Is There a Need for a European-Wide Initiative on Comprehensive Sexuality Education? Reflections from Croatia

Overview & Synopsis

Since the late 1990s, Aleksandar Štulhofer has been involved in debates over school-based sexuality education in his country. Introduced to this sensitive and often divisive topic by several research studies on sexual risk taking in youth, he recently participated in two education-policy processes dealing with school-based health and sexuality education. This commentary on the policy brief published in this issue (European Expert Group on Sexuality Education 2015) reflects both his experiences with the outcomes of efforts to introduce sexuality education in Croatia and his personal belief that well-designed, comprehensive school-based education (CSE) can assist young people in dealing with a complex world of sexual and emotional interactions. The article begins with a history of events related to the recent introduction of sexuality education in Croatian primary and secondary schools.