68 pc youngsters say yes to sex education

Regardless of political opposition to sex education, about 68 per cent of boys and girls in schools want adolescence education, a study to be released on Friday has revealed, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 26, 2009, 23:56:49 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Regardless of political opposition to sex education, about 68 per cent of boys and girls in schools want adolescence education, a study to be released on Friday has revealed.

The students however wanted sex education from someone other than their class teacher, according to the study conducted by the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education. The study was carried out in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and in a few slums of Bangalore.

Based on sex education imparted in schools in the last five years, it found that students were not comfortable asking their class-teachers sensitive questions about sex.

In schools where adolescence education was delivered, about 91 per cent students in urban areas and 95 per cent in rural areas said the decision to have a baby should be made by both partners in a marriage.

A significant number of girls who had been through the programme said they would decline to have sex without a condom and oppose sexual abuse.

It was also found that the number of girls are coming forward to obtain knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases increased from 27.9 per in 2003 to 42.3 per cent in 2008.

Class 10 students, the survey said, who had been through the curriculum, were able to reject common misconceptions about masturbation and HIV. But class 11 students, who had not studied sex education failed to do so.

Girls in class 10 were able to understand that the contraceptive pill did not protect them from sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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