GIVE INNOCENCE A CHANCE
The Indian mainstream media have not taken kindly to the ban on sex education in schools by the government of Maharashtra.
They blame the politicians of pandering to obscurantists and ultra-conservatives and call it a struggle between modernity and regression. They believe that sex education will only add to children's knowledge and remove sexual repression and perverted notions of sex. They claim that sexual repression leads to sexual crimes and a lack of sex education will lead children to access information through the wrong sources.
Let us see for ourselves what the forces of modernity have achieved for their societies.
UK leads the pack of countries which have high rate of teenage pregnancies. In 2005 there were 39,683 conceptions by girls between 15 to 17 years of age. That translates to about 40 girls per thousand. The conception rate for those between 13 and 15 years was around 8 per thousand. If this was the conception rate we shudder to think about what the abortion rate might have been?
In a survey carried by the United States Department of Justice in Dec 2000 to study the sexual victimization of college women, it was found that for every 1000 women there may well be 35 incidents of attempted and completed rape in a given academic year.
The statistics for child abuse, paedophiling, incest, molestation and domestic violence in those countries who claim to be bastions of freedom and openness are equally depressing.
This miserable state of affairs is in those countries where both sex and sex education are not considered anti-ethical; where consensual sex is not stigmatized and all avenues to vent repressed sexual desires are legal and easily available.
We fail to understand why the mainstream media missed these facts and indulged in spreading misinformation assuming a gullible public.
It is moral and not sex education that is the need of the hour. We appeal to give innocence a chance.
Posted by Arshad
on Tuesday, April 03, 2007. 
Times have changed a lot. Even in villages people are getting better informed about what sex rightly means. We have lived with a baggage that sees sex as wrong. But everyone indulges in it.
When a child touches his/her sex organ, haven't we seen some parents hitting the kids, instead of trying to explain to kids that it is bad manners to touch it in public.
The anatomical and biological aspects have to be taught to the students. As I have mentioned in my blog, if the word sex is what is troublesome, we might as well have the same things taught under Health Education.
Arshad, your piece is clearly written too. But naturally I disagree. :)
Actually I do not think that the things you mentioned happening in the west are due to sex education. The reasons are very complex and too long to detail here.
However where rape is concerned, the figures of the west are all out in the open. In the sub continent or other conservative countries women mostly do not report rape. What is reported is the tip of the iceberg.
I do agree with you about some sort of guidance to youngsters (I won't call it moral education) but frankly I don't think this will corrupt innocence. Its important to give sex education in small steps, depending on the age of the child.
In fact just today I read in the newspapers that some muncipal regional language schools have been giving sex education for some time now as village girls and girls from the slums are vulnerable to molestation and rape. They are also unable to speak to their parents about it.
Arshad,
First time here. Sex education is often confused, beleived to be education on the how's of it. Sadly, it is not about it at all. The truth is that the information needs to be spoken about, and there is no more point in talking about innocence here. After a stage, it becomes ignorance. Your figures are not clarifying. Are you trying to point that sex education in the west teaches, or rather introduces kids to pre-teen pregancies? That's a total take of ignorance! And as pradeep says, it can be called health education. Infact, it can be called moral science!