In Poland, attempts have been underway for years by the country’s government, which since 2016 has been controlled by the far right and is very close to the Polish Catholic Church, to limit the teaching of sexual education in schools.
The lower house of the Polish parliament in August has preliminarily approved after years of debate, a law bans access to schools for organizations which, according to what the text says, “promote the sexualisation of children”. The law has been described by opposition movements and human rights organizations as a way of banning sex education, and is the latest of the Polish government’s attempts to do so. The law, which still has to pass the Senate, was one of the last major measures examined by the government: elections will be held on 15 October, and for many it is significant that the majority has preliminarily approved such an identifying law for their electorate close to the vote.
However, the Polish government had been working to limit sex education in schools for some time. Last year, parliament approved two bills that the Minister of Education, Przemysław Czarnek, had defined as necessary to prevent the “moral corruption” of boys and girls. He had been to both laws, however vetoed of President Andrzej Duda, former politician of the party that controls the majority, Law and Justice, who to justify his decisions had argued that the two measures would have led to excessive government interference in educational systems and that in any case they would not have been socially accepted .
However, the latest proposal approved by the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, is a popular initiative: that is, it was presented after a collection of signatures. It was supported by several Catholic religious groups and associations that supported the almost total ban on pregnancy terminations, introduced in 2021 by Law and Justice. Education Minister Czarnek, PiS President Jarosław Kaczyński and Elżbieta Witek, spokesperson of the Sejm, explicitly spoke out in his favor.
The bill introduces some of the proposals that were included in the two previous attempts and which Duda had vetoed: it prohibits NGOs and other organizations from carrying out activities that “promote issues related to the sexualization of children” in nursery and primary schools, which include students up to 15 years old; and in schools that include students up to 20 years of age, it requires NGO activities to obtain the approval of the principal and the parent council, to whom the organizations are required to provide information on lessons in advance.
However, the text of the law does not define what “sexualization of children” means. Dorota Łoboda, an opposition politician, said that PiS «deliberately mixes two concepts: that of “sexualization”, which means perceiving another person through the prism of sexual attractiveness, and that of “sexualization”, which means impart knowledge about human sexuality.” And she added that of course «there are no NGOs, associations or educators in Poland who have “sexualization of children” among their objectives. There is nothing like it. This is a problem invented by Minister Czarnek and his political group.”
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During the discussion phase of the bill, an opposition party had proposed an amendment to make the term “sexualisation” less vague and to impose the same obligations envisaged for NGOs also on churches or other religious associations, but the Sejm he rejected.
Polish public schools do not formally provide the teaching of sexual education, but do provide optional “family life education” lessons (Education for family life or WDŻ, in Polish) which in most cases are taught by religious teachers.
A study on Polish students’ experiences of sex education published earlier this year show how the worst opinions on the teaching come from those who attended a WDŻ held by religion teachers, and how the best ones were given instead by those who participated in lessons held by qualified sex educators or biology teachers. It then emerged that 74 percent of the 11 thousand people interviewed had not acquired knowledge on sexual consent, that 50 percent had not received sufficient information on contraception, that only 10 percent had obtained reliable information on sexual orientation and only 6 percent on gender identity.
Even if the WDŻ is taught by qualified people, there are still strong limitations established by the Ministry of Education on what can and cannot be taught. WDŻ corresponds to an approach to sex education that is referred to in academic studies as “Type A”: it promotes abstinence as the primary form of contraception and generally encourages students to abstain from sexuality until marriage.
“Type A” programs tend to deal with religiously based values and use terms such as “chastity,” “virginity,” “purity,” and “sacredness of marriage,” excluding sex education on contraception, abortion, sexually transmitted infections, masturbation and everything in between. “Type B” instead focuses on teaching the biology and physiology of the reproductive system and is not foreseen in Poland (“Type C” is an approach that teaches the emotional, physical and mental aspects of sexuality: that is, it is a sexual education course).
The first approach has been criticized by the European Union, the United Nations and several important medical and pediatric associations. According to the UN, “abstinence-only programs have been found to be ineffective in delaying the onset of sexual activity, reducing the frequency of sexual intercourse, or reducing the number of sexual partners” and often “convey incomplete information or inaccurate.”
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The only textbooks provided for WDŻ courses were written by a few people and among them is the head of an anti-abortion organization. The book for students aged around 14 talks about sexual abstinence, marital stability, “respect for human life” and argues that comprehensive sex education increases risky sexual behavior by adolescents. He also says that twenty years of family-friendly, abstinence-friendly “Type A” sex education has been a success for the country, as Poland has the lowest rate of teenage abortions in Europe (the book doesn’t say naturally that since the 1990s Poland has had the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, and that this translates into clandestine and illegal abortions which do not emerge from the data).
All WDŻ program books express skepticism towards contraception, explaining for example that adopting a “contraceptive mentality” increases the likelihood of abortion. They are then intolerant towards anything that deviates from the norm of heterosexual intercourse that occurs within marriage and for the purposes of conception, they propose stereotyped gender roles by omitting relevant issues such as gender equality, they state that masturbation is linked to “addiction from pornography and sex” and that emergency contraception is a “drug for the early termination of pregnancy” (emergency contraception is not an abortive treatment and has nothing to do with the so-called abortion pill, the RU -486, which is used to perform pharmacological abortion by interrupting an ongoing pregnancy).
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Anna Bocian, psychologist and teacher of a WDŻ course in a school in Lublin, has explained that these books are not teaching tools but propaganda: they spread misinformation about sexual and reproductive health and pass on discriminatory myths and stereotypes.
The organizations that the bill plans to exclude from schools are often the only reliable source of comprehensive sexuality education in the country: «Sex education run by expert non-governmental organizations is essential in a country where the official curriculum means that children rarely learn about their bodies, consensual relationships and reproductive health.” he said Kyle Knight of the NGO Human Rights Watch: «Far from “sexualizing children”, these groups provide fundamental lessons about relationships, autonomy, safety and health».
If the proposal is finally approved after passage in the Senate, and if it finally enters into force after President Duda’s signature, it would also have a chilling effect on the few and few teachers in the country who provide comprehensive sex education.
Education Minister Czarnek responded to criticism from NGOs and the opposition by saying: «Do you know why they have a problem? Because in reality they want to sexualize, they want to deprave, they want to distort the conscience and minds of children.” Recently the minister he also argued that “brainwashing” by sex educators and “LGBT ideology” are responsible for the increase in youth suicide attempts.
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