Imparting sex education in schools among children
Sex is an instinct which comes to a person naturally. To maintain a good sexual health in one’s life, sex education is really important for an individual. Therefore, imparting sex education to children becomes a pre-requisite of building a stronger foundation of their lives.
In India, discussing sex as a subject is considered a social taboo. Therefore, imparting sex education to children in schools has always been a matter of controversy and whenever a decision is taken in this regard, it has always been against it due to the presence of conservative minds in our society. The topic of sex has always been told to our children in a way like,’No My child, Don’t talk like that. It’s a Gandi Baat’. You may not believe but in 2009, a Parliamentary Committee suggested against imparting any sexual education to children. They even recommended a ban on any NGO organizing programs of such kinds in schools and to the height of it, they decided not o have a power point presentation on the subject due to some explicit material in it and due to the presence of female members on the panel. It’s such a pitiable state of affairs with regard to sexual education in India.
I can easily recall an incident when some NGO came to our school to discuss the issues related to sexual education with the children, our teachers were even so reluctant to tell as to what the discussion was about. They wanted to teach the girls some facts about the menstruation, however, not only the teachers, even the children were so reluctant to participate. This all happened because the ground work was missing which is the responsibility of the parents.
While in a different school again at some point of time, I realized that the problem was deep rooted. I experienced that the two chapters which were primarily focusing on the male and female reproductive systems were not taught but emphasized upon to self study.
Now, when I have grown up to an adult, I realized how important sex education was for whole of our life. From knowledge about the reproductive system, it’s functioning to, maintaining a good health, at every point we need to be educated.
Before any girl or boy reach puberty and changes start in their body, they should be well acquainted with the replies to all the questions which are about to strike in their mind about these changes.
In my opinion, the most important benefit of imparting sex education is to remove gender discrimination from society. It’s a tendency of all of us to look into the matters more eagerly which are kept secretive from us. When a child is not told about something, it increases their eagerness to look into the matter more curiously. Before they see any misleading source of sex education, it is good to teach them the right facts. When both the genders know about the female and male body correctly, the mutual respect for the natural inequalities among both the sex increases.
The change in this direction starts from the home only. Parents can do a beginning by teaching the kids in a right way which gives them answers to all the questions as well as remove any inhibition or shyness on talking on the subject.
What should be taught under sex education:-
From the basics of the human body to differences in physical attributes of a man and woman, to changes that occur at the onset of puberty, Female reproductive health, use of contraceptive methods by both men and women etc. should all be included in the curriculum.
