Centre’s sex education programme is headed for the rocks, thanks to the culturally insensitive way in which teachers are expected to deal with it.
NEW DELHI: The Centre’s sex education programme is headed for the rocks, thanks to the culturally insensitive way in which teachers are expected to deal with the subject in class.
Nine states have already dumped the programme as being too hot to handle. And teachers have begun resisting the idea of teaching “sex education” for fear of facing criminal charges from parents upset about the contents of the programme.
Many schools and teachers have developed cold feet following a letter campaign initiated by the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (SBAS), which is affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The letter warns teachers that they could face arrest under sections 354 of the IPC (outraging the modesty of a woman) and 355 (dishonouring a person) if they taught “sex education”. Both these sections attract imprisonment of up to two years.
The letter has been sent to thousands of teachers in all states and the organisation is holding seminars to “sensitise them to the lurking danger in imparting sex education to minors.”
While the broad idea of sex education has been universally lauded, several segments of the Adolescent Education Programme (AEP) tool-kit for teachers with detailed instructions on how to explain reproductive and private parts of the body to students are insensitively handled.
The kit has been developed by the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry, the National Aids Control Organisation (Naco) and Unicef.
One example (page 104, step No 9, Yuva School Education Programme) talks of using play-way methods to explain body parts to children. In this step, a blindfolded boy runs his hands over all students and identifies boys and girls by touching their body parts.
The SBAS letter to teachers points out bluntly that “many parents will boil up (sic)” if they were to find out that boys were being asked to touch their daughters in various places.
The letter goes on to warn that many parents could file criminal complaints against the teacher under sections 354 and 355 even if the teacher pleads that he or she only called for volunteers.
The letter argues that in matters of sex and touching of body parts, the consent of a minor is no consent at all in the eyes of the law. Under IPC, a woman is a female of any age, and not just an adult. Moreover, a teacher in a classroom can be seen as someone who exercises “command and control” over her subjects, and hence runs the risk of facing charges of abusing custodial trust, too, says the SBAS letter.
A Naco official, when queried about the kind of material put into the tool-kit, turned defensive and pointed out that the material had to be tailored for local needs. “We have supplied the tool-kits and it is for the states and teachers to adapt it according to their social, cultural and religious needs,” the Naco official said.
But some teachers have already started expressing reservations. “Parents are very aggressive and sensitive towards such matters these days. What will I do if a parent complains against me for humiliating or dishonouring his daughter or son?” asks Sanjay Kumar Jha, a school teacher from Delhi.
“There is also the possibility that the child may belong to the SC/ST, OBC, minority or any other community. I may face criminal charges under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act,” says Mohit Singh, another teacher.
“The programme requires the teacher to roll down a condom and show students how to correctly wear it. Besides, he/she also has to explain the right age and right way of having intercourse through a flip-chart provided by the government. Throughout, the tool-kit uses ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ instead of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, which gives the impression that it is all right for school children to have sex,” says Prof Pratibha Naithani of Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College.
“The government, in the name of sex education, is making school children sexually active from the age of 12-13 years itself,” she charges.
Cutting across party lines, the government’s “sex education” programme has been widely flayed and is already banned in nine states, including Maharashtra. However, the HRD ministry and the health ministry have defended the move as part of the larger HIV/Aids awareness campaign.
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