Sex Education - Here we go again
The conversation topic amongst my friends this CNY is about the recent newspaper report about Anderson Junior College's sex education talk. I'm unable to provide a link here (don't have paid subscription to ST Interactive), but perhaps reading an AJC student's opinion about the talk will give you an idea why there's such a furore over the alleged preachy element in the talk, in stark contrast to what AJC insisted was an innocuous educational program .Aside from the fact that my friends and I were astounded that there are still people who think that masturbation is wrong in this day and age, we were also divided in our opinions over what approach schools should take in sex education.
My friend L opined that schools should stay away from values-education when it comes to something as personal as sex and that schools should just provide the facts and let students make their own decisions. The minute values are injected into a discussion on sex education, schools are guilty of imposing their beliefs on students, like what AJC has done.
I don't really agree with him though. I think schools are in the business of teaching values. Otherwise we might as well do away with the Civics and Moral Education (CME) subject altogether. The difficulty is which set of values schools should be imparting. There are the official, MOE-sanctioned values which schools are obliged to inculcate (not all are accepted wholly by society at large, for instance its stance on homosexuality). Then there are values which are tied to a certain religion and this is where schools which engage external organizations to conduct a value-loaded topic like sex edcuation need to be very careful about. If you get an external organization with religious affiliation to conduct sex education talks, you are likely to raise hackles amongst students for trying to impose your religious biases on others. In my opinion, it's better to take a secular approach so that you get maximum reach without disengaging any particular group.
AJC's explanation that the talk was merely to expose the students to a variety of perspectives is not convincing. If that is really the aim, then the school should engage another organization that believes in contraception to give a talk, and another that espouses the benefits of stem cell research etc. And once you follow this line of thought, what's to stop a school from hearing from some extremist organization, in the name of "variety of exposure"?
Since my last encounter with Focus on the Family in my school, I have been wary of the sex education message from external organizations with religious affiliations. Their intentions may be good, but they sometimes cross the line between telling the facts, and preaching. I may be a Christian, but I would not go so far as to expect people to adhere to the same level of conviction on matters like abstinence or homosexuality, for example, as me. Such issues are contentious even amongst Christians, so how can any organization purport to teach a particular stand to students who hail from different religious backgrounds and possess varying moral convictions?
Worse still, when such organizations get students to write down statements of belief in their workbook (in the AJC case), or in the case of Focus on the Family, to sign pledge cards of virginity, I want to cry "Foul!" and state categorically here, that this is patronizing, coercive, even oppressive and downright wrong.
posted by trisha @ 8:44 PM
16 Comments:
yeah... I don't know the full facts, so correct me if I'm wrong..
I think in any non-mission school environment, religious values should be bifurcated from "moral" / socially-accepted value...
If I were a parent, I'd be very very angry if my kid were taught that contraception is wrong, for example, unless she was in a catholic school...
And I know the world is different now, but I don't think the message should be changed from abstinence to if-you-must-then-have-safe-sex, for a long long time at least...
hey trisha, while I agree that schools are in the business of teaching values, I dont think preaching ONLY 'secular values' will lead us anywhere... the term 'secular values' is so poorly defined that nowadays it just means staying-away-from-all-religious-values :) - the Focault in me sometimes comes out :p
What I would instead prefer is to teach the students ALL values, relgious or otherwise. Tell them everything - from the viewpoint of christianty, buddhism, islam, hinduism, judaism etc etc, the MOE's stance, perspectives on homosexuality as well as the social implications on the various standpoints....
... then let the student choose and live with his/her decision.
Mmm... We are treading on dangerous ground with this, I think...
I would certainly want my children to make up their own minds when the time comes (and I hope that I would have instilled some solid values by then), instead of having their school present some one-sided views. I would have said something to the school and MOE.
Don't preach. Spoken with the candour of a teenager, sex education in school usually underestimates the sexual maturity of students as you as a teacher would know. Besides, preaching is grinding to the ears and it insults the intelligence of students who can think for themselves. This is not so much an intellectual discussion of sexual norms and their sociological implications as much as a very didactic cramming of ultra-conservative messages that truly, no teenager will believe in unless by choice. At a sexuality talk in my secondary school, the person told us homosexuality was an illness and that there was a direct correlation between pornography and crime. Sheesh.
If i may add my 5cents worth.
Hey, i thot Sex education was abt the biology of it. Facts wh people might think they know (are too shy to ask) but don't really know it. What precautions such as safer sex /contraceptions etc...when the time comes.
The moral part of it is something else & i do wonder if teachers are indeed the best living examples to convey such values or would a professional organization be more appropriate. Teachers are humans too & not saints.
