“UGH! Mom has to be kidding me! Why bring me here? To a sex education class? Really?”
My immature thoughts were flying and fluttering while the session was going on. Ok, I’ll admit I had real trouble uttering the word ‘SEX’ with a straight face.
”Good touch…Bad touch…Safe…Risk.” As the class went on ‘she’ (a girl sitting next to me) whispered into my ears, “only if they could teach all this to the little ones.” My eyes widened “little ones? We are the little ones!” She sighed. As she shared with me how she was mistreated by one of her near and dear one, I stared in horrified silence. All of a sudden, she wasn’t the same teenager who used to play with me. Her eyes were filled with a terrible sorrow that had been hidden all this time.
Since that day, I have been able to understand the importance of being aware of matters relating to human sexuality. If ‘she’ knew how the treatment meted to her had been, maybe she could have saved herself. She could have protected herself from being mistreated. All of this could have happened if she had known things a little early! It wasn’t her teenage self that needed sex education. Sadly, it was her innocent ‘child’ self. In this regard, Schools and colleges are undoubtedly the best places to introduce sex education.
How can we protect our body if we don’t know how it works? AND PLEASE don’t say that 8th standard biology is sex education! We all know how uneasily our teacher took that portion! Seemed as if he/she needed more sex education than us.
The rate of unwanted pregnancies, pre-marital sex and STDs are rising at alarming rates making “proper” sex education in our country a necessity. Though the surface thought of giving sex education to a young person might seem inappropriate, the rising rates of sexual crimes against children today leaves us with no choice. It is imperative that school and colleges must take initiatives to provide proper sex education, discussions, etc.
Let’s be honest, we Indians have a really hard time when it comes to having an open conversation about sex. But it is a fact as true as daylight that if we are not ready to educate our children, the future’s not going end well for either of us. If children can’t differentiate between right and wrong, if they can’t say NO to others’ unacceptable actions, if they can’t understand their own biology, then we can be sure that there are going to be a lot more people fighting their pasts, not knowing what to do, having gazillions of unanswered questions about things they need to know the most about.
If we don’t educate our children now, when are we going to?
“If not us, who? If not now, when?”