Life lessons

New Netflix show Sex Education tells some teen truths

Photo courtesy of Netflix
Photo courtesy of Netflix

Your parents won’t like it. Your teachers will hate it. Your friends will love it. Netflix’s new teen comedy drama Sex Education is drawing a line between different generations and different cultures.

The show is set in a UK high school and follows the lives of Otis, the 16-year-old son of a sex therapist, Maeve, the school’s badass cool girl, and Eric, Otis’s gay best friend. Together they start a secret business giving sex advice to their friends in school. 

You’ve probably read about Sex Education in the Thai media. The show has nudity, bad language and stories about teen pregnancy and abortion, all of which are taboo here. But Sex Education tackles these real issues in a way that is open, honest and mature, but also funny and moving. 

The characters in the show make both good and bad decisions, but the important thing is that they make decisions themselves, and learn from the consequences. As a result they become more mature and independent. If you think honesty and freedom of thought have no place in Thai culture then the show is not for you. But if you watch it with an open mind, Otis, Maeve and Eric might become your new best friends.

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Vocabulary

  • abortion: a medical operation in which a developing baby is removed from a woman’s body so that it is not born alive - การทำแท้ง
  • badass (adj): (of a person) tough and aggressive -
  • consequence: result of effect of something - ผลที่ตามมา
  • mature: behaving in the sensible way that you would expect an adult to behave - มีวุฒิภาวะ
  • move: to cause somebody to have strong feelings, especially of sympathy or sadness - ดลใจ, เร้าอารมณ์
  • nudity: the condition of not wearing clothes, or of not covering a part of the body that is traditionally covered when you are in public - การเปลือยกาย
  • open mind: open to new ideas; willing to think about and consider new ideas -
  • taboo: something you are not allowed to do; a restriction, a limitation; a no no - ข้อห้าม, สิ่งต้องห้าม
  • therapist: someone whose job is to treat a particular type of mental or physical illness or disability, usually with a specific type of treatment - นักบำบัดโรค, ผู้เชี่ยวชาญในการบำบัดโรค

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