Govt's lesson: Talk sex, but mind your language

WORDS THAT MATTER: The panel debates the importance of sex education in schools.

        

THE SEX EDUCATION SAGA

+ The recommendation for sex education in schools came in the wake of reports showing that AIDS has reached epidemic proportions in some parts of India.

+ Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh were the first states to turn down the idea to impart sex education in schools as part of anti-AIDS course.

+ The Maharashtra government said the images in the book are just too graphic, which is why students in schools across the state will now not be exposed to them anymore.

+ Karnataka Education Minister Basavaraj Horatti had said, "In today's world, we need moral education and not sex education."

+ Madhya Pradesh followed suit soon when Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Chouha banned sex education amid protests against graphics and pictorial descriptions used in the course material provided under the Adolescent Education Programme (AEP).

+ The Dukhtaran-e-Millat, which shot into headlines after demanding mandatory burqa for women, also demanded that curtains be drawn on the J&K government's proposal to introduce sex education in schools.

+ The AEP programme prescribed by the UNICEF in schools in Thiruvananthapuram had to be shelved in Kerala due to widespread resistance.

J & K | Chhattisgarh | Delhi | MP |
Mizoram | Rajasthan

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Source of sex education

In a particularly sexually aware environment as ours, should children not be learning about sex education from a sensible source rather than a television and pornographic websites?

“How do you guarantee that the teacher is going to be a sensible source?” Singhal asked.

Rajan said it wasn’t as if young people were suddenly becoming sexually aware. In India the average marriage age used to be 16 years so they just learnt by experience.

“Why don’t we find HIV/AIDS pejorative? I have to go into the whole range of sexual practise if somebody asks me what it is,” Rajan pointed out.

But Singhal said you don’t need to have condoms while telling a child about HIV/AIDS.

“You have to tell them it’s communicated through sexual contact and it’s for parents to tell them about safe sex,” he added.

When asked what his objection to a teacher talking about sex is, Singhal said, “The objectionable part about the course is the fact that volunteers should be picked up (one boy, one girl) so that they can feel the genitals of each other.”

But Rajan informed that the proposal has been withdrawn.

Are we imitating the West in blindly pushing sex education?

“The important point is the manuals that have come out take away the sensitivity. We have also forgotten that when we talk about sexuality, there is a question of relationships and feelings involved,” Rajan said.

She also observed that something as elemental as sex education should not be pushed by the AIDS campaign because in that way we put the “most horrible thing, which is AIDS to something that is so completely beautiful and natural - sex.”

So does that mean that those against sex education are making a medical and educational question into a moral question?

Jitendra Nagpal agreed with Rajan and said words like arousal and intercourse have nothing to do with embarrassment and every child will come across them, not just in the manuals and text books, but also on the Internet.

“In a democracy sensitivities and sensibilities across the country should be respected,” Nagpal said.

Difference between titillative sex and educational sex

“The only problem I have is when and how should children be told about sex,” said Singhal.

Singhal, in relation to sex education, had earlier observed that hamari maryada khatam ho jayeegi (our cultural values will end). But why should maryada depend on sex education?

“I think there’s a certain relationship between a teacher and a student. There is a wall,” said Singhal.