BMJ 1995;311:1226 (4 November)

Letters

Dutch surprise at British question

EDITOR,--The studies by Alex R Mellanby and colleagues1 and K Wellings and colleagues2 on the effect of sex education on adolescent sexual activity and the conclusions drawn raise the question why lessons learnt in other countries--particularly those in northern Europe, which have similar religious and cultural backgrounds--do not reach Britain and vice versa. This is probably true for many other fields in research and may be due to a language barrier, although much of the research done in the Netherlands, for instance, is written in English and easily accessible.

Being Dutch, I am baffled by the hesitance in England to incorporate sex education in school-children's curriculums. A recent article by Visser et al, which reviewed the effectiveness of sex education for adolescents in Western countries, confirmed that it increases knowledge about sexuality but does not as a consequence increase sexual activity.3Ketting and Visser discussed the reasons for the low . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

School sex education: an experimental programme with educational and medical benefit
Alex R Mellanby, Fran A Phelps, Nicola J Crichton, and John H Tripp
BMJ 1995 311: 414-417. [Abstract] [Full Text]

Access all current jobs at BMJ Group
Whats new online at Student BMJ
Listen to the latest BMJ Interview