Down With Sex!!

It sucks! And Maharashtra follows the precedent set by MP & Gujarat, by banning sex-education in schools in the state. What’s interesting is that the curriculum has been laid down by the CBSE, which is a GoI body, last year. And depending on the which of the fragmented news-items you read, is a part of a broader course;

(Titled) Adolescence and Reproductive Sexual Health Programme (ARSH), it will address issues related to nutrition, health, hygiene, physical fitness and mental health besides drug abuse, reproductive and sexual health and HIV-AIDS.
As reported in the Times of India

I’m disappointed - Maharashtra falling behind Gujarat is unacceptable, but falling behind MP? But I suppose that the state has compensated for its tardiness:

The western state’s government also banned books that instruct teachers on how to present sex education in the schools, following opposition from lawmakers, The Indian Express newspaper reported.
From The Hindu

So its not just the students, but the teachers who should not get education on sex-education.

Incidentally, can a state government ban a book published by a central government body?

This part was an eye-opener:

Speaking later to DNA, Shobha Fadnavis (BJP) said the government had begun training about 400 teachers after it had introduced a resolution in February 2006. She said some of the contents and illustrations of the syllabus, derived from the CBSE curriculum, hurt religious sentiments of all communities. She said the controversial content was being passed off as an exercise to sensitise students about the dangers of HIV/AIDS.
From the DNA

For the life of me, I’m not able to understand how religious sentiments get into the whole thing - sacred sex? Are they teaching sexual worship? The missionary position is Christian? Perhaps they showed a Hindu penis? Even worse, a Muslim vagina? Or vice-versa? Or worse? What???

More interestingly, elsewhere in the country:

Activists of the Students Islamic Organisation of India staged a dharna in front of the Deputy Commissioner’s office here on Wednesday protesting against the introduction of sex education CBSE and State board schools. The organisation in a memorandum to the Government said that sex education was irrelevant in India.
As reported in The Hindu

I really like the irrelevant-part…. they propose moral-education instead, I read in another story. How delightful, lets not talk about sex, sexuality, the physical aspects of sex, lets drape it in a purdah of morality. S-E-X it, as it were?

Personally, I can’t think of a better forum or situation to introduce youngsters to sex than the classroom; being in a group of known and familiar peers, all of the same age-group and thus likely to have similar doubts and questions is probably the best way to take the taboo out of the subject and the furtiveness from the curiosity.

Have these crackpots forgotten that we live in the Internet age? And the age of the camera-cellphone? With pornography jumping out from every wall and screen, with sexual abuse of children becoming mind-numbingly common news? With public transportation that’s a wet-dream for any groper and grabber, fondler and pincher? Where ‘good-touching’ and ‘bad-touching’ has to be explained to children at 5-years? This story in Outlook Online (Oct-11, 2004) still remains scarily valid!!

When will we get the leaders we need, rather than the leaders we deserve?? For now, I’d rather bet on selling hang-gliding courses to Sus scrofa Cristatus…….