New Delhi: It’s the middle path between abstinence and an orgy. Or rather lets talk about sex but omit the birds and the bees. The HRD Ministry seems to think its possible. It is toning down the content of its adolescence education programme after it ran into trouble with four states.
Topics like arousal, masturbation, ejaculation, intercourse and teenage pregnancy have been deleted from the teacher’s manual. Also gone are the diagrams and posters that was the cause of uproar.
“This was felt that for the time being that anything that is important to the children, should also be taking into account the cultural sensitivities,” says NAEP, Committee Member, Jeetandra Nagpal.
The programme, currently being field tested in 7,000 schools across the country, isn't all about sex. It deals with topics as diverse as drug abuse and facial hair. Strong reactions from teachers, especially in Punjab and UP have prompted the Board to water down the handbook. The revised version is to ensure that the entire programme is not scrapped.
”If it’s really tough on somebody’s sensibilities, leave it out. But it still doesn’t prevent teachers from doing a good life-skills programme,” says Principal, Modern School, Lata Vaidyanathan.
The teacher’s manual is just a guide not a textbook. So teachers are at liberty to go beyond the suggested text.
It's of course a totally different matter that most teenage kids are pretty up to date as far as sexual terminology goes. And the so called distasteful diagrams are no more explicit that the ones in their biology textbooks. But for the sake of the adolescent education programme continuing - a programme that was initially started to deal with aids awareness - lets just say - better safe than never.
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