The child’s early education was not violated and the fundamental rights of the family remain intact, it was said on Thursday in a judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The applicant from Basel had argued that sex education came too early for her seven-year-old girl. This violated their right to a private family life, she claimed. The school administration rejected the application as well as the Swiss courts.
The mother said she was not completely against sex education, but in Kindergarten or elementary school this was too soon for a young child, she said.
The judges of the ECHR have now stated that sex education serves the important purpose of “protecting” children from sexual violence and exploitation. It is about preventing serious mental and physical injuries, they say.
The teachers in Switzerland are required to respond exclusively to questions from children. The lessons are therefore not “systematic” and do not contradict the right of parents to provide for the education of children themselves.
Already in 2011, the ECHR dismissed the lawsuit filed by five parents from North Rhine-Westphalia who fundamentally rejected sexual education at school.
Teaching on the subject was not compatible with their religious beliefs, they said at the time. The plaintiffs belonged to a Baptist church.
Last year a Belgian sex education website featuring highly explicit drawings was recommended to children as young as seven. The explicit website, called Alles over seks [Everything about sex], was launched by Sensoa, an centre for sexual matters in the Belgian region of Flanders.
Frederic Leire, father of two children aged seven and nine, told Belgian media that his children got the guide at school. He said he was shocked by the website.
Leire said: “I would even call it perversity. I don’t think that children will ask questions like how many sex positions there are and if they need drugs for sexual pleasures.”
The Catholic Education organisation also expressed shocked over the website, which said the sex education website was too technically focused and did not detail the relational aspect.
The European Court of Human Rights was established in 1959 in Strasbourg by member states of the Council of Europe to ensure compliance with the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.
The ECHR, not to be confused with the ECJ, give rulings on individual and state complaints for alleged violations of the rights recognised in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Since 1998, the ECHR has been a permanent court of law. Citizens can turn to it directly after their domestic remedies are exhausted. The judgments delivered by the Court are binding on the States concerned.
According to the Swiss daily, the Tagesanzeiger, the Verein Schutzinitiative, which emerged from the former conservative Initiative Committee, did not comment directly on the verdict.
In 2012, a federal popular initiative was launched against the instruction when Basel schools announced sex education demonstrated with a sex box containing a wooden penis and plush vagina in the canton of Basel city.
In the last newsletter, Toni Bertoluzzi, a SVP member had however denounced the tendency in sex education: “It is completely wrong to believe that children should be forced to learn the subject!”
Beat Zemp, president of the Umbrella Association of Teachers in Switzerland said in response: “Our teachers teach sex education according to age and situation”. This includes reacting to children’s questions at the lower level. It is up to the teacher to decide when to answer them personally to the child or to discuss the subject in class.
Zemp assumes that sex education, as envisaged by Curriculum 21, is also legally sanctioned. The syllabus is currently being introduced in the 21 German-speaking cantons.
Johannes Reich, law professor at the University of Zurich, remains cautious however: the Strasbourg judges only assessed an individual case. He admitted that the ECHR has remained true to its course, to support the concept of a Federal EU Constitution, according to which instruction is the same everywhere.
A limit can be drawn where parents must accept interference in their parenting power, he said. Reich describes the limit as follows: “The child may be confronted with other attitudes and views, but not indoctrinated.”
