The Americas | Birds, bees and not much else

Latin America lacks decent sex education in its schools

Teenage pregnancy rates are still too high across the region

Jun 23rd 2022|BUENOS AIRES AND PANAMA CITY

Two 14-year-old students at Jesus and Mary College, a Roman Catholic girls school in Buenos Aires, squirm as they describe their classes on sex. Last year they learned about fertility and sexual organs (“It was really embarrassing!” says one). This term they have talked about the process of giving birth, but they are not sure what else they will learn. The teachers refused to answer some of the questions that their classmates were allowed to write in anonymously. “They said it wasn’t appropriate to talk about it in school and we could ask our family members these things,” recalls the other.

Sex education is patchy across Latin America, a mostly Catholic continent. Although on paper every government in the region tells schools they must teach their pupils about the birds and the bees, many fail to do so. A survey in 2020 in Brazil showed that only a quarter of teachers had undergone training in how to talk to their pupils about sex. “We train ourselves from our own interest,” says Vicky Fernández Blanco, a nursery-school teacher in Argentina who teaches her charges how to ask for consent before hugging a friend, and so on.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Birds, bees and not much else"