"In Delhi...[the censored curriculum] did include information about sex and AIDS, [the education secretary] added. “But we're the education department, not the health department.”
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9804730 Sex education in the land of the Kama Sutra The birds, the bees and the taboos Sep 13th 2007 | DELHI AND MUMBAI >From The Economist print edition No sex please, we're Indian nationalists BALU SUDHA, a teacher at a private girls' school in Mumbai, enrolled on a sex education course because she felt unable to answer her pupils' constant questions about sex. Her school, one of the city's poshest, invites an expert to lecture pupils on “those sorts of matters” two or three times a year. That is more than most children in the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, are getting. Sex education has never been Indian schools' strong suit, but earlier this year Maharashtra and eight other states rejected a new sex-education programme introduced by the central government. They included some of India's most populous, such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, where one teachers' association threatened to make a bonfire of the new textbooks. The attempt to make sex education universal in a country where sex is rarely discussed openly was always going to be tough. The course's euphemistic title—“Adolescent Education Programme” (AEP)—did not fool teachers, many of whom were horrified by a flipchart with illustrations of naked bodies and detailed drawings of genitalia. Some also expressed anger over the inclusion of information on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases—the main point of the initiative. In India, 44% of reported AIDS cases occur among 15-29 year-olds. The involvement of the United Nations' Children's Fund, which developed the programme with the government, was another hurdle. It gave right-wing religious groups, always quick to make political capital from issues touching on “Indian values”, the chance to dismiss it as a Western import. Nasratullah Afandi, of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, an Islamic cultural organisation, says teaching sex education is part of an attempt to create a “homogenised culture”. “Anyway, sex is instinctive,” he adds. “It is not necessary to teach children about it.” This highlights another problem: that many Indians have serious misconceptions about what sex education involves. As it happens, if they are given without publicity, sex-education classes can work in India. Since 1995, the Catholic church, which runs more than 100 schools in Mumbai, has taught a course that focuses on AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases with no fuss at all. But following the ruckus over the AEP, several states are tinkering with the course material. AIDS groups worry that this will involve stripping out the sex and focusing on “life skills”. The central government, meanwhile, has formed a committee to review its programme. It says it will reintroduce a watered-down version by the end of the year. In Delhi the sex-education programme never reached any schools. Rina Ray, education secretary in the local government, said it would introduce its own course in November. It would emphasise “life skills: like nutrition, decision-making, and communicating with one's parents”. It did include information about sex and AIDS, she added. “But we're the education department, not the health department.”
