How proper sex education can make a person a good and responsible citizen and reduce crime? How can schools play a crucial role in early identification and intervention and educate students about healthy relationships, consent, and appropriate behavior?
Supreme Court Sets Ball Rolling
In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court has set the ball rolling for implementing sex education in schools. Setting guidelines, the apex court said that the union and state governments should ensure the implementation of comprehensive sex education programme. It should include information about the legal and ethical ramifications of child pornography.
What Has SC Said?
The Supreme Court also said the governments should ensure that comprehensive sex education programmes that include information about the legal and ethical ramifications of child pornography should be implemented that can serve as a deterrent to potential offenders.
Pitching for raising awareness about the realities of child sexual exploitative material and its consequences through public campaigns, the apex court also emphasised that it can help reduce its prevalence. It also asked to include psychological counseling, therapeutic interventions, and educational support.
What Is Sex Education?
Sex education is the instruction on issues relating to human sexuality. Under this programme, human sexual anatomy, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, safe sex, and birth control, are taught. Besides, the students have also imparted education on sexual health, reproductive health, emotional relations and responsibilities, age of consent, and reproductive rights.
Why Sex Education?
Though people were aware of the importance of sex education for quite a long time, its need was felt more urgently when the world was hit by the menace of AIDS. Sex education is seen as a public health strategy in AIDS-hit areas, particularly in some African countries, where it has reached the level of an epidemic. It is also used as a way to sanitize people about population growth and the risk of overpopulation. Those working for the women's liberation movement also picked it up as a weapon to further their cause.
Depending on the age of the students, many aspects of sex education are considered appropriate. Experts like Rubin and Kindendall have said that sex education is not just about reproduction and teaching how babies are conceived and born. The main objective of sex education is to help children incorporate sex more meaningfully into their lives. It aims to provide them with some basic understanding of different aspects of sex by the time they reach maturity.
Sex Education And Crime
According to the Public Health Foundation of India, rape-related crime in the country increased by 70.7% between 2001 and 2018. It was reported in 2019 that a child is abused every day. It also said that such incidents are highly under-reported mainly due to a lack of understanding about their bodies and consent. Sex education helps the children understand their rights over their bodies and they can come out openly instead of feeling ashamed.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 51,863 cases were reported under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO). A total of 33,348 or 64% of them were of sexual assault. The experts believe it can be improved significantly by introducing proper sex education.
The verdict of the Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice J B Pardiwala is significant in this background. The apex court also said that the common belief that sex education is a Western concept does not align with traditional Indian values. It is also said that this view has led to resistance from various state governments, resulting in bans on sex education in schools in some states.