Education Minister Athena Michailidou witnessed a five-year-old confessing to his kindergarten teacher about experiencing sexual abuse and spoke about the incident at the Human Rights Committee of the Parliament during a discussion on “children’s right to sex education.”
“I was present when a five-year-old child told the teacher, ‘Miss, what you are saying was done to me by my grandfather.’ I didn’t know what to do, but the teacher did,” said the Education Minister, emphasizing the vital importance of sex education.
As the Minister highlighted, there has been a spread of false news and misinformation regarding the teaching of sex education, which has recently become mandatory.
“From the very beginning, we experienced war. It was very unfair for parents and students to be recipients of this misinformation,” she said, adding that it was wrongly spread that it was not taught until recently, while it has been in the detailed curriculum for the last 12 years in Preschool, Primary, and Middle Schools and was taught by the respective kindergarten and school teachers.
Now, it is also taught in high schools and technical schools.
“We posted all the material of the detailed curriculum online for transparency reasons,” explained Michailidou, adding that opponents often circulated other material from other countries on social media, claiming it was in our schools.
“The units include respect, equality, acceptance, knowing my body, breaking the silence, and protection,” added the Minister, emphasizing that sex education is taught in European countries.
Regarding the results of teaching sex education, she emphasized that they are encouraging. “The best assessment is the reports. The cases that reached the Children’s House show that children broke their silence.”
Furthermore, she said that the lesson was embraced by the students. “It seems they need these discussions, and especially the older ones request more hours.”
