My name is Miia Kams and I am from a small country called Estonia, which is located in Northern Europe. I am a first year law student at Tartu University. For my entire life I have been interested in the justice system and how it works. For the past few years the topic that has interested me the most is LGBTQ+ rights and how unfairly the system treats sexual and gender minorities. I am specifically interested in sexual education in schools. It is important to have a good education overall, because schools raise the next generation that is going to lead the country. Schools should be the place where students can obtain objective information and subsequently form their own opinions.
Firstly, sexual education is important because it raises a more tolerant society. People fear things that are unknown for them. In Estonia, when students are in the 11th grade, it is mandatory to do a research paper. I researched 9th grade students’ knowledge on sexual minorities and their satisfaction with obtained information through school. What I concluded from that paper was that 100% of the students who did not have any sexual minorities in their social circle were not at all accepting towards LGBTQ+ people. From this it can be inferred that hatred may be due to ignorance or deliberately avoidance of people who belong to sexual minorities. However, 68% of the students who answered that they are very accepting of LGBTQ+ people had friends/acquaintances/family who identified as a sexual minority. This goes to show that personal contact with the LGBTQ+ community results in people being more accepting of the issue.
Secondly, it is important that teachers tell students objective information, not their own opinions. School should be a place to learn, not to spread biased assumptions. In this day and age, one can find a lot of information on the internet. It has the potential to provide children and young people with access to educational information, but the problem is that they are unable to critically analyze and evaluate the information they read. Young minds are easily influenced, so if they end up only seeing one sided information, it creates the illusion that there is only one correct opinion. If they constantly get only one type of information from parents, the internet, friends and school, it becomes difficult to convince them otherwise.
Next, I am going to explain sex education in Estonia. As of 11.03.2023 the Estonian government officially included sexual and gender identity into their middle school inimeseõpetuse (human studies/social studies that is primarily aimed at the development of the students’ personality, general human values, and social competence) curriculum. In the previous curriculum the word “sexual orientation” was mentioned once and “gender identity” was not mentioned at all. The curriculum now is still not enough to give an informative overview of LGBTQ+, but it is a start. The curriculum states that “9th grade graduates have to understand that people with different sexual orientations and gender identities have the right to equal and respectful treatment”, which is amazing and is the beginning for a more tolerating society.
Even if the curriculum says that middle school graduates need to know about certain things, they might not know it in reality. Teachers have a lot of autonomy in Estonia, which has its pros and cons. The main problem in this case is that the teachers can pick and choose what to teach. I have a friend who came from a different middle school, and their teacher said “I do not want to talk to you about sex, so I am not going to do that”. My friend did not have a sex education in middle school even though it should have been mandatory to talk about. Another problem is parents. Let's say that there is a teacher that wants to give students proper sexual education lessons. They might not be able to do that because there have been cases where parents have said something along the lines of “Why are you teaching my child this trash?!”. The teacher cannot do anything against the parents, because they might risk losing their job.
Another thing is that the textbooks that should describe sexual orientation and gender identity do not do it in reality. For example in my middle school the book they use in inimeseõpetuse (human studies) classes is called “Tervis – minu valikud“ (“Health – My Choices”). It is meant for 8th grade. The book has one chapter called “Sexuality and Relationships”. In theory, it should address sexual identity and sexual orientation, but the reality is much different. In the entire textbook, there was only one page about sexual minorities. Said page mentioned three sexualities: heterosexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality, but there are actually more sexual orientations than the three previously mentioned. The textbook briefly covered the topics of discrimination and sexual differences, and while it is very important to teach young people that there are sexual differences and that no one should be discriminated against because of these differences, the book was still strongly lacking.
In conclusion, Estonian sexual education is moving in the right direction. It is still inadequate, but the progress has to start from somewhere. It is important to teach children about different sexual and gender identities and that helps to create a more supportive and tolerating society. Schools should be objective and not push their biased views on children, because young minds are easily influenced.