THE SHRINKING UNIVERSE
We don’t need no (sex) education
VIJAY NAGASWAMI
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We can no longer afford to dwell in the corridor of uncertainty when it comes to sex and sexuality…
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Photo: Anu Pushkarna
Can we really leave it to time and nature?
I never stop feeling astonished by the fact that sex education continues to be an issue even in 21st century India. We are pretty much surrounded by sex today, but we still persist in reacting to it with embarrassing ambivalence. State governments st
ill talk of banning sex education in schools altogether, for, they feel it is an alien (read Western) concept and goes “against Indian culture and values”. Parents have still not made up their minds on whether or not to sex-educate their children and by the time they resolve the conflict, their children will probably be ready to provide them a refresher course on the subject. Nobody, save a handful of valiant activists and NGOs, seems to be paying heed to the report of the “National Study on Child Abuse: India 2007” published a couple of years ago by the Ministry of Women and Child Development of the Government of India, which dropped a bombshell by noting that “53.22 per cent of children all over the country reported having faced one or more forms of sexual abuse” (If you don’t believe me, visit http://wcd.nic.in/childabuse.pdf). Over one half of our children are victims of Child Sexual Abuse and we are still ambivalent about sex education in schools? I don’t get it!
Confused attitudes
Today, we seem to live in the corridor of uncertainty where the whole issue of sex and sexuality is concerned. Even as we enjoy the growth of our incomes, greater exposure to the world around us, and the ready access we have to information and entertainment at the flick of a switch, we have not yet come to terms with where exactly we want to position ourselves when it comes to dealing with value change. While there are several value conflicts that we do and will continue to experience as we engage with this complex phenomenon of modernity, conflicts in the area of sex, sexuality and, in particular, sex education, need not be part of these. Sex education is a vibrant part of our country’s hoary past. We even had temples dedicated to educating passersby about sex and sexuality. Hopefully you don’t think Khajuraho and Konarak were the work of some extraordinarily insightful forefathers who had the foresight to predict that in the 21st century, Incredible India would need some tourist attractions! I think this is a good time to set aside the notion that sex and sexuality are Western phenomena, and get comfortable with the idea that we practically invented it.
It is most unfortunate that we think of sex education only in the context of child sexual abuse and the almost epidemic prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases. Ideally we should be thinking of sex education not just as a tool to protect young people from abuse and disease, but as a rite of passage from childhood into adolescence in order that our children may obtain appropriate information about sex, have a positive attitude towards it and actually enjoy the physical as well as emotional fulfilment that it can bring, instead of going through a life of sexual apprehensions, performance anxiety, premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction which is the fate of a fairly large number of our fellow citizens, whose primary source of sex education is Internet pornography. Let us also remember that children today mature sexually at a much earlier age than they did a few decades ago. Unfortunately, emotional maturity comes much later. In other words, we are left with a situation where our children are physically capable of reproduction, but are not informed by any reliable source as to how they should deal with their raging hormones. Nothing can be scarier than this.
Clearing misconceptions
Whatever sex education tends to be provided ends up being “reproductive education” concentrating more on the anatomy and physiology of procreational sex. While this is undoubtedly important, this can only be a primer. Most adolescents want to understand the nuances of recreational sex and the value base surrounding it. Is masturbation ok? Is pre-marital sex acceptable? Does one have to love a person to have sex? And so on. As I see it, procreational sex education can be provided at school by sensitive teachers or educators, but recreational sex education is best provided by parents or a trusted family member or specially trained counsellor-educators. This way, teenagers can get all their sexual concerns addressed within the context of trusting relationships than through word-of-mouth or by skulking around pornographic web sites that create enormous complexes in young minds.
At the risk of sounding like a scaremonger, I would like to re-emphasise that unless we get our acts together soon and encourage sex education for our children or at least not discourage it if schools and NGOs attempt to provide it, we leave ourselves open to the risk of one unpleasant surprise after another. Hopefully we won’t wait for an epidemic of teenage pregnancies to realise that we do need sex education, not just IITJEE coaching!
The writer is a psychiatrist and author of The 24x7 Marriage. He can be contacted at: vijay.nagaswami@gmail.com
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