Argentine Senate OKs law to make sex ed compulsory in all schools

Published: 2006-10-05

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CNS) -- The Argentine Senate has approved a nationwide law making sex education compulsory in all schools, but Catholic officials and groups said it was vital to ensure the subject was not narrowed down simply to contraception. The law includes private religious school and begins sex education at age 5. "We think it is fundamental that there is information about everything," Jose Maria del Corral, spokesman for the education department of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, told Catholic News Service Oct. 5. "But no law can eclipse the responsibility parents have." Del Corral said it was important to note that the law would set minimum requirements. Religious schools would therefore be able to present sex education within "an ideological framework ... a framework of belief." The law says the Education Ministry will decide on the basic curriculum, to be adapted by each school "to its sociocultural reality, with respect to its institutional standpoint and the convictions of its members." A commission of experts still has to work out the finer points of how the law will be applied.

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