Schoolkid? Seven Years Old? British? Watch This Film Teaching You How to Have Sex

A British mother took her little girl out of school in March 2010 after seeing a sex education film the seven-year-old had been made to watch in class. The cartoon film showed a couple in a bedroom, naked and having sex.

The young pupils were made to watch the Channel 4 sex education DVD, "Living and Growing", at their village primary school in Lincolnshire. After seeing the film herself, Lisa Bullivant removed her daughter from the school and placed her in another local primary school.

Mrs Bullivant's complaint was that the cartoon was sexually explicit, very graphic and not suitable for children seven years old. Her daughter had been frightened by what she saw, she said, and children in the class had been trying to copy what teachers had shown them on film. Not surprising because the 'educational' film is in effect a practical how-to-have-sex lesson. For little kids.

"Seven to nine-year-olds should not possess this knowledge." Mrs Bullivant said. "There's no educational or psychological benefit or need for children of this age to have full knowledge of what sexual intercourse actually entails."

The Lincolnshire school had notified parents that a sex education film would be shown to young pupils but Mrs Bullivant said she had had "faith in the head teacher and the school that all they would be learning would be basic puberty. It should have said in the letter that children would learn how to have sexual intercourse."

The head teacher, Lesley Thornes, declined to comment on the charge that the seven-year-old children were in effect being taught how to have sex. Debbie Barnes, assistant director of children's services at the local council, however, did comment. She said: "The DVD has been recommended for use in schools by the [British government's] Department for Children, Schools and Families, and is seen as appropriate for the age group...We are happy with the school's approach in using the DVD for the benefit of its pupils and their education."

Thousands of copies of the Channel 4 sex education film have now been sold to primary schools across the UK. So tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of little kids will have a key part of their childhood innocence forcibly removed by intrusive teachers, pushing explicit sexual detail at them.

The short film can be viewed on YouTube. It does its very best to encourage kids to try what they see. The narrator stresses that sex makes you happy. In fact she tells the children four times, as they are watching the man mount the woman and then the woman mount the man, that having sex is making the couple happy. To underline that, she adds that having sex gives people "a good feeling", that having sex is a "wonderful" thing to do and is "exciting for them both". Just in case the children being made to watch are a bit doubtful of what the woman narrator is telling them, a young child's voice is brought into the narration. The child says the couple do indeed look happy as they are having sex. "They do look happy, don't they!" she says enthusiastically. And the adult narrator underlines that they're happy because they're getting "such a good feeling". She then stresses yet again that they're "so happy" because they're having sex.

Ironically, YouTube asks viewers to confirm that they're over 18 to watch "Living and Growing".

Asked to comment on the use of the film in sex education classes for such young children, a Channel 4 spokesman said, in typical British bureaucrat non-speak:

"'Living and Growing' was developed in response to requests for a resource that promotes sex and relationship education as a developmental process."

Hmmm. Some might say adults herding little kids together and making them watch pictures of naked adults having sex is pretty close to paedophilia. Saying over and over as they watch that having sex is wonderful, exciting and makes people happy is indistinguishable from the child grooming behaviour of paedophiles.

But even if the "teachers" involved in this educational exercise are well-intentioned they're not doing kids any good.

Firstly, it's pretty obvious that children often try to copy adult behaviour they see. Why else do little girls step into mum's shoes even though they're far too big for small feet? Why do little boys jump onto the driving seat of dad's stationary car and grab the wheel? Sexually explicit films can only encourage kids to go further than they otherwise might - and at a younger age - in inquisitively exploring each others' bodies. Especially as the narration says only that sex is wonderful. No hint of disease, no hint that sex can lead to unwanted pregnancy, no mention of possible pressure to have sex or emotional consequences.

Secondly, even if kids don't try to imitate the sex acts they've been shown, adults have no right to show the detail of intercourse to kids aged seven years old. It's an assault on their childhood and their privacy and tantamount to child abuse. There's a time and a place for everything and being made to watch adults - even cartoon adults - have explicit sex on film when you're a seven year old sitting in primary school isn't either. The strange UK education establishment and Channel Four may think little kids need teachers to "promote sex and relationship education as a developmental process" - whatever that hooptedoodle's supposed to mean - but they don't. Learning how to have sex at seven is the opposite of "age-appropriate". Kids of that age need to have their childhood protected as far as possible, not stripped away from them. They need to be free to play and imagine and live in a kids' world separate, as far as possible, from the worries and concerns of adult relationships and activities. And, at that age, that includes not knowing graphic detail about the mechanics of having sex.

The sex "educators" really should leave kids in peace at this age. They can waffle on as much as they want about age-appropriateness and developmental processes but there are some things a kid needs to know and other things that can wait till later. A seven year old doesn't need to know, and shouldn't be taught, how to arrange a mortgage, organise a funeral, drive a car - or have sex.