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Unfortunately, Romney couldn’t understand the gravity of Obama’s concerns considering he made those remarks only a day after the courts order the LA Catholic Archdiocese to cough up an astounding amount of $600 million to nearly 500 victims of sexual abuse. So you can imagine the problem of child sex abuse is no laughing matter considering the vanguards of morality are involved in perpetrating such crimes. I’m sure this is just the tip of the iceberg and there exist thousands of cases that go unreported or even unmentioned. So would sex education to warn children as old as 5 years old be useful in preventing such crimes? Perhaps but as long as the parents take it upon themselves to do the teaching. I’m not sure sex education for children that young in school would go down quite that well.
Unfortunately in India, parents shy away from sex education of any kind and only a small minority of schools offer sex education and even then, it is taught only in the latter years to giggling and red-faced teenagers. I am not even sure the teachers are doing it right. In fact, I’m quite sure that the health checkups that we are subjected to in schools are also at best a token gesture and do not achieve anything substantial. Just today, I came across this horrific news in an prominent Delhi School [via India Uncut]:
Students of Class VI and VII at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya had been called for a medical check-up earlier this week and doctors asked them to undress.
The girls and boys — most of them aged 11 or 12 — complained that their “private parts” were “measured” to check whether the “growth was natural”.
Although hardly sex education, this news is wrong at so many levels. Not only is it intrusive at a personal level but also reflects misguided notions of health by the so-called doctors. Can we ever get it right? Have you ever had appropriate sex education in your schools?
by Patrix | on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 5:40 pm | 
Health, India, Society Culture, education . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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July 20th, 2007 at 7:40 pm reply
– I have been lucky hehe :) Ironically it was a spaniard “father” in a catholic school who taught us biology and sex. I think they were some of the most amazing lessons he could teach us - there were no pretentions, no “I will teach girls and boys seperately” shit and no “read for yourself” shit. It was laid out to us, bare and open, but done in such a practical and informative way.
I was actually surprised later on in life learning how pathetic sex education was in schools - I’ve been lucky :)
July 21st, 2007 at 11:22 am reply
Supremus, I guess you were the few lucky ones. So has it helped any? ;)
July 21st, 2007 at 11:33 am reply
Pat,
Minor correction. The Court hasn’t ordered them to pay 600 million, rather they have settled it out of court.
Incidentally, I was in Sardar Patel for 3-4 years. Never knew they could mess up this bad.
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:23 am reply
My school at least had attempted to teach it but failed miserable. The teacher was uncomfortable and hence we kids were too. And yes, we were separated into gender based groups and taught by the same gender teacher and still, we got nothing out of it.
July 24th, 2007 at 2:04 pm reply
Confused, sorry! Will fix that. So it was your alma mater, eh? Hope you didn’t have such ‘probing’ health checkups during your time…heh.
Sakshi, My school(s) didn’t even have that. But thankfully everything turned out just fine :)
July 24th, 2007 at 7:40 pm reply
Bit late to the discussion - my school never had any sex education either. We learned about stuff the usual way: Sidney Sheldon, Irving Wallace, adult mags, cousins etc. :-)
Btw, can’t say I am thrilled with the huge pink Ads that’s coming up on this page that promises to calculate my love quotient.
July 24th, 2007 at 8:15 pm reply
Bongo, it is never too late. Well, at least not until the comments shut down automatically after 21 days :) And I am surprised that we got our sex ed pretty much the same way…right down to the authors :)
And yup…am fiddling (as usual) with the sidebar ‘goodies’. Will remove the edgier ads.