Campus Manilla school in Stockholm, Sweden. Sweden was the first country to mandate sex education in 1955 and now has a national sex ed curriculum integrated through all course subjects. (Michael Campanella/Getty Images)
Picture this: A public radio reporter interviews a group of American college students in a comfortable office lounge, asking about their experiences with sexual education. This may already seem unusual enough, given that sex ed is such a controversial topic in the U.S. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that parents can remove their children from sex ed classes and many states continue to teach abstinence-only. But when you notice that hanging on the wall above the students is a large pink model of the clitoris, you realize that something especially unique is afoot. Such are the cultural differences between Sweden and the United States when it comes to talking about sex.
Thirteen college students and two professors recently traveled from South Carolina to compare the sex ed programs in Sweden and the United States. And on this day, we were sitting inside the offices of the RFSU, otherwise known as the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education, to learn about how the Swedes do it.
Sweden was the first country to mandate sex education in 1955 and now has a national sex ed curriculum integrated through all course subjects. Swedes divorce sex ed from discussions about religious morality. Their curriculum instead encourages students to ask questions and critically examine gender and sex norms, while teachers instruct students with medically accurate information.
Sex ed starts young when toddlers learn how to name the parts of their body and begin to learn about boundaries, and it develops as the students mature. As students progress to more advanced grades, teachers begin to focus on the complexities of consent and healthy relationships. Instead of centering solely on the dangers of sex, Swedes teach students that sex can and should be pleasurable, and seek to provide them with the empowering knowledge of how their bodies work.
When it comes to LGBTQ+ issues, Swedes generally express an open attitude. They emphasize the value and dignity of all humans, including those who are trans and queer. But we did notice some gaps between these claims of inclusiveness and Swedish practices. One of our queer students questioned the depth of discussions surrounding the LGBTQ+ community in Swedish classrooms. “Yes, queer identities were mentioned,” she wrote, “but how deep were the conversations? Were students really getting the tools to understand queer relationships, power dynamics or the emotional realities of being different in a world that still centers straightness?”
One Swedish academic we met pointed out that Swedes tend to buy into the “national mythology” of Sweden as a fully egalitarian society, which can blind them to the ways some groups of people continue to be marginalized. Still, LGBTQ+ students in Sweden experience nowhere near the level of hostility and erasure they endure in America. Young queer and trans Swedes we met at a Swedish non-profit for youths called Fryshuset acknowledged that they were lucky compared to LGBTQ+ Americans.
When we spoke with high school students in Stockholm, we learned that both Swedes and Americans have widely varied experiences in sex ed depending on where they live, what school they attend and who their teachers are. The disparity in Swedish students’ experiences with their comprehensive sex ed curriculum demonstrated to us that even with good policies and a significant public investment, student learning outcomes can still widely vary.
If we could sum up the Swedish approach to sex ed in one word, it would be trust. Survey evidence indicates that Swedes have much higher levels of trust in their government and the media compared to Americans. They also have far more trust in young people and are less willing than Americans to let parents or religious institutions control the content of their sexual education. If at times their aspirations fly ahead of what their programs actually accomplish, those aspirations are still admirably focused on the students’ well-being and grounded in scientific facts.
Mia Pruitt holds a sign during the SlutWalk Festival in Los Angeles on Oct. 1, 2016. The event seeks to bring to an end slut shaming, victim blaming and sexual assaults. (Ronen Tivony / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In large swaths of the U.S., on the other hand, sex ed is infected by distrust. This is certainly true of our home state of South Carolina, an abstinence-only state, where many parents and policymakers deny the reality that most teens have sex before marriage. Ever since Ronald Reagan first earmarked $11 million for abstinence-only sex education in 1981, abstinence-only programs have received over 2 billion dollars in funding. While sex ed is required in South Carolina, it is often far from medically accurate and there is an “opt-out” policy allowing parents to remove their children from classes. Rather than learning anatomical terms, one of our students recalled learning about “no-no zones” for the first time in fifth grade.
Rather than providing young people with information to make informed decisions, abstinence-only programs aim to dictate those decisions. In most cases, this involves imposing a narrow, religiously-defined vision of sex—that only married cisgendered heterosexuals should have it—on everyone, even if that vision completely excludes them. Empirical evidence demonstrates that abstinence-only approaches are less successful than comprehensive ones at reducing teen pregnancies and the incidence of STIs. Instead, these conservative approaches manifest a deep distrust of young people, educators, science and government.
Unsurprisingly, LGBTQ+ topics are largely absent from sex ed in South Carolina. Until 2020, the only context in which LGBTQ+ people could be mentioned was in regards to STI prevention. Even still, school districts are allowed but not required to discuss LGBTQ+ issues or even consent.
Swedes were shocked to learn that in our local South Carolina school district, sex ed teachers use a memorable acronym (H.A.M.) to remember what their districts won’t allow them to discuss with students. “H.A.M.” stands for homosexuality, abortion and masturbation—three topics which are forbidden. If students ask about these subjects, teachers are told to redirect their questions.
Of course, we couldn’t expect to just import Swedish-style sex ed into a state like South Carolina and have it seamlessly embraced by the schools. While the racial and cultural homogeneity of Sweden is easily exaggerated, the U.S. is far more polarized than Sweden by several orders of magnitude.
Still, American sex education would benefit from incorporating aspects of Sweden’s more inclusive, medically accurate and student-centered approach. The challenge for us is to develop versions of this approach that can succeed in the much more religiously diverse and politically divided landscape of the United States.