Sex Education: Is India Ready for it?

One of the much debated topic across the world is the importance of sex education in schools. And perhaps, the topic has divided the whole world into two- some pushing for the inclusion of it in school curriculum, while others are trying their best, signing petitions to stop it, citing the darker side of such education to young minds in school. In India, the topic has already created a stir and lot of anxieties among the citizens, particularly when there is huge outcry among people for the rising number sexual violence. At this juncture, we should stop and think if we really need to introduce the the topic as school curriculum to change the perceptions of our future generations.

Why Sex Education is important in India today?

It has been seen that various schools across different cities in India are organizing workshops to create awareness among students on issues like health and hygiene. Unfortunately, a complete sex education drive on a regular basis is still to be introduced in Indian schools. If we were to go by the data published by WHO, sex education should be imparted to children who are 12 years and above. It has also been seen that it is the age group of 12 to 19 years that counts for some 34% of the HIV infected persons in the world. Despite the availability of such data, schools in India are still giving a deaf ear to the urge.

The much prevalent silence over the topic of sex education is leading to the young generation seeking information from misinformed sources that attracts them to the darker side of what could be an important knowledge in their growing days. And in most cases, adolescents seek the required information from pornography which hardly throws light on issues like gender equality, marital sexual relationships or even violence or abuse on sexual grounds.

The biggest advantage of sex education in India is perhaps, it will help the country fight the rising spread of AIDS. According to statistics released by the Government, it is seen that 31% of the AIDS cases reported comes under the age group of 15 to 29 which itself shows how risk prone are young Indians. Even, a study by the Department of Women and Child Development shows that some 53% of children in India have been victims of some kind of sexual abuse and in most of the cases, the child is known to the perpetrator.

Isn’t it high time to act? If we travel back to the history of sex education in India, we’ll find that spread of awareness was started as a result of the concern for population growth. Hence, family planning programmes were launched during the 1950s; but it was in the 1980s that the government launched the National Population Education project. The project saw textbooks promoting the idea of a small family and highlighted the fact that increase in population leads to poverty. A change in the tone of awareness was noticed in 1994 during the International Conference on Population and Development when the concern shifted from population control to prevention of AIDS in adolescents. The year 2006 witnessed the launch of the much controversial Adolescent Education Programme (AEP) in association with UNICEF and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) which was later scrapped the next year in some states after a report by a Rajya Sabha Committee Petition.

A comprehensive sex education can help the present generation live a secured life. Sex education cannot be a typical educational practice in school; it should cover all psychological, physiological and social issues that can force a person to think about the urgency for this kind of awareness among school goers. Children reaching the teen phase starts showing peculiar behavior that can grow up into bigger problems in future, if not given the right knowledge at the right time. An effective sex education at school along with adequate communication between parents and children at home can bring about a lot of change.