Sex education in schools gets a boost

HYDERABAD: Worried that the sanitised version of sex education offered in schools has failed to create enough Aids awareness among adolescents, the school education department has now sought the services of Family Planning Association of India (FPAI) to give additional lessons to students on safe sex. The lessons offered currently in the school textbooks were toned down by Andhra Pradesh State Aids Control Society (APSACS) as the moral brigade had objected to the explicit content in textbooks, which they said offended certain sensibilities.These lessons do not have words which have sexual connotations and also avoid the mention of sex organs.
As per the arrangement between the school education department and FPAI that was formalised a week ago, the FPAI will take up the task of talking about sex in a clinical way without hurting the sensibilities of parents and teachers. The sex education lessons as planned by FPAI would include discussions on topics such as puberty and menstruation, which were only referred to vaguely in the existing chapters that read more like moral science lessons on ���life skills���. The FPAI lessons will also discuss pregnancy and safe sex. In schools where co-education is the norm, separate classes for girls and boys supervised by female and male teachers respectively will be conducted.
There will now be special teams from FPAI that will take charge of imparting adolescent education in state schools from classes VII to X. This would be in addition to arranging classroom sessions for teachers to familiarise them with the new content. ���We have been conducting such classes for a select number of schools since long. With the help of the school education department we will be able to perform better,��� said Suja Karthika, one of the counsellors of FPAI. She said some of the corporate schools and other reputed schools like, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) in the city had approached FPAI for sex education for their high school students.
The teams will visit schools along with trained psychologists and give monthly lessons to high school students. The extra classes will, however, not be forced on any of the schools, even though the services of the FPAI can be availed by all.
���Children talk about sex all the time as they are curious. The counsellor���s task will be to get them introduced to the matter in more matter of fact manner so that there will be not be any kinds of mistakes,��� Karthika said.
The project will be implemented in a phased manner across schools in the state. ���Opinion from school managements, teachers, parents and students will be taken after conducting a few classes. If acceptable to all, instructions will be given to continue with the classes or else the plan will be dropped,��� a senior official from secondary education department said. Officials only hope that the moral brigade doesn���t spoil this attempt at informed schooling.