Sex education

Three UN agencies—Unesco, WHO, and Unicef—have been working for two years on guidelines on sex education with the aim of improving children’s awareness of sexuality in order to reduce sexually transmitted diseases as well as illegal abortions.

The International Guidelines on Sexuality Education are intended to help government departments, school systems and teachers develop curricula and curricular materials that are “evidence-and rights-based.”

A preliminary draft was issued in June 2009 in a conference in Sweden. The final draft was released on September 7 at a conference in the UK.

The guidelines are organized around sex concepts: relationships, values, attitudes and skills, culture, society and law human development, sexual behavior, sexual and reproductive health.

What has raised the hackles of faith-based groups as well as NGOs concerned with public morals are the age groups at which the guidelines are targeted.

They suggest, for example, that the subject of masturbation be discussed by children between 5 and 8 years old and in more detail when they became 9 to 12 years old. Objectors say that it might encourage young children to masturbate.

Other items that have aroused anxiety are discussions on condom use, sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, and the statement in the preliminary draft that “legal abortion performed under sterile conditions by medically trained personnel is safe.”

Without explicit exposition of these matters sex education, as it has been for over a hundred years, is euphemistic, misinformed and transmit prevailing of sexual biases.

The three UN agencies assert that properly designed sex education programs delay sexual activity, reduce infections, prevent unwanted pregnancies, and promote sexual and reproductive health. All this is based on years of research and on hard data.

When our own Department of Education receives these guidelines, it should not just shove it into a desk drawer but use them for a thorough and objective examination of what we want our school children to know about sexuality.

There will be the usual carpers, some of them more influential than others. They should be won over by reason and not by appeals to preconceptions, whether for or against.

Sex education is the missing element in basic education. Starting them young is the UN’s message. –Manila Times