Sex education must in curricula: Experts

Time to do away with societal stigma attached with sensual pleasure?

Even as civil society is busy discussing the involvement of adolescents in sexual crimes, experts say that lack of sex education in schools and colleges is one of the major reasons for the growing number of crimes.

Most of the high schools and intermediate colleges fail to prioritise on educating students on this topic.

People still see sex topic as a taboo and show disgust, say psychologists.

Schools only focus on biological knowledge on how reproduction takes place.

They only teach about the female and male reproductive system. “We have only learnt about the biologic process of how babies are made, they haven’t explained sexual process in detail,” said Payal, a high school student (name changed). She added that they had not been taught the ways one could have safe sex, due to which, she claimed, that there were a lot of teenage pregnancies. “A teacher in my school scolded two friends saying you can’t have sex in school when they just had a casual hug,” said another student.

People in India have a stigma associated with sensual pleasure. Parents of this generation avoid educating their wards because they think it is not important and necessary.

They had the fear that their kids might get distracted from their goals, added psychologists.

“Children are very curious, especially teenagers and they get the information from all the wrong sources because information is not directly available in a healthy manner,” said Dr Daina Monterio, a psychologist.

She also added that she had attempted to talk about this particular topic to a few high school parents and they absolutely showed no interest and felt that there was no need to discuss this with their children.

There are a few parents who have a broad view about this topic.

A high school teacher and a parent said that sex education was really important for young adults because it was helpful in not only giving them a perspective but also important in preventing diseases like STDS, HIV etc.

“It’s important to talk openly with your children about sex education; the hormonal changes that take place during that time are unavoidable. However, children can be at least educated and guided about their changes. Sex education is very important, especially among students,” said M. Hiranmayi, a parent.