So, in some way, i do agree with L that the facts need be given but i see yr point that some moral guidance is necessary. My question is: did u & i had such stuff in our adolescent age? Are u & i less able to make the right decisions becoz we didn't have those lectures. Opps... maybe i shd leave myself out of this tricky question! ;). Moral values are picked up along the way (here we may digress into the role of media like TV/movies).
I have no idea how these preptalks take place. Are they unidirectional ? If so, i guess a discussion forum is more appropriate. If the asian students are too shy, surely there are ways to have them slip questions on paper anonymously.
Actually, I think that masturbation is probably one of the reasons why women find it so difficult to orgasm and why men suffer from premature ejeculation during sex.
hmm. i seem to be hearing a lot about sec education talks in recent days.
i just found it comical one particular section of the student's rant, about lust being not = to true love; like anyone really knows what the latter really means.
"Lust demeans the lustful person. Destorys (sic) character and self integrity and dehumanize human relationship"
damn powerful words. very impressed. ;)
as i read the rest...my eyes opened wider and wider. some unconventional messages they bring across...
I actually looked into the link u had to the comments from the AJC student. Boy o boy, the covert teacher in me was screaming away at the typos & had to resist the urge to use a red marker to edit them on my screen.
i know u are sniggering coz my english has been atrocious since i left Singapore (but hey, i have an excuse, being bombarded daily with other languages!)
Then, i saw the comment of tscd. (Sorry i had to say this, tscd): i didn't know whether to laugh or cry. With the exception of some medical/psychological condition, treatment of premature ejaculation usually involves manual stimulation (Yes, Masturbation!) to "learn" to desensitize the male organ.
On a lighter note, if my partner comes too quickly, i would assume he finds me EXTREMELY SEXY.
That's right, Trisha. Sex Education -Here we go again
woof!:
I would be upset and disturbed too if someone tells my child contraception is wrong without qualifying what he means.
I still believe in abstinence but I think it's a hard message to sell nowadays.
doubleyellow:
I'm not saying that secular values will lead us to be more enlightened beings. Being a religious person myself, I strongly believe we need to have a strong grounding in religious values.
But in a school setting, and in a multi-religious society like Singapore, it is not right to let any religious group impose its beliefs on others.
I do agree about exposing students to various views. But is it wise to leave it entirely to students to decide what to embrace? We're talking about 15 year olds? Do they have the maturity to handle decisions like that? I really don't know and I don't have the solution either.
Hugewhaleshark:
I definitely agree with you about parents laying a strong foundation for their children. Values teaching should ideally be done at home. The schools should NOT have to lay the foundation for kids. It is ultimately the parents' prime responsibility.
Susilo:
I shudder when I read the part where you said "sex education in school usually underestimates the sexual maturity of students". In my secondary school, I actually see 2 extremes of students - those who are really 'duh' about sex, and those whose knowledge astounds me.
It's not easy to present a message that is relevant across such a wide spectrum of students.
Germs:
The professional organization you are talking about is precisely the Focus on the Family & Family Life Ctr grps that ruffles so much feathers recently.
I actually think teachers might be
better at this than these organizations because
1) we don't have a hidden agenda (like to propagate a certain religious bias)
2) we know our students better
3) we can follow up with 1-to-1 discussion for students who have specific issues.
Of course we are not all living examples of sexual virtue. No one is unless you are Mother Teresa I suppose.
And comparing to our times when we were teenagers, we were not bombarded with sexual messages from the media & internet then. It's a rather different world now.
a ball of yarn:
Careful your eyes don't pop out ah!
It is quite amusing (even scary) reading what those teenagers rant about!
Tscd & Germs:
How come the topic has veered towards premature ejaculation?? Oi, stay focussed, folks! :)
(Germs: stop grinning! You being extremely sexy is not the topic of discussion here.)
Hello
I read your post and the link to the student's comments. It sounds to me like the problem may be with the way in which the content was presented. I mean, all these organisations are entitled to whatever stand they want to take, but the presenters should explain that they represent a certain viewpoint because of this reason or that. And perhaps it's the job of the school to tell the students that these are some views on the subject and that there will surely be other views, and get the students to explore them too.
If I am not wrong, the MOE sexuality programmes for upper pri (I'm not sure if there's one but I thought I read that they came up with a package), Sec and JC, intend to touch on the 'values' involved, and abstinence is one of the key things.
I agree that family must set the foundation for values and it is also the role of the school to develop values. Sometime ago, this thing called 'values clarification' was popular in the US. The focus was to clarify students' values, i.e. to make them aware of what their values were and why they valued those things. The problem was clarifying is not enough and is certainly not the same thing as developing values. Perhaps MOE or schools want to avoid this.
