DECONSTRUCTING THE DUTCH UTOPIA:
Sex Education and Teenage Pregnancy in the Netherlands
By Joost van Loon
A4 size booklet, 68 pages. £8.50 (inc. p&p)
Family Education Trust, The Mezzanine, Elizabeth House, 39 York Road,
London SE1 7NQ.
ISBN 0 906229 17 0
Britain has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the world, and the Netherlands one of the lowest. For many years, some involved in sex education in the UK have attributed low Dutch teen pregnancy rates to permissive and explicit sex education given at a young age.
This important study investigates this claim. Joost van Loon is a Dutch sociologist, now a reader in social theory at Nottingham Trent University. He shows that there is no standard model of sex education in Dutch schools, as there is no National Curriculum; that sex education does not begin at a younger age in the Netherlands; nor is it more explicit or permissive than in Britain.
