The absence of proper sex education in Malaysia is perhaps responsible for the kind of ignorance we’ve heard about in the findings of recent research on the issue. Some girls think that they can get pregnant after holding hands with boys. A few boys believe that the withdrawal method will not make a girl pregnant.
Last week, prompted by all the hysteria in the news about British paedophile Richard Huckle, Education Minister Mahdzir Khalid claimed that he had consulted academics and professionals to help the ministry determine what should be covered in a proposed sex education curriculum for schools.
Haven’t we been here before? Year after year, it takes a major sex scandal or the rape and murder of a child to prompt the authorities to give us the same old lines.
Mahdzir appeared to be suggesting that we should have sex education in our schools, but just last March, his deputy, Chong Sin Woon, was quoted as saying, “There are no plans at the moment to introduce sex education as a specific subject. But we welcome any NGO that wants to create awareness on the matter so that students can better protect themselves.”
Why should we depend on NGOs to create awareness? Surely this is a matter of national importance. Schoolgirls who get pregnant may not be able to complete their studies and may be sentenced to a life of poverty. They may be banished from home because of the social stigma attached to teenage pregnancy. With neither skills nor qualifications to get a job, how can they improve their lives?
Some parents have wondered why the ministry wants to introduce sex education only to students who have reached the age of 16. They believe that it should be taught at the onset of puberty.
Others want Malay children to join non-Malays in moral classes because, as one Malay student said, “In our religious class, sex education consists of lectures about the woman’s role, which is to take care of her husband’s needs and to cook him the dishes he enjoys eating.” Another teenager said, “We were told that Muslims should not celebrate Valentine’s Day, as it is a Christian festival and we can get pregnant.”
This is not sex education. It is stupidity.
So, will the Education Ministry finally roll out sex education in schools? We are a nation of talkers instead of doers. There is no political will to resolve the baby dumping crisis.
Mindful of the so-called ulamas, ministers are reluctant to endorse sex education in schools. Furthermore, like so many ignorant people, they think that sex education will encourage boys to visit online porn sites and that sex education will teach teenagers to have free sex. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both sexes watch online porn. And sex education is not about free sex.
Successive ministers have talked about introducing sex education, but nothing has materialised.
In October 2010, Muhyiddin Yassin, the former DPM and Education Minister, said the government had launched several pilot projects on sex education in schools and found the results encouraging. But nothing happened after that.
In November 2010, PAS Youth chief Nasruddin Hassan Tantawi claimed that the baby-dumping issue could be resolved only with the introduction of hudud law, which prescribes stoning and whipping for fornication, including pre-marital sex.
A Stone Age mentality will not cure 21st Century problems.
We cannot continue to marry off young children to their rapists. The act of punishing young mothers by jailing them or forcing them to marry their lovers, and then whipping them after they have given birth, does not solve anything.
The Muslim community tends to punish young girls for waywardness, but ignore the core issues of respect for women and the development of healthy relationships between the sexes.
Sadly, by the time the Education Ministry gets its act together, thousands of unwanted babies would have been born and hundreds of them dumped by the wayside.
Mariam Mokhtar is an FMT columnist.
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