Lets talk about the Birds and the Bees shall we????

Yeah, you heard it write, i want to talk about this. In fact i want people around me to talk about it, and the very important issue of sex-education in schools. because they ( the Maharashtra government that is), just last week banned it. Reason???? its against social values, against a 5000 year old culture, against the wishes of parents, who would rather let their children grow up all confused about their very own existence,or take recourse to misleading sources of information on the net and all, thereby creating bigger problems.and no, they are not the first, there are a number of other states that have already banned this.

Its silly, to say the least. I was just having a conversation with my father, who himself happens to be a doctor. And i am fortunate to have been born in a family where at the tender age of 14, when i went through the changes that nature hath in store for me, my father made me sit down and explained a lot of things, and gave me some sound advice. I am sure my mother did the same for my sister. And i was also fortunate enough to have a biology teacher in school, who when teaching this NCERT chapter called Life Processes II, that talked about the human reproductive system, explain it as clinically and scientifically as possible, without resorting to being emabarrassed ( we had another teacher in the same school, who would leave the chapter to be read by students themselves). And today as i talked to my father, he told me about how as a kid himself, he and his brothers and all used to be flabbergasted at the way things moved. They used to have no idea of what was happening, they were confused, scared, to the point they thought they were "sinned".And they had no one to help them, for that was the way society was then, closed, with fathers and mothers rarely talking to kids openly. The society was good in its own other ways, but atleast in this way there was something wrong.

50 years down the line, the story i guess continues. Atleast thats what one gleans from the reports that appear in the news. The repercussions though are far more serious. Children grow up confused, unable to go to anyone at times, resorting to questionable sources of information, and in the worst of the cases, become victims of child abuse, many a times at the hands of thier own relatives. A recent study published here in the Hindustan Times indicated, India had one of the highest incidences of child abuse. A simple solution to this problem was this subject of introducing education in a structured manner to school going children. I read report of a school starting almost from class 1, and progressing to impart knowledge based on the child's mental and physical progress. the younger kids are first taught about differences between a good touch and bad touch, and all. I liked the system, atleast on paper.

But now that has been banned atleast in this state. The reasons, to the say the very least, are absurd.They talk about preserving the culture of the country against westernization. Bah. Strange it is, that some of the actually bad things have been beautifully imbibed into our system, with hardly a whimper, while the certainly better thing is being cried foul against.

And the worst part that i read, was that parents are against the subject. I do not know how true it is. But if it is, well i hardly can believe that we have progressed. I mean for politicians to claim all this shit, is understandable, they always like to use culture shit to get votes. but for so called educated parents ( i do assume parents sending kids to school, and good schools, atleast have some level of awareness and education), to behave such, is sad.

It is an issue that is serious, that is deep. and i guess it requires gargantuan efforts by doctors, physchologists and the like to change the mindset of the people at large. Only then could the governments be made to change stance.

Till then, its sad, perhaps very sad.