“Sex Education” Can Indian youth do without it?

Last Week Dr. Harshvardhan, the Health minister of India, created a furore by expressing his views on “sex”, that is still a taboo in this part of the world. He suggested of doing away with sex education in schools and instead talked of inculcating abstinence and yogic values in the young minds.

I remember the first time I had my “fall” it was during while watching a semi explicit scene from a Hollywood movie, that had Drew Barrymore doing a car wash, as a matter of fact this much is enough for anyone at that time to go weak between his knees and when I mention hot-pants and a string top, the temperatures is sure to go up a few notches. But this was the time when the internet hadn’t taken over our lives completely and we were still dependent on fashion TV and HBO for our daily dose of sexual content. What followed it were beads of perspiration, feeling of loosening of legs and a flaccid penis. A child with no knowledge of what was happening to him is bound to get frightened and impatient at the sight of slimy white fluid trickling down. This impatience in our days led us to flicking between the Hollywood channels in search of anything explicit. In those days even a girl in a skirt excited us to limitless extents. But this is not the case now, today in the internet age you don’t have to go looking for the sexually explicit content just click a button and you can visit any female part in detail. So the sex education becomes all the more important.

In India, sex education starts in 10^th standard with a chapter on “reproduction”, talks of every organism except “homo-sapiens”. It gives just a fleeting reference to post puberty changes in male and female body. The problem is how we in India view “sex”. Instead of referring to it in the same way as any other natural process. The mention of the word follows by giggles from teenagers and a stoic silence from the parents. The condom ads on the TV still evoke a discomfort of sorts when the whole family is watching the television together.

“filthy” is how sex is defined in India precisely and something that is filthy “we Indians are a cleaner lot, we don’t talk filth”, but given India’s ever and overgrowing population I think the definition of “filth” is different behind those four walls.

The need of the hour is to introduce sex education from Class 5^th itself, the tender minds should be exposed to “reproduction” in a constructive manner much before they know what “porn” is.  Mr. Harshvardhan’s idea of introducing yoga and values instead of sex in curriculum in this age of internet does not cut ice, acting noble does not make one noble one has to think noble.