The term sex education, that is often misunderstood, should be modified and called sexuality education to give it a broader meaning to it.
NEW DELHI: The term sex education, that is often misunderstood, should be modified and called sexuality education to give it a broader meaning to include its biological, socio-cultural and psychological dimensions, speakers at a two-day meet on the subject suggested here.
Jaya Sharma of Nirantar, a centre for gender and education, said that sex education is often understood to mean education about sexual anatomy and sexual behaviour, and misunderstood by parents to be encouraging sexual activity among the young people.
"People think that sex education is all about sexual anatomy and behaviour and will only encourage sexual activity amongst their children. That's why it has been banned in most states.
"Therefore it's better to use the term sexuality education which includes biological, socio-cultural and psychological dimensions of sexuality," Sharma said.
The meet, which brought together over 40 representatives of NGOs, women's rights groups, child rights groups and other organisations in the capital, saw the participants discussing the various issues related to sexuality of young people, paying special emphasis on sex education.
"Sexuality education is much wider than information about sexual activities. It also deals with making an adolescent aware of her developing body, taking decisions and preventing abuse and violence.
"Some of the objections raised against the material on sexuality education are actually weird. For instance, the anatomy of the body depicted in the biology textbooks were not objectionable but the same pictures in the sexuality education material were," said Jasodhara Dasgupta of Sahyog, an NGO in Lucknow.
To the fear that parents harbour about children wanting to actually experiment with sexual activity after sex education, Dasgupta said that young people are already interested and sexually active in India.
"This is a fact proven by the National Family Health Survey 2 and 3 which states that young people are sexually active by the time they are 12 or 13. It says 57 percent of the girls are married before they turn 18 and 52 percent have their first pregnancy between 15 and 19 years.
"The report on child abuse which was released this year showed that 53.2 percent children are sexually abused, a sad fact which can be avoided if only children are made aware of their bodies, of differentiating between a good and a bad touch," she added.
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