Archive News
Explaining mysteries of sex to teenagers
Date Published: 25-Oct-2012
Siobhán O’Higgins is a woman anyone would be glad to have as a partner. Not only is she a trained sex researcher and educator, she is also a Cordon Bleu cook – and to top it all off, she has a great sense of humour.
Siobhán, who has a Ph D in sexual education from NUIG and who is Education Co-ordinator with AIDS Help West, is a regular visitor to schools in the city, county and further afield. She teaches teenagers about sexuality in a way that is open and frank and that allows for an occasional laugh – a vital part of sex education, she says.
“I go into schools and tell them, ‘you are going to laugh and going to giggle and feel embarrassed and it’s all OK’.”
For her PhD she examined what young people wanted regarding sex education and found that they really wanted to learn about basic stuff, such as how to be good lovers.
“And if they aren’t going to learn it from their parents, they are going to learn it from the internet, where it’s all about ejaculation, penetration and sexual intercourse,” says Siobhán.
Youngsters in schools show her the stuff they have on their phones and it’s far from pretty. Her aim is to have them realise that having sexual intimacy with somebody can be about love and beauty rather than making sex an act in itself.
“It’s about having it in the context of a relationship,” she says.
Siobhán first became interested in teaching young people over 20 years ago when her children, now aged 32 and 28, were in school and “I worked out they weren’t getting enough sex education”. So she set about learning what was involved and ended up with a PhD.g
She has a primary degree in Social Administration from Nottingham University, and came to Ireland in 1979 for 10 days. She’s been here, more or less since, working first in the hospitality industry and training to be a chef. In 1980, she trained in Cordon Bleu cookery in Paris, after which she returned to Ireland and started catering here, eventually taking on the catering in Taylor’s Bar, now ironically a lap dancing club, which represents so much of what she regards as dysfunction regarding sexuality.
However, she had a strong interest in social issues and approached the Probation Services locally about doing voluntary work. They didn’t take volunteers, but recommended she try Galway Youth Federation, where she volunteered for three years and was then offered a part-time job. During this time, she did constant courses in youth and community work and eventually it was suggested to her that she embark on a Masters in Health Promotion in NUIG. She did that and was subsequently offered part-time research and teaching for the Health Promotions Research Centre.
Since 1990 she has been going into schools educating young people about sex and sexuality, and that experience formed the basis for her PhD. It was funded by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs – and she is so chuffed about that, because Siobhán never regarded herself as scholarship material.
Her research involved exploring what teenagers wanted from sex education. The research, and working with adolescents has helped her increase her understanding of how teaching works and how to communicate her knowledge with the students.
“I love my subject, which is sex and sex education,” says Siobhán.
She talks to sixth class pupils in primary school level and also to both junior and senior cycles in second levels. In addition, she runs workshops at NUIG and other third level institutes, with one of these being on Flirting, Dating and Relating.
In terms of primary and second level schools, it makes sense to have one person focusing on teaching sex education as part of the Social, Personal and Health Education curriculum (SPHE), although in practice, that’s not what happens, she says. Usually a teacher who specialises in another subject takes on the task.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
