Sweden: Liberal Party Proposes Eliminating Parental Opt-Out for Sex-Ed

The Local: Sweden's News in English: Immigrant girls and sex education - who knows best? by David Landes:

Parents, students, or the state: who knows best? David Landes looks at the thorny issue of sex education and editorial reactions to a Liberal Party proposal aiming to bar parents from exempting their children, particularly girls, from classes.

On Thursday, representatives of the Liberal Party made headlines with a controversial proposal to do away way a rule exempting school children from attending compulsory lessons in subjects considered objectionable by their parents.

The rule came about in 1969 to allow students of different faiths to skip Christian religious instruction, which was compulsory in Swedish schools at the time. In 1996, the exemption was expanded to allow students to skip otherwise obligatory lessons, such as sex education, under “special circumstances”.