Sex in the City

Maharashtra and Karnataka governments have decided that they would opt out of sex education in schools. Education being a state subject in India, the centre can not override the legislature of these states. The impact would be on the state run schools primarily, because my guess and experience from many years back is that most missionary schools and private schools provide some semblance of sex education in schools.

For us many years back, it was easy, missionary school, all boys schools and our biology teacher, Mr Mian became by default our sex education teacher. Mr Mian of course could draw extremely well with a chalk on the board and had access all sorts of colourful chlaks. So unbeknown to him the biology classes from standard 8 onwards became really colourful. Initially we giggled, then we asked clever questions and finally when all that excitement settled down we learned something.

What we learned was not much in the sense it was a functional education, we learned about various parts and their functions... It was to scientific and clinical... It certainly never helped us take critical moral and social decisions such as why a woman should not conveive before 18, why it was morally incorrect to sex before marraige, why one should be aware of diseases and hygiene etc etc. Of course, those were pre-aids days so how and why one could contract that deadly disease was till then unknown. The clinical education although interesting enough to tease a conservative teacher was useless. Do you teach a fish to swim? Do you monkey to climb trees, do you teach tiger to hunt? to you teach any animal how to procreate? No you do not... All of them learn it by instinct.

So if the schools going to provide what I called technical education on "sex" it is better not done. If on th eother hand the curriculum is going to include more broad based issues related to sex it may make sense.... Questions such when to have a baby, what health measures to take, what precautions to take, what kind of effect an unwanted child can have... etc etc may be useful...

But getting into the morality of it all can be tricky. Like all moral issues, we can only be judgemental and being judgemental with a child is either likking his/her initiatives or to take him off any learning at all this applies to sex education at all.

I therefore think that it is too tricky to get into at least in schools in our country. If for nothing else, schools which for the last 50 years have not been able to teach maths, physics and history properly should not be dumpled with soemthing as sensitive as sex education.

The second reason for schools to keep away from it is, parents have now almost outsourced every part of child rearing, ayahs, governesses, day care centres, creches, teachers, drivers, private tutors, music teachers, dance teachers, in fact an army of specilists have take over the taks of training the child. Most of these functions till 10 years back would be performed by parents. I think sex education is one which should still be with parents. This will at least ensure that every child suffers from the prejudices or openess of her own parents and do not have to suffer from the prejudices or openess of the teacher[some one else's parents]

By the way, by the time Mr Mian introduced to technical side of sex, most us seem to know much more than him.... so there goes all the education and training.

Cheers.