The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Appeal for subtler ways in sex education

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 26, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Appeal for subtler ways in sex education

Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD: There can be subtler ways to impart sex education to school children, and it has to be done in a professional way by experts rather than by the school teachers equipped with haphazard training. This is the consensual opinion of experts at the seminar organised jointly by All India Mahila Samskrutika Sangham and All India Democratic Students’ Organisation to protest the introduction of adolescent education into school curriculum.

“There are many other ways to instil wisdom. One does not have to touch electricity to know that it kills,” said renowned Telugu writer Sharada Ashokavardhan.

Criticising the trends in media as propagating false values in the garb of virtues, she said that children should be allowed to ripen naturally.

P. Sudarshan Reddy, a paediatrician felt that sex education should be an appendage to life skills and not the end of it.

Expressing apprehensions about taking children into forbidden areas, he wondered if “we are arousing hunger and denying food.” The emphasis should be on values, and not on the biological aspects, he said.

Psychiatrist K. Chandrasekhar objected to the explicit nature of the modules designed for training the teachers.

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