Date:13/05/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/05/13/stories/2007051317310300.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

`Sex education is about making responsible choices'

Staff Reporter

Bangalore: Panellists at a discussion on "Ill-advised resistance to sex education" organised by Oxford Bookstore and Education World magazine emphasised the need for adolescent education in schools, which would focus on sexuality, gender and the need to make responsible healthy choices so that others are not placed at risk, rather than focussing on sex as an act.

Shekhar Seshadri, Additional Professor, Child and Adolescent Services in the Department of Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), said sex education was not about endorsing experimentation, but it was about making responsible choices.

Therefore, it should not stress only on the "sexual act" but on the sexuality, which encompasses experiences such as love, affection, eroticism, passion and so on.

Speaking on the whether there was a need for sex education in schools as being promoted by the Government, M.N. Sriram, president of the All-India Democratic Students Organisation, Karnataka State Committee said his organisation was not opposed to equipping students with constructive knowledge about making responsible choices.

"But the material developed by National AIDS Control Organisation and UNESCO for teaching sex education in schools is giving a wrong notion to children about sex. We are afraid that it may instigate students to actually indulge in wrong and risky behaviour," he said.