Comprehensive Sexuality Education needed in public schools

Apr 06, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I am writing this in response to a letter titled “Pseudo theories in the promotion of sex education” in the Kaieteur News’ March 29th edition. In the letter written by a seemingly educated individual, there are quite a few misconstrued ideologies being presented. The letter references “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” as “homosexuality, abortion and masturbation are heavily promoted while abstinence is given miniscule attention”. The individual quite accurately defined what comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is, and it baffles me as to how he still misinterpreted what it really means.
Using the definition he referenced from UNESCO, comprehensive sexuality education is defined as “age appropriate, culturally relevant approach to teaching about sexuality and relationships by providing scientifically accurate, realistic, non-judgmental information”. What this means is that the messages created are carefully developed for the specific age and cultural group being targeted. The scientific facts about sex, sexuality and information about services are delivered in a non judgemental way, respecting everyone being addressed. Let me be frank and say that Comprehensive Sexuality Education is not based on the promotion of masturbation, homosexuality or abortion.
These are however, subtopics or smaller aspects of a larger CSE syllabus. While presenting facts about sex, we do however, establish that heterosexuality is not the only sexuality and we ought to respect individuals as human beings and not respect them on a basis of sexuality. We also do not promote masturbation, what we do is present the fact that an individual can sexually please his/herself. We also don’t promote abortion, what we do is present the fact that a woman has the choice to legally and medically terminate a pregnancy. We do not base our entire CSE discussions encouraging or promoting these topics but we do talk about it as factual and scientific as we could.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education captures an array of issues like puberty and body changes, body image, self respect, self esteem, values, human rights, HOW TO TALK TO ADULTS ABOUT SEX, AM I READY FOR SEX, sex and sexuality, saying No to sex, consequences of sexual activity, etc. I also want to mention that we do however, talk about abstinence and we do encourage young people to delay their sexual debut.
We are however, cognizant of the fact that young people are sexually active so we need to present measures or mechanisms they can use to protect themselves. We do also make it known that even if a person is already sexually active, he or she can also abstain if they do decide to. CSE looks at sexual “readiness,” as having a “ready body”, and being emotionally and mentally prepared for sexual activity. We believe that the more educated young people are in a rather comprehensive way, then the more informed they will be in their decision making.
Many persons will argue that having an abstinence only approach or not talking to young people about sex is the best way to combat social issues like teenage pregnancy, Guyana’s high rate of STI’S and HIV AIDS, etc. However, Guyana through the Ministry of Education has had an age old “abstinence only” approach to sexual education and clearly it is not working for us. With this same ideology, I found that Guyana is second to the Dominican Republic for having the highest rate of teen pregnancy with 97 out of 1000 teen girls becoming mothers before they are 19. This was mentioned in the State of the World Population Report, 2013.
Unfortunately, Guyana also has a high rate of cervical cancer and this is closely linked and is caused by the Human papilloma virus which is a sexually transmitted disease. All of these issues could have been avoided if the Ministry of Education had adopted Comprehensive Sexuality Education programmes in the public school system; instead the Ministry has been using an abstinence only approach through the Health and Family Life education Program which is compulsory from Grade 7 to 9. The CSE program is taught with a right based approach, acknowledging human rights, women’s rights, children rights and sexual rights.
If this taught then many of the social issues we face could have lesser impacts on our society. Over the past few years and even recently we saw a series of pornographic videos of young school children, most of which are from the public school system who were engaging in risky and early sexual activities. It is my belief that if we had buried the abstinence only approach and openly dispense facts and information about healthy living to these young people then these things could have been avoided. Sexual privacy is also a sexual right and being taped is an infringement of that right, but young people don’t know this because society still does not want to accept that young people are having sex and teach them how to protect themselves, even if it is through abstinence.
With reference to the aforementioned letter, religion was also brought up to solidify the argument but I want to know this. “Doesn’t the church have a responsibility to the people?”. The church should be concerned with the protection of the congregation and they should do so by acknowledging that the health and well being of the worshippers are top priority. If they refuse to talk about sexual reproductive health and rights issues and the church members become negative statistics then who will throw “generous offerings” if they are spending all of their money on healthcare.
Dennis Glasgow

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