What's wrong with our sex education?
(China Daily)
Updated: 2002-11-29 16:48

A girl feels a pain in her abdomen and goes to the school clinic. She is diagnosed with stomach troubles and given some pain-killers. That night she gives birth to a premature baby! An unbelievable story? How could this girl possibly know so little about her pregnancy?

One need not doubt the truth of this story in the weekly newspaper, the Southern Weekend, if one knows anything about China's traditional attitudes to sex education.

Her case is only one grain of sand in the vast desert of sexual ignorance among Chinese youngsters.

We seem to prefer silence on the question of sex. We are always worrying about such questions as: "Am I telling them more than they are supposed to know?" or, "Am I telling them to do something bad?"

Fortunately, in the past few years, it has been gradually dawning on us how important sex education is for our children, easing many of the worries of Chinese parents.

However, today's parents and teachers are worrying about a different problem. "God, he knows more than I do! He could even offer to give me a lesson."

It seems that overnight, sex has grown from not being a subject for squeamish youngsters but is now on centre stage. Sex stands brazenly in the spotlight, as naked as the many of the girls our young people see in the movies.

Today's young people seem to know so much that we sometimes feel it is hard to catch up with them.

I have two younger cousins studying in different secondary schools in Shanghai. When we talked about how they felt about their sex education classes, one told me it was uninteresting and she could anticipate what the teacher was going to say next. The other, however, excitedly told me the class slides she had seen were "terrific and surprising." Later I discovered she actually meant that her school had managed to show the most private aspects of sexual behaviour when she said, "terrific and surprising."

I am sorry to see that what our sex education system is doing is either "helping students go over their lessons" or teaching the wrong lessons by loudly broadcasting sex to cater to the deepened curiosity of our children who seem to have already become "sophisticated" about sex.

Actually our children know far less than we imagine. They may have seen enough of the female form in books. They may have watched enough movies like "American Pie". But sex education is more than sex or physiology. It is about psychology, about society, about love, marriage and responsibility. It is about how to protect oneself and how to respect and treat the opposite sex.

Our media have laid enough emphasis on the importance of sex education but have we ever considered and discussed what and how we are to educate our children about it? The problem now is not how our children will react to the teaching but how society should present it.

If the importance of a good education in the humanities is not woven into sex education, the latter will be no more than a poor porn movie that ranks far below the standard of "terrific and surprising." Or it will be no more than a lecture in bad taste.

It is time teachers and parents changed the stereotype of sex education so that they can teach young people something better than what is available in those books and disks we do not want them to enjoy.

We are certainly glad to see that sex education is finally trying to catch up with our children's knowledge, but will we be happy to hear our children say: "Goodbye education, hello sex?"

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