certain materials repeatedly arising over the past number of years.
For example, back in 2019, news emerged that schools in the English region of Warwickshire were planning to teach children as young as six about masturbation as part of its All About Me sex ed programme.
According to documents seen by the Mail, six and seven-year-olds were to be given lessons under the subheading of “Touching Myself”, with teachers prompted to tell their pupils that “lots of people like to tickle or stroke themselves as it might feel nice”.
More recently, a new mandatory sex education curriculum set to be rolled in Wales has been slammed as being “extreme and unbalanced“, with significant focus being placed on promoting “LGBTQ+ diversity”.
The incident in Coleshill Primary School is also not the first time sex-ed organisation AMAZE org has become embroiled in controversy, with the group being heavily criticised for telling children watching porn is “normal” back in 2020.
“Lots of people watch porn,” the narrator in one video aimed at teaching children sex-ed during lockdown says. “After all, it’s right there and it’s free. And anyway, many people are curious about this sex stuff.”
The organisation has since put out videos on “challenging male stereotypes”, as well as on various aspects of transgenderism.
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