12 Wairarapa Midweek Opinion Wednesday, August 3, 2022 EDITORIAL
Opinion
Teaching consent: Let’s get it right As Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft told Stuff in 2021: “It’s time for New Zealand to admit [sexual violence] is an epidemic — and it needs a national epidemiclevel response.” At the time, Becroft was responding to the results of a survey, completed by 725 students from Christchurch Girls High School. Of the students that responded, more than half reported regular experiences of sexual harassment and assault. The survey estimated there had been, within a five-month period, 2677 incidents of harassment against 381 students — with their young male peers among the offenders. Twenty students alleged they had been raped. That same year, a report from the government’s violence prevention strategy, Te Aorerekura, revealed an estimated 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys will experience sexual violence before the age of 16. Let that sink for a moment. More than year on from the Christchurch Girls High survey, a
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Young(ish), scrappy & hungry
Erin Kavanagh-Hall growing number of educators, advocates and rangatahi are calling on the government to make sexual consent education compulsory in schools. Overseas research has shown comprehensive sex education can help reduce sexual harm — by giving young people tools to develop healthy, respectful relationships. In Aotearoa, teaching on consent — as well as on gender diversity, online safety and pornography — is advisable under the Ministry of Education’s Relationships and
Sexuality Guidelines. However, the Ministry has no process to ensure schools are implementing these guidelines. It’s up to schools to set their own lesson plans, in consultation with their communities. Sexual violence prevention advocate Genna Hawkins-Boulton recently surveyed 300 teens who had experienced sexual assault — all whom reported their high school consent education was “inadequate” at best, non-existent at worst. My thoughts?
If the statistics are anything to go by, sexual violence among young people is frighteningly common — and schools are well-placed to be part of the solution. But if we’re going to mandate consent education, we need to ensure it’s delivered competently. Sexual violence is a multi-faceted issue, and there’s more to consent education than “no means no”. For example: How do we give rangatahi the tools to handle rejection? How do we ensure a student knows what to do if someone isn’t prepared to take “no” for an answer? How do they navigate body language and non-verbal cues? How do we ensure our consent education is inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community, rangatahi Maori and disabled students? How do we help children develop confidence in their bodily autonomy — and the language to communicate their boundaries? How do we guide young men to push back against a culture which teaches
them they’re entitled to sex, and that women’s bodies are theirs for the taking — by force if necessary? There’s a lot to unpack here. As with any major changes to the curriculum, educators will require significant upskilling and professional development. Consent will need to be incorporated into teacher training courses. And I know I sound like a broken record here … but it will require buy-in from our elected leaders. It will require support and adequate resourcing for our teachers. It will require investment in our education system — which has been successively underfunded. It will require the political will to do better by our rangatahi. And right now … I don’t know if we’re seeing anywhere near an “epidemic level response”. Yes, we need consent education. But we need to do it properly: It can’t be another box-ticking exercise, with a few worksheets and awkward animated videos. Young Kiwis deserve better.
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