Cover features biracial children
The first sex education pamphlet for six-year-olds is being marketedto primary schools to encourage teachers to start sex lessons earlier.
Thecomic, from the former Family Planning Association, includesillustrations of a naked girl and boy and invites youngsters to labelthe genitals.
The group, now called the fpa, is producing 50,000copies of Let’s Grow with Nisha and Joe in an initial print run andpromoting it to schools across the UK.
The fpa insisted the12-page comic, designed for use in school and at home by six andseven-year-olds, was a ‘gentle introduction’.
But angry parents condemned it as ‘too much too young’ and warned against robbing children of their innocence.
MargaretMorrissey, of the lobby group Parents Outloud, said she would have gone’ballistic’ had her own children brought a copy home.
She said: ‘Giving children explicit names for body parts at this age seems clinical.
‘We are feeding them this information when they still should be playing with dolls and toy cars.
At that age, children are unlikely to have the ability to ask the right questions.
‘We have got to be so careful that we are educating, not confusing or putting fear into their minds.’
NormanWells, director of Family and Youth Concern, said: ‘Parents alreadycover such things by word and example in the context of everyday life.Groups like the fpa want to go an awful lot further and be much moreexplicit.
‘The fpa wants to ride roughshod over the views ofparents and force all primary schools to provide sex education, whetherparents and teachers like it or not.’