The Government is shaping up to radically overhaul the way Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) is taught in schools. To this end, it is placing considerable weight on a new survey conducted by the Smart Consent research team at NUI Galway on sexual harassment and consent. It was widely reported by the media, but does it deserve the weight being placed on it? The answer, probably not.

It’s worth recording at the outset what the acronym ‘Smart’, in ‘Smart Consent’ stands for because then we can see what kind of sexual ethics the State wants to see in place in our universities. Presumably it has something similar in mind for our schools.

The ‘S’ stands for: All Sexual orientations and Gender identities.
M: Your State of Mind – Willingness; Free from pressure; Thinking clearly without the influence of alcohol or drugs.
A: All Activities, on an ongoing basis – Kissing, Touching, Oral, Penetrative Sex etc.
R: All relationships, both casual and committed.
T: Talking or nonverbal signs and signals.

We can see the philosophy at work here. It is, essentially, that anything goes between consenting adults. Its definition of ‘R’ is a particular giveaway. The ‘relationship’ can be either ‘casual’ or ‘committed’.

This is probably seen as morally neutral, but of course it is not. If you believe that so-called ‘hook-ups’ (which is to say, commitment-free sex) is acceptable, then that is unavoidably a moral position.

The aforementioned survey is called, ‘Are Consent Workshops Sustainable and Feasible in Third Level Institutions?’

In the foreword, Minister of State for Higher Education, Mary Mitchell-O’Connor, says: “This research demonstrates that formal school experiences do not currently prepare most young people well for managing the sexual decision-making scenarios likely to arise during their time at college.”

And so we can see that the scene is set for consent classes in schools which means, by default, the scene appears set to teach second-levels students that ‘hook-ups’ are, essentially, ok.

The survey was conducted among NUI Galway students and its headline findings, in the words of Mitchell-O’Connor, are as follows: “Seventy percent of the women studied and over half of the men, reported experiencing some level of sexual hostility by the end of their third level educational experience. Moreover, 70% of women, and over 60% of men, express dissatisfaction with the sex education they received at school.”

But when we read the finer detail of the survey, we discover that it is not based on a random sample of students, and also that it has a broad definition of ‘sexual hostility’.

Researchers sent their questions to a random list of students at NUI Galway and had a response rate of 10pc, adding up to 632 in all. That does not inspire confidence in how representative the survey is.

Then we find that there is no independent way to assess whether someone who says they experienced ‘sexual hostility’ or ‘harassment’ really did so.

Of course, this is a notoriously difficult area. What one person sees as ‘hostility’ another person might not even notice or see as such at all. But the difficulty in defining ‘hostility’ and ‘harassment’ should at least be addressed in the survey.

When we go to the part of the research which finds that a majority of those who took part in it were dissatisfied with the sex education they received at school, it is not at all clear what precisely they were dissatisfied with. It is all very general. Nor are we told what they would want the current school curriculum replaced with. Presumably that is to be left up to the State in its wisdom.

There is little doubt that a hook-up culture exists to a greater or lesser extent in third level colleges. There is little doubt that we need to have a discussion about what real consent looks like. (Whether consent classes should be made compulsory is another matter).

But it also appears that there is to be no real questioning of whether a hook-up culture is a good thing in itself, not just morally good, but good in its effects on those who take part in it.

Any good RSE programme needs to include discussions like this, and present students with the downside of a hook-up culture, but the planned revision has a pre-ordained feel to it. The outcome appears clear; it is to double-down on the idea that sexual ethics amounts to consent and little more. The view that perhaps it might be better to get to know, like and trust the other person first does not appear to form any part of the State’s thinking in this matter.

Is this really how parents want their teenage children (and possibly younger) taught about relationships and sex?