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By Rashme Sehgal After the furore over the direct nature of India’s Adolescence Education Programme last year, NACO has come up with a sexuality education module that dare not mention ‘intercourse’ or ‘safe sex’ or even ‘condoms’. Over 30 groups working with sexuality have rejected the material
TARSHI, a Delhi-based NGO, has been hosting a confidential telephone helpline service providing information and counselling on sexuality and reproductive health issues since 1996. It has received over 60,000 calls, mainly from teenagers, ranging from whether kissing causes conception to whether kissing or sucking the nipples can cause HIV. One 18-year-old young man rang up to say that he had found a lump in his testes but could not talk to his parents about it. Indian teenagers are becoming more sexually active and are keen to learn about sexual behaviour. National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) II and III show that over one-quarter of Indian women are married before the age of 15 and consequently had sexual intercourse at a very young age. The NFHS reports concur that research across the world has shown that sex education does not encourage increased sexual activity at a younger age. Education experts therefore are surprised at the re-worked Adolescence Education Programme (AEP) prepared by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) which shuns any reference to sex and sexuality. Radhika Chandiramani, Executive Director, TARSHI, points out that the NACO material is clearly out of sync with the lived realities of young people’s lives, especially since the average adolescent has little information on matters related to sex. Jaya Sharma, Director, Nirantar, an NGO that’s been active in the field of adolescence education for the last two decades, agrees. “The curriculum fails in one of its main objectives, which is to address the whole issue of teenage pregnancy. It does not provide any knowledge about what causes conception since it does not touch on the issue of sexual intercourse,” says Sharma. Defending the new module, Sujata Rao, Director General of NACO, clarifies: “Words like ‘intercourse’ and ‘masturbation’ will not be mentioned as we are not teaching them the Kama Sutra. Nor does the revised module on life skills education mention words like ‘condom’ or ‘safe sex’. Rather, it will be focusing on the aspirations of the youngsters and will also talk about being faithful to one’s partner, and abstinence. There should be no hypocrisy on the subject,” says Rao. The earlier module caused a furore and was rejected last year by several state governments including those of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka, with the chief ministers writing to the Ministry of Human Resources Development accusing it of corrupting the morals of the young. A frightened government immediately put the nationwide programme, conceived by the Ministry of Human Resources Development and NACO, under review. The AEP was meant to be implemented in all states through the departments of education, in collaboration with the State AIDS Control Societies (SACS). Its main objective was to enable students in Classes IX and XI to receive adequate knowledge about HIV/AIDS in the context of acquiring life skills. The AEP sessions, which were to be conducted by nodal teachers for a minimum of 16 hours during an academic year, would focus on growing up, adolescence, reproductive tract and sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS. The present review was called upon after many states objected to what they felt was explicit content in the flip chart and teachers’ workbook. The “objectionable content” included pictures of male and female reproductive systems, diagrams depicting physical changes in boys and girls, and those explaining conception and contraception. In Orissa, the State Council of Educational Research and Training threw up its hands following protests over the “explicit” content and decided that only teachers, not students, would be given exercises designed to teach reproductive changes. But when several state governments decided to ban the AEP toolkit, the Ministry for Human Resources Development constituted a review committee to make the necessary modifications. This committee comprised educationists, doctors, child psychologists, inter-faith leaders, members of the Central Board of Secondary Education and members of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). After a series of meetings, NACO managed to finalise a new toolkit. Having burnt its fingers earlier, the organisation says this time the module was passed on to the education departments of each state; feedback was expected by the end of August. Agreeing that the earlier text had “too much sex,” Rao says the current one is more interactive and user-friendly, with not too many illustrations and drawings. “This time we have made sure that we involve conservative as well as progressive people and groups in our consultations before finalising the module. We went through an elaborate consultation process to prepare the toolkit. The final prototype (of the module) was sent to the state education secretaries for their feedback, which we are now awaiting,” adds Rao. After the state governments approve the toolkit, their education departments will be asked to interact with parents, teachers and NGOs. Unlike last time, there will be no “graphic” flip charts either. NACO is hoping that the new adolescence education programme will roll out by November this year. This time, the committee has prepared three sets of materials: a teachers’ handbook, facilitators’ handbook and trainers’ handbook. “The module does not have any explicit details about sex and sexuality and will instead discuss the physical changes a girl or boy goes through. It will go through various stages before being finalised,” says Rao. “The issue of sex education has