People in our country get kind of embarrassed when you say the S-word. Most of all our politicians. They are the gatekeepers of morality in our country after all. Where would we be without them? That's why, in their wisdom, they have stopped sex education being introduced in our state for the umpteenth year in a row.
Having lived and gone to school in the (shorn of morality) US for four years, I am one of the few students in the state who has actually been given sex education. I didn't actually know it at the time because we were taught it under the subject Health Education. There are many misconceptions about sex education. The first is that it teaches innocent young children how to have sex. Firstly, by Std 9, there really aren't any innocent students. They say school kids nowadays are experimenting more with the other sex than my generation (that makes me sound pretty old, even though it's just been just 4 years since I left school). But I knew kids in school who'd had sex in Std 8. Hardly your innocent school children. Secondly, sex education doesn't teach students the mechanics of sex. It's much more like a biology lesson than anything else. I actually learned about the act when I observed some of my school mates making some obscene gestures and then realising that what I'd learned in Health class kind of made sense.
I think the problem of introducing sex education in India is political more than anything else. A lot of what we learned in Health class in Std 7 is actually in the Biology syllabus of Std 12 in India. But since not everybody takes biology in Std 12, many students miss out on some essential information. It would be a capital idea to simply introduce the human reproductive system into the science syllabus in Std 9. When it's science, after all, nobody, not even politicians take much offence. And students get some much needed information.
For more information about the need for sex education in India, check out the excellent article in today's edition of the Sunday Times. 'Nuff said.
1 comment:
Ahh...dicey issue here...2 diametrically opposite points of view that need to find a compromise...simply because kids ARE oversmart these days and they don't wanna be taught what's right or wrong;they want facts and the ability to choose for themselves.
Too bad the environment here is too stifling to allow that...
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