As far as I'm aware, serious sex ed doesn't begin until 7th or 8th grade. It seems reasonable that any school-led discussion of genital mutilation should occur after that. I mean, you don't tell kids about practices related to sexuality BEFORE they really even know what sex is, right?
Sex ed does take place in 5th grade here, I understand. Having had dd12 skip that grade, I have no first hand knowledge of what it consists of. However, I do have to say that I found the sex ed in 7th grade to be wildly age inappropriate even for kids who weren't as young as dd. I wound up opting her out of part of it. She did watch the video of a birth, etc. but we skipped the contraception parts b/c they were discussing anal sex and how neither it nor oral sex were considered safe. I didn't need a kid of that age learning about things like that. I also didn't like the fact that they had a Christian anti-abortion group doing a presentation during the contraception piece. I wasn't sure how unbiased that would be.