Anyway, I thought parents could opt out on behalf of their child if they didn't agree with the focus of the sexuality education programme. Oh, but maybe the parents agree but the child doesn't!
germs: Yes, graded masturbation is used as a tool to train for stamina - but only because the main goal of it is not to orgasm. Compulsive masturbators have difficulty with stamina because their main goal is to achieve orgasm as quickly as possible. When this becomes habitual - then sexual problems arise.
quite surprised that no one has mentioned passion, love (or lust, which some of u would point out, but an emotion that makes us human), curiosity, STD's like syphillis and AIDS that are also associated with the wonderful act of sex. For some human beings, moral values may not save our lives as compared to a 10 cents? condom (how much is a condom?) or when u fall in love, the high moral horse or stallion may not come between u and your lover.(I'm also getting confused here myself as to who's the stallion who's the lover? well whatever)
Also,another point to add, Singapore does not score very high on frequency of sex among the countries in the world according to a survey done by Durex i think. Could that in general reflect the state of passion in our city? Will too much values preaching with regards to sex ( by the way, universal moral values should be taught in school in civics class; but 'values' in a sex education class? hold our horses and consider which 'values'?; civics and sex are different 'genres') have the effect of mortifying the desires too much for some people and may lead them to become ultra-conservative and maybe even frigid or impotent and add to the increasing number of 'morally upright' lonely singles? (If you got lost somewhere in my convoluted sentence, me too.) Don't forget that there are conservative and cautious teenagers around and who knows the percentage of this group may be a lot more than the 'liberal' ones?
sexual desire is a wonderful desire but it's something very complex (like my sentences) that an individual needs to manage. and the school perhaps should equip the students with the facts and consequences of their actions and help them take necessary precautions when necessary before it becomes too late.
some parting questions before I sojourn on: should someone beautiful who has had premarital sex with a few people at different times of his or her life but now happily married, be judged as more immoral than someone ugly who for some reason didn't have the chance to have sex with anyone other than the spouse but actually very much wanted to? When is it sex? When is it love?
Ex-teacher:
I think most schools, because of lack of time, will simply engage ONE organization to do the Sex Edn talk (to fulfill their obligation so to speak). Hence, there is simply no opportunity to expose the students to diverse viewpoints. There are also not many organizations doing such talks anyway and those that do are predominantly of a certain religious persuasion.
Tscd:
Thanks for the clarification. I never knew that compulsive masturbators have problems with stamina! Maybe I shd start telling my students that!
Sojourner:
Welcome to my blog! You raised some interesting questions.
1) I think the Durex survey doesn;t imply that our moral education has gotten in the way of our passion. It's scary if you draw assumptions like that. My belief is that we are a pragmatic lot. We are dead beat after working, and since we don't want that many babies anyway, might as well cut down on the sex. I really don't think our civics/moral education is SO strong in school that we have churned out very conservative/passionless students.
Truth is, I think teachers are losing out to the power of the media, which extols individualism, carefree sex, and hedonism.
2) on your parting question. My answer is a definite NO. I can't answer your question on when something is sex/love. It is something no observer can tell, only the participants of the act.
Sometimes it's a combination of the 2, sometimes it is either.
trisha: I'm afraid you must have got lost in my convoluted sentences and tongue in cheek humour and drew the connections yourself. That's really scary. I did not say that the Durex survey implies that moral education has affected people's passion or churned out conservative passionless students. As a believer in empircism and scientific studies, I am certainly cautious about making causal relations.
Please note that I was adopting the Socratic method in throwing up questions for further thought and hopefully refine our two cents worth of critical thinking. Notice the question marks?
And by the way you've made a generalized biased statement of the media which you claimed to be the truth.
Hi Sojourner:
I'm re-reading your earlier post to see if I had misunderstood you.
"Will too much values preaching with regards to sex ....have the effect of mortifying the desires too much for some people and may lead them to become ultra-conservative.." -- I think when you used the words "have the effect", it seems to me that you are suggesting a cause-and-effect situation. OK, I may have missed your Socratic style of questioning so my apologies.
My statement about the media is borne out of general observations about how the young today is very influenced by the media and how tough it is for teachers/parents to say anything that is different from what the media ostensibly propagates. Talk to any youth counselor and they'll probably not think that my statement is far from the truth. Of course I have no empirical evidence to cite. It is simply from general observation.
I am particularly dismayed at what passes for children's entertainment on TV nowadays. And if so much junk can be shown on Kids Central or Nicklelodeon, what else can we say about the mainstream channels?
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