CONTENT, FORMS AND TECHNOLOGIES OF STUDENTS’ SEXUAL EDUCATION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES

Abstract

A comparative analysis of sexual education formation in the leading countries of the world is conducted in the article. Four main periods of sexual education genesis have been distinguished, their features and characteristic emphases in the formation of students’ competences during each of these periods have been analyzed. In particular, one-sided approach to solving the problems of sexual education is shown, namely the emphasis on sexual aspects of it, ignoring the connection of sexuality with marriage and childbirth. The importance of sexual revolution in changing the approaches to solving the problems of sexual education in educational institutions is emphasized. The transformation of moral and family values, the loosening of social control over the pre-marital behavior of young people, the legalization of same-sex love, the separation of sexuality and reproduction, the normalization of unproductive sexuality – these and other realities of life have pushed the governments of many foreign countries to revise the attitude towards the sexual education of schoolchildren. Different approaches to the content, forms and technologies of sexual education, from abstinence from sexual relations before marriage to radical sexual education with the domination of sexual socialization, have been singled out. The key problem in the content of sexual education development, namely the identification of the relationship between the study of the issues of sexuality and the idea of teaching the abstinence from premarital sexual contacts, have been determined. At the beginning of the XXI century a tendency for the replacement of a special subject on sexual education by means of integration of the problems of sexual education into other school subjects based on the principle of multidisciplinarity is observed. The content of sexual education in contemporary pedagogical systems of the West is analyzed, the focus is on issues such as attitudes towards sexuality, the formation of a contraceptive culture of the youth, gender aspects of sexual education, homosexuality, and others. The content should be implemented via the use of a variety of training strategies and technologies, namely, media, interactive technologies, video, project work. The necessity of using certain elements of foreign experience in educational institutions of Ukraine has been substantiated.