to be tackled. We can’t hide such things from children when they are seeing it all on television. They are not a bunch of idiots living on an island. We can’t be hypocritical and should not forget that we have a 15% rate of teenage pregnancies,” Rao continues. Meanwhile, 33 NGOs from across the country, including youth groups, sexual rights groups, women’s groups and groups working with child sexual abuse have rejected the revised education module. They insist the AEP must be prepared in such a manner as to both “inform and empower young people, not the other way around”. In a joint statement they declared: “The thrust of the NACO curriculum is abstinence. It is silent even about the biological aspects of reproduction. The lesson on conception, whilst addressing internal biological mechanisms, omits any description of intercourse. Sexual intercourse is shrouded in the euphemism ‘intimate physical relationships’. Without the knowledge of what does cause conception, the curriculum will fail in one of its own objectives -- that of addressing teenage pregnancy.” Jaya Sharma of Nirantar says: “The present material only serves to strengthen the sense of shame and fear that surrounds sex and sexuality. Not talking about sex intensifies the taboo around the subject rather than alleviates it. The curriculum has failed to enable young people to choose between saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Those who work in the area of child sexual abuse know that a sense of comfort and confidence related to sexuality are critical in enabling the child to recognise abuse and break the silence surrounding it.” NGOs are also unhappy about the information being provided on a crucial issue like HIV/AIDS prevention. A moralistic approach that pushes abstinence will not succeed in bringing about behaviour change. “Experts in the HIV/AIDS sector have always maintained that the only answer to the epidemic is information. It is ironic that a curriculum, informed primarily by the HIV/AIDS agenda, fails precisely on this count. It denies young people their right to information. The way HIV prevention is addressed in the teachers’ workbook is highly inadequate. Despite citing the fact that 86% of cases of HIV are sexually transmitted, the curriculum provides scant information on how sexual transmission occurs and how to protect oneself against this particular means of transmission. It is very difficult to explain how HIV is transmitted sexually if one doesn’t explain what sex is in the first place. The curriculum leaves young people in the dark, only mentioning that HIV is transmitted sexually and leaving out the hows and whys, and all-important information on HIV protection during sexual activity,” continues the statement. The statement adds: “The material is also based on false assumptions. It assumes that all young people are able-bodied and attracted to members of the opposite sex. That all those who are born male are masculine, and all those who are born female are feminine. There is only tokenistic reference in the material about the diversity that exists among young people. Failure to address issues of diversity will aggravate the discrimination and prejudices that exist in mainstream society today against all those young people who do not conform to stereotypical expectations.” NGOs maintain that the curriculum violates the basic principles of education. Any curriculum needs to have the interest of the learner as its core. The only concern that manifests itself in the NACO curriculum is “abstinence only until marriage” to prevent HIV/AIDS. “In its desire to control ‘high-risk behaviour’, the curriculum does not even inform young people on how to stay safe. What it seeks to do instead is to discipline young minds to make them adhere to stringent social and moral norms. Education is meant to enable the learner to critically understand the realities and to make informed decisions,” the NGOs declare. “Sex education is a new area. All the more reason for them to strategise and deal with the kinds of anxieties and tensions that the young go through,” Sharma asserts. NGOs also question why the material should have been prepared by NACO and not by the NCERT in coordination with the education department. In 2006, the NCERT -- the nodal agency within the Ministry of Human Resources Development coordinating the AEP -- analysed existing school textbooks to see if adolescence education components were adequately woven into the curriculum. It found that in 1,957 textbooks, taken from 19 states, the quality and quantity of adolescence education was inadequate. Therefore, in March 2007, the NCERT was mandated to do a mapping of adolescence education in collaboration with the states. Professor Saroj Yadav of the NCERT, who is coordinating the programme, explains: “We are not providing sex education but life skills education by discussing issues of adolescence through a whole range of experiences. The NCERT has developed this conceptual framework by involving doctors, administrators and parents.” Yadav adds: “So far, we have thought about adult needs primarily from the point of view of adults. This time around we have concentrated on the needs of the adolescent. We have looked at gender roles for adolescents, how to build respect for the opposite sex, when they should marry, and so on. The attempt of the exercise is to move away from stereotypes and help adolescents develop a sense of responsibility.” It remains to be seen what the outcome of this new kit will be, and what its consequences will be for adolescence education. NGOs and education experts maintain that the government must come up with a national-level policy on sexuality education. Such a policy must keep the present environment in view in order to ensure that young people receive an education that’s suitable to them, combining scientific education with the prevailing cultural ethos.
InfoChange News & Features, September 2008 |
