To teach or not to teach...

The Mahrashtra Govt has finally taken the well-traversed and obvious path and decided not to introduce sex education in school curriculum. It certainly isn't a surprise. On the other hand, it might've come as major news that the proposition was actually being considered. The news report that I was watching on the same subject was rather amusing to say the least, the amusement factor being the reactions of some MLAs who were asked their opinion on the issue.

Replies were standard. They all thought it was "wrong" ,"galat baat" etc. One MLA said we should be proud that we live in a country where mothers and sisters can walk alone on the roads at nights without fearing for their safety and that if sex education were to be implemented, it would turn the country into an unsafe place. Poor man seems to be suffering some hallucination. I mean, who hasn't heard of how Mumbai, which is supposedly the safest ciy for women, is also becoming rather dicey what with stories of rape and molestation being flashed by the media every now and then. Another gentleman said that considering that students are complaining about teachers who behave inappropriately with them and make sexual advances, if teachers were also made to become "sex gurus", it would ruin educational institutions.

One can't help but wonder why on earth these so called leaders and representatives of common man go through the actual syllabus content before deciding the effect it will have on society. Paranoia about a sex education syllabus thats called "Kamasutra for Kids" (LOL!!!) is much more understandable than just jumping on the mindless bandwagon of going about and calling sex education wrong, evil, immoral and other such cliched adjectives.

According to one MLA, the knowledge has been previously imparted in schools under the name of Adolescent Health Care (or something to that effect). So is it all in the name? I suppose the name could have a lot to do with the extreme reactions. I mean one can't exactly expect leaders who can barely read English to understand content to judge how appropriate or otherwise it is. To them, I suppose sex education would comprise only of how to do it and different "fun postures". Also the gentleman who was aginst "creation of sex gurus" must've imagined that there would be practical classes. What bullshit!

Its high time people started to look around and actually understand where kids get their knowledge from. Would you rather have your child learn about sex from racy shows on TV, hardcore porn on the internet, porn literature, misguided peers, or worse, their own fumbling experiments? Or would you rather prefer that they were made aware of the concept objectively?

I suppose it's rather pointless to expect objectivity in this issue from a country that prides itself on its foolish prejudice. "It's against our culture" apparently. For the people from the land of the Kamasutra to actually go about swearing by immaculate conception and deem any physical contact as immoral and vile is more than a huge truckload of prudishness I must say. And if immaculate conception is the reason why our dear nation is bursting at the seams with the burgeoning population, well it doesn't seem to be doing much good.

To all of you who are ready to find the nearest heavy object and whack me with it for "propagating the cause of immorality", hold your horses for just a minute. I completely agree that the fact that we live in a society necessitates that some amount of censoring is necessary. Nobody's exactly saying we want to hump people in the middle of a busy intersection or teach kids to do it. Just the approach to the entire thing is rather disturbing.

It's not easy to change the mindset of an entire nation but it's high time that people were encouraged to treat the sex education thing from a scientific perspective. It would make a world of difference if children were told about it like the functioning of some machine. If its okay to teach them about how excretion works in the human body, why not approach sex with the same objectivity and also explain to them in detail the risks that come with it? Youngsters need to know about how AIDS, premarital pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases etc ruin lives. They need to be taught about how things could go wrong and end up affecting them physically and emotionally.

I know a lot of people would react to this by asking me if I would want my children to be told about this in future. Yes I most certainly would want them to know. How I choose to tell them and how much I tell them would be entirely upto my discretion but I'm convinced that adolescents will have enhanced strength of conviction to be able to say no when they know the risks and dangers and realize its not so cool after all, rather than hesitate just because mommy said its dirty.

Knowledge never hurt anybody. How it needs to be disseminated is worth debating but to me ignorance in this matter in today's day and age is definitely nothing to be blissful about.