My 10-year-old son and his friends Isaac and Eliot did not go inside that exhibit; it was labeled for ages 12 to 18 (!). But they were interested in the exhibit where you could practice French kissing by sticking your hand inside a giant puppet of a tongue. "Be creative! Make it beautiful!" read the instructions.
The boys found it fascinating and watched it twice. Zander pronounced it "disturbing" -- but he didn't really look disturbed.
There were a lot of things in the Teen Facts area that would have some American parents yanking their kids out by the hair. I admit, I was a bit shocked. But I also found it refreshing. Another blogger who wrote about this exhibit asked whether the frank attitude of the Dutch toward sex ed had a better outcome than the
American approach cited the following statistics, which support the case for openness quite elegantly:
| United States | Netherlands | |
| Births per 1000, women ages 15-19 | 52.1 | 6.2 |
| Abortions per 1000, women ages 15-19 | 30.2 | 3.9 |
By the way, this intrepid blogger took pictures of everything.
Comments, anyone?
[update: Interested in further information about what schools and government do in the Netherlands to produce the outcomes cited above? Check out this article: Adolescent Sexual Health in Europe and the U.S.—Why the Difference? ]
Loved this post, Suzanne! I laughed and laughed and then nodded thoughtfully at the end. Having worked at COSI in the studio that designed the exhibits, I could only imagine the boardroom discussions of, say, the French-kissing box...
ReplyDeleteI love you for this post! I had no idea that poor growing boys spend so much time peeking into their underwear.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for openness- but this is America- so I have little hope. Do you know whether contraception is more readily available to teens there? Openness couldn't be enough to account for the discrepancy in those statistics- right?
I'm not sure where teens get contraceptives here, Sarah -- although as an irrelevant aside, I will tell you that a group of girls from a Dutch high school here expressed their rivalry with the international school my kids attend by swinging by after school one day and throwing condoms at the kids . . . I'm sure there was some kind of subtext that I missed! I'll check into your question.
ReplyDeleteCheck out this article exploring reasons for the difference in sexual health between U.S. and European teens.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.advocatesforyouth.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=419&Itemid=177
The statistics are very clear: teens are having sex in both places, but in Europe they are avoiding pregnancy and STDs much more effectively. I don't think that US teens have trouble getting contraceptives; condoms are available at CVS. But to have them ready at the critical moment requires planning, which requires acknowledging that you plan to have sex. And I think our cultural attitudes encourage American teens to pretend that they are not going to have sex until they are about to do so.
The exhibit at NEMO and the sex ed approach described in this article are strikingly different from US sex ed in that the underlying message is that sex is a healthy, normal part of adolescent development. It's a concept I'm not entirely comfortable with myself, to be honest. But the data tells me that I should get comfortable with it.
By the way, we have seen this in our international school here in Amsterdam: there was a unit on human reproduction and sexuality in the 6th grade science curriculum. It was not a special class, and the parents were not warned or informed about the unit at all. The textbook had some very forthright information, including a drawing of a couple having sex, and the kids received a handout describing all the available methods of birth control, with drawings explaining how to use them.
LOL! This American mom has been avoiding the NEMO just because of this. I'm not quite ready. Our school covers sex ed in the fifth grade with the "condom and banana" demonstration somewhere in seventh. Holland is a whole different experience!
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