The podcast waldorflernt [Waldorf Learns] is offering a series titled “sexeducation” with episodes dedicated to topics on sex education and gender issues. The contributions are moderated by Sophia Klipstein and Ulrich Kaiser. Below is an interview with Sophia Klipstein.
How did you decide to offer a podcast on sex education as part of the waldorflernt series?
I have been working with topics of gender relations, couple relationships, and sexuality for about six years. The initial starting point was my first-grade class at the time. An antipathy between the girls and boys was evident from the first day of school, which is actually unusual at that age. Along with this, there were personal biographical motives, and also, my own children were very near to entering adolescence themselves. Ulrich Kaiser and I had many conversations; he had also dealt with these topics for biographical and professional reasons. Meanwhile, a number of books on sex, gender, and diversity were published, and we found them quite helpful and important, so we decided to share our knowledge and experiences. During the pandemic, we had a little more time than usual and then—joyfully, dilettantishly—tried out the podcast format for the first time. Ulrike Sievers from waldorflernt kindly offered to publish our episodes under her format.
What topics are included in the “sexeducation” episodes?
Our original plan was to mostly just present the books we had found, writing out our accompanying scripts. We wanted to incorporate entertaining and informative elements and find suitable music. As the production progressed, we met more and more interesting people that we wanted to interview and started including them in the episodes: a kindergarten teacher from Berlin, the director of the documentary Pornfluencer, a sex education teacher from a curative education school, a student from Basel with a master’s thesis on relationships, and so on. Since we were doing all this alongside our actual jobs, we soon reached our limits and decided to stop after twelve episodes. But we’re still working on the topic of sex education.
What ideas are you hoping to call forth from your listeners?
Our initial intention was to sensitize parents and teachers to the importance of the topic. We wanted to make an issue visible and audible that was beginning to become very relevant in society but was still barely mentioned in schools. As a class teacher, and thus a representative of Waldorf schools, I would like to see discussion and awareness-raising in the school faculties; I would like to see more suggestions in the Richter curriculum; I would like to see something analogous to the concept of protection of minors from harmful content in audiovisual media services, and, thereby, a guarantee that all students will be able to deal with these existential, life-long issues at school in a time- and age-appropriate manner.
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Instagram waldorflerntsexeducation
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Sophia Klipstein and Ulrich Kaiser, Courtesy photo
