The controversial plans were recommended by educational experts and included in a draft new education program for the city...
The local government in the German capital of Berlin has ruled out introducing “sex rooms” for toddlers in state-run daycare facilities despite the recommendation having been included in an unpublished draft of the city’s new educational program.
The U-turn was announced by State Secretary for Youth and Family Falko Liecke in a statement to Junge Freiheit on Monday.
“In Berlin daycare centers, there will expressly be no separate rooms for educational sexual explorations for children among themselves, nor any guided or free other sexual-educational concepts,” he told the news outlet.
“We are aware that the recommendations for action given to us from the scientific field represent a different perspective. However, we expressly do not share these views and will not include these recommendations in the Berlin educational program for daycare centers and daycare,” Liecke added.
In the draft of the new program, educational experts advising the local government had called for the establishment of sex rooms for three to six-year-olds to experience “feelings of pleasure” in privacy.
Several other states, including daycare centers in North Rhine-Westphalia, have already adopted the policy with at least two nurseries in the state entertaining the idea of safe spaces where young children can retreat to masturbate, or as one daycare center in Kerpen put it, “discover and satisfy themselves physically.”
The idea was to allow children to learn that “masturbation is something normal” and that sexual self-gratification is “of great importance.”
However, Berlin will not follow suit, at least for now, Liecke insisted.
“This concept was passed on at the specialist levels as part of a work process that had not yet been completed and has now been withdrawn.
“This does not correspond at all to our ideas about a child-friendly educational mandate,” he added.
Berlin’s Department for Education insisted it had not been informed about the publication of the draft program with the controversial plans included.
However, Junge Freiheit noted that the paper bears the department’s logo.
