Sex education cannot be limited to biological descriptions in textbooks. We must talk of its pleasures and pains, or the repression in our minds will hurt everyone

MEERA PILLAI

A few months ago, I heard of a 15-year-old who had knotted two ends of a rope, tied one to a stair rail and slipped the other around her neck, and jumped over the banister. A student at one of the teaching shops that churns out a full load of 90+ percenters every year, she had heard that the results for her batch were very poor. When the results were actually announced, she had topped at that school of over-achievers. I mentioned this incident, in the carefully careless way one uses when one wishes to make a point without seeming to interfere obviously, to a friend. He has perfectionist tendencies himself, and high expectations of his daughter, due to appear for the ICSE. “Are you referring to so-and-so?” he responded. “I heard that they found out later that the real reason was that she was pregnant.” “That’s just as bad,” I exploded. “We fail our children by not giving them information and skills to protect themselves; by not creating a support structure so that they feel there isn’t even one adult who will understand and assist them, and the only option is to kill themselves.” My friend did not respond.

The implication was that in the hierarchy of reasons for committing suicide, pregnancy was a more justifiable one. A similar limited mindset causes governments like those of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, etc to ban sex education. Renuka Chowdhury was spot on last week when she called us a nation of hypocrites — a population of one billion that still likes to pretend that sex is some base Western practice, permissible between married Indians for the sole purpose of procreation, but for the most part, unmentionable even then.

At the many sexual health training workshops that I have carried out for NGO activists working with vulnerable children, the sheepish recognition of the obvious inconsistency between the size of our population and our prudish rejection of sex is the thin end of the wedge that works to get these respectable, largely lower-middle class and middle-class men and women to begin to look more objectively at the issue of sex. When they come into the workshop, their tight smiles and stiff body language indicate their discomfort at being there. When they share their concerns and fears at the beginning of the workshop, invariably several say, “What is there to talk about or work on sex for three whole days?” To the question, then, of what is sex, the answer, without fail, is sexual intercourse.

Over the next three days, however, through games and collaborative exercises, participants begin to recognise the number of complex emotional, mental, behavioural and social elements at work within the concepts of sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights — affection, fantasy, relationship, communication, conversation, respect, sexual behaviours and rituals, societal rules and expectations, joy and pleasure, as well as the more obviously negative elements like manipulation, blackmail, violence and abuse. By the end of the workshops, the participants invariably feel personally empowered at having received a space and the licence in which to explore, with courage, sensitivity and without judgement, this integral aspect of being human. One woman told the group, “I wish I had attended a workshop like this 30 years ago, it might have saved my marriage.” Another participant said, “This evening, I am going to go home and talk to my wife about sex.” He had been married for three years and had had sex regularly but never asked her about how she felt, what gave her pleasure or joy, or what she feared. Likewise, participants are convinced that we need to empower children and young people in a similar fashion. In all the workshops I have facilitated, only one person has ever rejected this premise, an Italian religious, a volunteer at a street children’s organisation, who steadfastly maintained that “our children are not like that”, against the strenuous assertions of the other activists, who provided support services to these children on a daily basis, that many children were initiated into sex early and were sexually active, often with multiple partners. The rest, at the end, complained that the three-day workshop had been too short, and asked when we would have a follow-up!

If sex education is only going to be about the plumbing of sex or what goes where, then perhaps we should continue with the trend wherein 75 percent Indians learn about sex from friends and porn films

And it is not as if sex education is relevant only to particularly vulnerable groups like street and working children, or to the adults who work with them. Contrary to the assertions of many middle-class parents that their young people have no interest in sex (though they may be watching significantly sexually stimulating Bollywood and Western music video-based material on tv several hours a week), many surveys, including those carried out by India Today and ac Nielsen, show that this is not the case. 17 percent of Indian teenagers and 33 percent of college-going youngsters surveyed had engaged in premarital sex. 46 percent of young single men had had sex, and 49 percent of young men had had sex with a sex worker. Nearly 40 percent of Indian women had not heard of aids, though 25 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 30 in eleven cities had had premarital sex. And contrary to politicians’ fears that sex education will promote lax morals in young people, several studies by the who show that good sex education raises the age of first sexual intercourse and first pregnancy, and lowers the rate of teenage pregnancy.

The issue, of course, is not only one of “whether sex education” but what and how. If sex education is only going to be about what one of my professors called “the plumbing of sex, or, what goes where”, then perhaps we should leave and continue with the trend by which 75 percent of Indians learn of sex from friends and porn films. Likewise, if the assumption is that even among those states that have not banned sex education the person best qualified to teach the subject is the high school biology teacher, never mind that he or she might be the most prudish and rigid person on campus, incapable of establishing a rapport with the children, the exercise will be quite futile. The chapter will be skipped, or so boring that children will go back to the tried and tested sources of the lore of friends and pornography.

Every minute of every day, six young people between the ages of 15 and 24 become hiv positive, according to unicef. Surely it is possible to care for the lives of our children by finding some viable medium between prurience and obscenity, on the one hand, and a clinical, distant “sex education” that they are unable to relate to their own lives, on the other. Surely it is possible to train caring and competent educators who can help children and young people acquire essential knowledge and skills related to positive sexuality, including negotiation skills, the ability to handle peer pressure, the skill and strength to say “no” when a sexual relationship is inappropriate, to protect themselves from violence and abuse, and seek out support when they need it.

What are our politicians truly worried about? If the issue is fear, let us confront it. Let’s acknowledge that sex is one of the most highly charged aspects of human life, and encourage our young people to handle it well. If the issue is morality, let us teach our children to appreciate their sexuality and not desecrate it or misuse sexual energy, but to work with it skillfully. If we are pragmatic and respectful of their lives, perhaps we can support them to make wise choices. To embrace sex as one of the great potential joys in the universe when it does not hurt oneself or others, and to turn away from it when it is marked by negativity and the diminution of self and others.

Pillai is an education policy expert and an independent consultant to NGOs

Aug 04 , 2007