The Educational Drawback

India, as a nation, still lacks behind the rest of the world due to a lot of reasons. Yes, I say this despite the government statistics of high growth rates, the world organizations claiming us to be the next superpower, we being the self proclaimed “culturally rich” country and our billion-year old history. India is still trapped in a number of stereotypes, conventions and thought process which had been developed by politically-motivated or regressive portion of the population.

Karan came back home from school one day and asked his mom about condoms – a word he had come across on FM Radio. His mom slapped him with anger and asked him to concentrate on his studies. Karan went back to his room and opened up his school bag to start his homework. But the question stayed in his mind...

Sex education in schools for teens and young adults has been branded as a tabooed topic in our country because every time any such thing is discussed or comes out in public, either we shun it away like an adult joke or have those cynical cheap smiles on our faces. The government authorities and officials have, for long, avoided the implementation of sex education as a part of regular curricula citing reasons such as “cultural and social values” or because they feel that the content of sex education course created by the WHO is unacceptable to the Indian sensibilities. However, no steps have been taken in this regard and they have not cared to formulate their own course of study or teaching. The apathy of the government can be clearly sensed as since ages, there have been no effective programmes to rein this problem.

The statistics such as these, that 12% of Indian girls aged between 15 and 19 become mothers, increasing cases of teenage abortions, young pregnancies, unprotected pre marital sex and many such health and emotional exertions. The age of rejuvenation and high speed internet connections have opened a Pandora box of opportunities and teenagers are exposed to all types of data, knowledge and information. Television, books, media, friends and the discussions termed as “sexual arena” create that risk taking drive among teenagers and increase the chances of them taking steps in this direction. Sex education becomes all the more vital in such an era of revolution and media, more so, because Indian parents and families are ever hesitant in discussing such topics with their kids.

Proper sex education and training to teenagers regarding safer sex, human anatomy, sexual intercourse, measures of birth control, sexual orientation and STDs is very necessary and may help in avoiding the increased cases of teenage miscarriages and repercussions of unprotected sex at a young age. This may also help prevent STDs and control or decrease the cases of HIV AIDS in a country with a population of 120 crores. In fact psychologists also believe that it may teach the young adults about self restraint, and prevent them from becoming perverts.

Despite all these reasons, Indian education system has not accepted sex education as part of their regular curricula. Also, while the implementation of this path breaking course, it should be kept in mind, that ill informed teachers and trainers can do more harm than good and hence, staff training is also mandatory. Besides, it should not be treated as an extracurricular course and should be made a part of the mainstream education.

India needs to open up. It is time to shed the inhibitions and spurn the hesitation. The ice needs to be broken and there has to be a friendly and open environment where students are free to ‘ask’, at the schools. Education needs to be redefined to avoid the scary cases of forced sex, increasing pornography and STDs among young adults in India. Gathering information from unauthorized sources is not the advisable way to collect knowledge. Knowledge needs to find the right channel in our country. After all, Wikipedia is not the answer to everything!   

(THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN SPRINGTIDE DIGITAL MAGAZINE's SEPTEMBER 2012 ISSUE. Direct Link to the September Issue of the magazine - http://issuu.com/springtide/docs/september_2012?mode=window&viewMode=singlePage

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