Govt takes sex education back to birds and bees

GROPING IN THE DARK: 15 per cent of all pregnancies in the country are teenage pregnancies.

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New Delhi: Looks like sex education is still too hot to handle a topic in India even by the National Aids Control Organisation.

After the furore over the course material in schools last year, NACO is ready with a tamer module this time around.

The explicit pictures in the teachers handbooks are out, and so are words like intercourse, condoms, and masturbation.

“It’s much too important to take a very striding tone and have people ban the book and not allow . I’d much rather have a middle path and get something – a dialogue – going around this and go incrementally from there,” says NACO chief Sujatha Rao.

Thirty-three NGOs who have reviewed the content feel the study material is out of sync with the reality of adolescence.

So cagey is the text about offending sensibilities that the chapter on conception doesn't even mention intercourse, this when 15 per cent of all pregnancies in the country are teenage pregnancies.

NGO Nirantar has raised its objection. Says Jaya Sharma, CEO Nirantar, “We find that you van have an activity that talks about how HIV is spread and how it is not spread. Those activities do not mention condoms at all.”

Another problem with the module, educationists say, is that the underlying motto is abstinence, that’s when 86 per cent of all AIDS cases are sexually transmitted. When statistics show children between 15 and 18 years are sexually active, not taking about sex safe is irrational.

IF we say abstain, the child will get more curious and will be more willing to experiment with things he shouldn’t at the age,” says child psychologist Sanjay Dhingra.

Last year, 12 state governments – including Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka –banned the entire AEP module with the logic-defying argument that sex education encourages sexual permissiveness in children.

Now back in a “toned down” version and open to reviews till the end of September, NACO is hoping they can introduce it in the next academic session.