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BUSINESS NEWS - Sexual education has been a hot topic over the past few years in South Africa. Teachers, parents, religious groups and activists all had their say with many of their opinions even ending up in news reports. 

Most of them had valid points and good reason to make such vehement public statements. Is there a perfect way to approach the topic of sexuality and sexual health in a school system?

Perhaps not, but in the end our responsibility lies with doing our best for the children, right? 

So, what are the main points of view and how should adults navigate this complicated topic?

The Need for Understanding

Knowledge does give you power. Knowing different perspectives can help parents and teachers guide children more effectively whenever the topic of sex comes up. Also, opposing groups may have more success by gaining understanding for each other.

3 Important Points of View

A Motivation to Educate

For the passionate activists that believe sex education should cover more topics than were customary over the past few decades in SA schools, it’s all about empowerment. They believe teaching young girls about sex is a resource in preventing the shocking statistics about teenage pregnancies in South Africa.

These statistics clearly showed that there was an increase in pregnancies for girls between 14 and 19, when comparing 2018 and 2019 numbers. Believing that knowledge on the topic would give girls the power to make different decisions in certain situations, was an important reason to provide comprehensive teachings on this topic.

The individuals in this group also felt it important that sex education should cover topics such as gender non-conformity. Masturbation, that includes mention of sex toys and sex aids, as well as identifying physical interactions that aren’t appropriate also carry value.

Furthermore, they welcomed the idea that especially girls would have a chance to learn about matters like consent. Unfortunately, not all young people receive this valuable teaching at home and knowing that schools can help with this task, created hope for many. 

This was especially important in the light of South Africa’s sexual violence rate being one of the highest in the world.

A Need to Protect

From a different point of view, people and organisations joined the conversation with the motivation to prevent the planned comprehensive sex education in SA schools. To a great extent this was motivated by a need to protect children but also belief systems.

The planned curriculum included topics that some felt weren’t appropriate. For example, these groups felt that some of the lessons bordered on pornographic content. Also, people believed that certain grades were much too young to learn about topics such as masturbation, sex toys and aspects of dating.

Another objection was how this type of curriculum infringed upon the rights of parents and communities who may have a different viewpoint on topics like masturbation and promiscuity. 

For example, some communities didn’t agree with the idea of normalising masturbation. They felt it their right to teach their children based on their own value system, rather than allowing an entity like a school to communicate its own perception and ideology on the matter.

People were also concerned about the fact that everything in the curriculum wasn’t really created with a South African context in mind. Some of it relates to the Planned Parenthood Federation in the US, an entity known to provide abortions. 

The topic of abortion alone is complicated to discuss, since not all communities and religious groups approve of it. To think that schools would teach on related topics without parents’ values and beliefs taken into consideration was simply not fathomable.

Respect for Teachers

A third group that made themselves heard during discussions about the CSE (Comprehensive Sex Education) programme was teachers. They would be the individuals who would broach these difficult topics with their students. 

Many of them have had no proper training in handling these situations, which placed them under a tremendous amount of pressure.

Those fighting for teachers’ rights, such as unions, mentioned the need to help and empower teachers to perform the task properly. Also, many felt the curriculum wasn’t always age appropriate and could confuse rather than help children.

By helping teachers in fulfilling this task, many of these concerns could perhaps have been alleviated.

What could the outcome be if all parties simply work together? As with many topics in a diverse country like South Africa, we have a decision to make. Can groups find common ground and ways to compromise, rather than only fight each other?

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