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No Sex Education in School
It's now all over bar the shouting. Sex education will not be part of the curriculum from the academic year 2007-2008. Asserting this, the Primary and Secondary Education Minister Basavaraj Horatti put the lid on this issue, by firmly declaring that his government did not see merit in the Union HRD Ministry's observations on this controversial matter.
"Teaching a primary school student about AIDS prevention does not make sense," the Minister told TW. The Union HRD Ministry had pressed state governments across the country to introduce sex education from the primary school level. However, strong pressure from parents and teachers has forced the Karnataka government to have serious second thoughts on following this directive.
The government's decision to thumb down sex education has spurred a debate on the need for it. While stating that it was pointless and even dangerous to expose young boys and girls at the primary school level to sex, he added that there was also no need for it as the students were being taught moral science. "We should concentrate on providing the students a moral and ethical foundation… Focusing only on sex education might prove counter productive," he cautioned.
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Some of the educationists too agree that exposing very young minds to sex education is not such a bright idea after all. As a former Vice Chancellor of Bangalore University has stated, students should have knowledge about AIDS, but not at this level. On the government's syllabus, he observed that it has been drafted in an unscientific way. "Many chapters are not worth mentioning and do not deserve the status of a subject," he averred. According to another expert, the government should introduce sex education as part of the science subject and not as a separate subject.
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