Where is our sex education at?

When discussing the topic of pre-marital sex through the same column a while ago, I touched upon the subject of sex education in Sri Lanka during a discussion on young people and sex. This week, we're taking an in depth look at Sri Lanka's sex education system, and where it should ideally be.

The current delivery of sex education in Sri Lanka is done through the national curriculum. Whilst this is known to be the most effective delivery system in terms of coverage, Sri Lanka's actual impact suffers due to several reasons.

The curriculum itself is regarded as too restrictive and flawed by critics. This is due to the fact that while talking of the biological aspects of sex and reproduction, issues such as relationships, contraception, Sexually Transmitted Disease (STDs) are either discussed extremely briefly, or not discussed at all.

A Comprehensive Sexuality Education Framework, (CSE) is one which encompasses all the above aspects of sex and reproduction. A CSE framework is generally based on a concept referred to as a "Rights Based Approach," which looks at a specific issue as a violation of a person's or group's rights, and then tries to rectify it by empowering the person to overcome that specific issue.

A much asked question when it comes to sex education, is when it should be done. The current school of thought is that sex education should be age-appropriate. This however, is both conducive and restrictive depending on its interpretation. For those who think that sex education should not be given to children and youth (and there are quite a few of them), the words "age appropriate" can be a shield which they can hide behind.

But if the same term is used in a progressive manner, then "age appropriate" can form the basis for a near perfect system of promoting. Let's try and come up with a scenario for age appropriate sex education.

From the younger ages (say 5 or 6), this can mean knowledge and skills about protecting your body. Simple things such as protecting your personal spaces, and what to do if you think you're being abused. Think of the children who could've been protected from child molesters and pedophiles, only if the children knew what was happening to them, and how to avoid the situation or how to respond to that.

Moving up the age ladder, the next step can be education for pre-pubescents about the changes their bodies are about to undergo. Think of our own thoughts and feeling when we were growing up. We had no idea as to what was happening to our bodies and how and why we are being transformed this way. Whatever (mis)information we got was either through smut and toilet humour, or through talking to our peers who had the same kind of understanding of what's going on.

But the most responsible part of a sex education system comes into play at an age at which young people have a tendency to become sexually active.

Contrary to what some neo-conservatives want to believe and want the rest of us to believe, a well planned comprehensive Sex Ed system can actually increase the mean age of sexual debut. This can be seen if figures are to be compared between France and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's age of sexual debut is 15.3 for boys and 14.4 for girls, compared to 17.5 for boys and 17.2 for girls in France, which by some random chance has an excellent system for sex education.

In a follow up article on this, I will be talking about the actual content that should be included in a comprehensive sex education system. And for this I would love to hear what you have to say. After all, its future generations of young people like us who are affected by this. Send in your comments to pinkboxinggloves@gmail.com.