A German school was forced to withdraw a sex-ed lesson after children aged 13 and 14 years old were given the classroom task of designing a “new brothel for all”.
Children in an eighth-grade class at a Catholic high school in Kevelaer, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, were assigned the classwork of designing an inclusive brothel, including floor plans. The local Rheinische Post reported on the remarkable lesson plan on Wednesday, and news quickly spread nationwide, leading to the headmistress and mayor facing demands for explanations.
The worksheet, entitled ‘The New Brothel For All!’, asked students to consider key areas of modern “house of sexual pleasure” design, including “What sexual preferences need to be addressed and catered to?” “How should a brothel be designed from the outside so that it can be visited and desired by all kinds of people?” and “What should an advertisement for such a brothel look like?”
After considering these factors, including who would work there, what it would offer, and drawing a floor plan, the class would be brought in at the end for a group discussion.
The school, Kardinal von Galen Gymnasium, was invited to offer an explanation for this extraordinary sex education lesson, and while it didn’t exactly double down, it also insisted it had been delivered for all the right reasons.
The headmistress said, reports WDR: “The material under the heading: ‘Sexual Education of Diversity: Practical Methods on Identities, Relationships, Bodies, and Prevention for Schools and Youth Work’ is deliberately designed to be provocative in order to stimulate discussion.
“It responds to developments in our society with a diversity of lifestyles and gender roles. It also addresses the heavy use of social media channels by children and young people and the associated flood of information about various forms of sexuality.”
The school said it would not offer the same lesson again in future, stating “students are to discuss the ‘diversity of lifestyles and sexuality’ in a different way in the future”, and apologised for causing “unrest” in the community.
The local Alternative for Germany (AfD, sovereigntist-right) demanded an explanation from the mayor of Kevelaer, Social Democrat (SPD, globalist-left) Dominik Pichler. While he acknowledged the lesson had been “provocative and perhaps not entirely without risk”, the mayor said in general, children receiving sexual education is normal and what happened is “not a scandal” in his opinion.
Germany is one of only a handful of countries where both prostitution and the operation of brothels are totally legal. Prostitution is treated as a registered profession with registration documents and income tax paid. However, this hyper-liberal settlement is one that has come under increasing criticism, particularly because the sex industry is propped up by immigration and human trafficking.
Broadcaster Tagesschau reflected this changing attitude in its report, noting criticism of the school lesson from some quarters, not only for its suitability for the classroom but also for its implicit acceptance of prostitution as moral. The report highlighted commenters, who said the portrayal of a “brothel for all” as something positive in a school demonstrates the lingering prevalence of what are now old-fashioned “hip, cool, and super-feminist” ideas in education that prostitution is liberating and anti-patriarchal.