Scouting Ireland has no plans to introduce sex education as part of its programme with young people. “We have no sex education policy and it is not on the agenda to develop one,” PRO Neil Mahoney told ciNews.
His comments came as the Scout Association in the UK announced that it would be including sex education as part of its remit.
The Association’s official website, says it feels they need to address the issue as scouting had always promoted “safe and responsible relationships amongst its youth membership.”
It continues: “the new guidance focuses on helping young people develop the confidence, maturity and self-esteem to resist peer pressure to be sexually active until they are ready to make safe and informed decisions.”
However, it is clear from the British site, that while it says they are aiming to help young people resist sexual activity, the tone of the information is one of accepting that young people may be sexually active, and their scouting leaders should be “signposts to point young people towards the Family Planning Clinic or the local sexual health clinic,” as Matt Mills, an eighteen year old leader, said on BBC news.
Despite reports in papers, the Scouting organisation says they will not be handing out condoms. Matt Mills said that the leaders respected the views of parents too, and generally had very good relationships with them.
Leaders will be provided with Fact Sheets to help them deal with questions coming from their scouts, and the organisation denies that having a policy on sex education will encourage sexual activity.
“Scouts of all ages are expected to behave appropriately whilst on scouting activities. Young people undertaking sexual relationship at scout events would be inappropriate.”
Leaders are advised to follow a set of rules if a young person says he is sexually active. They can be “provided with information about contraception and good sexual health,” and contraception can only be “accessible to young people in accordance with the Fraser Guidelines”.
These guidelines were developed in 1985 by Lord Fraser, and say advice can be given to young people without the parents’ knowledge and consent in certain circumstances: where the young person is able to understand the advice being given and the adult cannot persuade the young person to inform his or her parents that he or she is seeking contraceptive advice.
In these cases, if the adult believes the young person is likely to “begin or continue having intercourse with or without contraception,” they should provide contraception.
While another scout leader, Amy Breslin, told the BBC that the founder of the organisation Baden-Powell would have approved of the new policy, (“He would be proud that we are equipping young people with the things they need today.”) others would strongly disagree.
In fact in his book Rovering to Success, Baden-Powell wrote that young men should not indulge their “primitive sexual urges”, but should put their energies into “hiking and the enjoyment of the out-of-door manly activities”, rather than “aimless loafing and smutty talks”.
In Ireland, Neil Mahoney said that scouting was a movement and “not designed to be static.”
“A common ethos exists in all the scouting organisations, but it is adapted to the culture and needs of a place.” Cultural norms varied widely from country to country, he said.
Policies in the organisation change when young people request the change. “If enough young people ask for change, programmes and structures are developed to implement them. We are a ground roots organisation,” said Mr Mahoney. However, he reiterated that there was no call for sex education in the scouts in Ireland at the moment.
There are 36,000 young people involved in the scouts in Ireland. Membership has grown by 10 per cent since the two scouting organisations, the Scout Association of Ireland and Catholic Scouts of Ireland, merged four years ago.
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(Source: CIN)