Sex Education A Taboo In S.A Schools
The department of basic educations last annual survey found that 17 pupils I Grade 3 had become pregnant in 2008 and a total of 49 600 had fallen pregnant across all grades. Juliet Houghton the programme director of paediatric training organisation Chiva Africa said sex education is critical and teenagers need to get it from a neutral source. “parents are anxious that the teaching and talking about sex and sexuality will encourage their children to have sex. The opposite is true and many studies have shown this in fact if we don’t talk to young people about it they’ll go and have it without any knowledge. Schools and clinics are not as inviting as they need to be for teenager, this means they turn to their peers for information.
The biggest problem is that older generation teachers are uncomfortable talking to students about sex. The department of education needs to do more about this so teenagers get information in school based grounds. The curriculum needs to be improved and more work needs to be done to educate teaches on how to handle and approach such issues. “ the fashion for teachers is to cling to this model of abstinence, so students are not prepared for sex but educated on the advantages and disadvantages so they are not pressured to early sexual relationships and unplanned pregnancies. It is up to individual schools to manage what is taught, the department does not have the resources to drive these programmes but can work in partnership with schools. Sex education can start as late as grade 10 when students are 16 or early if willing to.
Children who are exposed to early proper training will wait till them older to have sex.
This year’s Praekelt Foundations Youth sex survey of 17 000 teenagers showed that up to 15% have had sex by their 16th birthday, 27% have had sex by the age of 18 and 25% were still inactive… the same survey shows that 605 of them would not ask their parents about sex, 44% of those who’ve had sex say they had no information to guide them.
