No sex ed please, they146;re kids

I have a confession to make, a rather shameful one. But, heck, how often does a nice matron like me get to learn the dos and don8217;ts of ...

I have a confession to make, a rather shameful one. But, heck, how often does a nice matron like me get to learn the dos and don8217;ts of the birds and bees on the front page of a morning daily? Or on prime-time television? Notice I am mincing my words. Using sanitised versions. Just like everyone else in the sex education debate 8212; the terms so pedagogically sanitised, so hermetically packaged for moral consumption! And I have a sneaking suspicion that I8217;m not alone. Bare it or ban it, everyone8217;s delighted with the Central Board of Secondary Education8217;s official 8216;Kamasutra for Kids8217;.

For newswallahs, it8217;s the chance to turn soft porn into hard news, reproduce graphics and illustrations edited of course; we don8217;t want respectable readers to be getting any adolescent ideas, now, do we?, then ask every Peeping Tom, Dick and Dirty Harry to talk about whether we should talk about sex to a generation weaned on Hollywood films. In fact, thanks to the media, the CBSE8217;s Adolescent Life Skills Programme is reaching beyond its intended target to provide adult sex education to the entire nation.

For politicians it offers a new consensus formula: disagree to agree. So when the Maharashtra government primly banned sex ed this week, politicians across the political spectrum made strange bedfellows 8212; again 8212; to support the decision, and denounce the deflowering of 8216;Indian Values8217;. Coming from our leaders, whose exemplary conduct has always provided us with the perfect role model, this protest needs to be taken seriously. Although I do wish their defence of vulnerable minors would include the thousands sold each year to India8217;s flesh bazaars.

Meanwhile, for liberals, it is the chance to be, well, liberal. Sex education, they tell us, is not just bawdy biology, it8217;s the 20th-century survival kit, protecting our kids from AIDS, unwanted pregnancies and sexual abuse. Sobering, but superfluous: do we really need to clinically justify a natural human instinct? Somewhere in this pointless debate, we seem to have forgotten that sex is life itself, Nature8217;s way of ensuring her own continuity. And that by expressing their sexuality, our kids are simply fulfilling their cosmic role.

The laissez-faire lot has also warned us that if we don8217;t tell our kids exactly how they became our kids, they will seek this information from the 8216;wrong sources8217;. Again, perspicacious poppycock. I mean, do we honestly believe that biology will ever be a substitute for pornography? If so, we need the Adolescent Life Skills Programme more than our children. And, just by the way, do the aforementioned 8216;wrong sources8217; include harmless prime-time soaps that feature three rape scenes every week?

Finally, for traditionalists, this is the perfect chance to polish haloes 8212; by talking legitimately about what8217;s always been on our minds illegitimately. Sorry, no marks for guesswork here. Now, these custodians of our collective morality will have us know that sex ed is actually harmful because it encourages kids to have free sex. I presume the concern is over the word 8216;free8217; rather than sex, because an estimated thirty per cent of us happily arrange for our kids to have conjugal coitus before they are old enough to vote. Besides, in this country, freedom is not exactly a word we like to apply to children.

Come now, let8217;s not beat about the bush: keeping our kids sexually ignorant is not really about safeguarding values, but a form of sexual control. It allows us to dictate when, how and with whom our children can morally have sex 8212; namely, a suitable candidate from the same caste, class and religious background. So sexual control gives both parents and society unquestionable social, economic and religious control 8212; it is, without doubt, the most powerful tool we have to perpetuate our traditional status quos. Maybe that8217;s why, ultimately, this row over sex education is not really about sex at all!