Once a Taboo : Soviet Schools Begin Offering Sex Education

MOSCOW —  Teen-age students in Soviet schools have taken up a subject that sounds a lot like sex education, which has been considered taboo by ultraconservative school administrators.

Reflecting Soviet society’s Victorian attitude toward the human body, the schools have generally discouraged even any discussion of sexual matters.

Now, the official news agency Tass has announced the start of a new course entitled “Family Life Ethics and Psychology” to be taught by specially trained teachers.

Young people of 16 and 17, the announcement said, will learn about the psychology of human relations, as well as cultural standards and family budgets. For Soviet citizens who have learned to read between the lines, though, the real message comes through the cryptic language.

‘Physiological-Hygenic Aspects’ “There will be conversations on friendship and love, marriage and family life, physiological-hygenic aspects of mutual relations of young people,” the announcement said, never mentioning sex.

“Young people display interest in the new course,” Tass said, explaining that it will be compulsory although students will not be graded or given academic credits for completing it.

Ivan Grebennikov, a Soviet educator and one of the authors of the course, said it “will help the young people to have a correct view of everyday problems.”

The announcement was sure to be applauded by the Soviet Union’s handful of sex education specialists, who for some time have been demanding sex education in the schools.

Soaring Divorce Rate They have linked the absence of formal instruction about sex to the Soviet Union’s soaring divorce rate in recent years. In Moscow, almost half of all marriages now end in divorce; nationwide, the figure is one in three.

Sexual dissatisfaction, according to Soviet researchers, ranks third among the causes for divorce, behind incompatibility and complaints over sharing of household duties.

Igor S. Kohn, a prominent sociologist and educator, has assailed the “19th-Century morality” here that he says has prevented the very mention of sexual problems.

Kohn said teachers, most of whom are women, have been an obstacle to instruction in sexual matters. Some of them, he said, would block their students’ view of a nude statue of Venus, “with their own bodies, if need be.”

As a result, he said in a recently published interview, students are left with dubious sources of information and a feeling of “unrestrained cynicism.”

Inadequate Textbooks Kohn also decried the lack of sex education specialists, contending that proper advice for young newlyweds is becoming ever more important. He also lamented the absence of adequate textbooks for sex instruction.

The newspaper for young Communists, Komsomolskaya Pravda, confirmed the primitive state of sex education by printing a letter from a teen-age boy who apparently had been enrolled in a trial course.

His teacher, he said, was clearly embarrassed by the subject and told her pupils only that warm clothing was required in winter but that in summer one had to dress differently.

“Read everything else in the booklet,” he said the teacher advised.

The boy said the booklet contained only “descriptions of organs, couched in impenetrable but learned verbiage, so that even the most tenacious reader dropped the project halfway through.”