Sex-ed missing in Vietnam
Vietnamese youth lack adequate factual knowledge about sex, a problem a controversial new school program aims to solve in the hopes that it isn’t too little too late.
A recent study by the country’s youth league on 10-24-year-olds understanding of productive health and sexuality indicated that most had no formal sex education in school.
Half of Vietnam’s population is aged under 25 and are enjoying a better life than their parents, but they lack the sexual knowledge necessary to remain healthy and safe.
The youth league’s research suggested that most kids learn about sex through conversations with friends or by reading, which leaves them open to the risks of incorrect knowledge.
According to other surveys, the majority of Vietnamese youths know at least one contraceptive method, but as many as 80 percent of young people do not use condoms during their first sexual experience.
This is alarming considering one in every five Vietnamese people aged 15-24 has had sexual intercourse.
The lack of appropriate sex education is putting youths at risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases including HIV.
Up to 65 percent of newly infected HIV cases occur in people between aged 15-19 years old.
Sex-ed two decades overdue
The Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) recently announced that it will introduce its “population and reproductive health education program” to students grade 1-12 at the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year.
The ministry hopes that this will help curb young people’s unwanted pregnancies and contraction of STDs.
It has taken the ministry 26 years to compile the curriculum for the new program—according to an official—because the program needed to be tested thoroughly before general application in schools.
Teaching students about these “sensitive issues” is a step out of the educational dark ages and the ministry is concerned that the implementation of the program in public schools will be difficult.
Even teachers who have attended training courses on how to teach the program have been shy, expressing concern that the program might just be “a red cape to a bull,” encouraging immoral behavior.
As well, many parents do not agree that such subjects should be taught in school, reasoning that children will find out for themselves at the ‘right age’.
By taking the false moral high ground, both teachers and parents are blinding their children to powerful realities.
What young people need
Concerned about the issue, Le Van Cau, representative of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union’s Central Committee, said that the biggest problem for young people at present is their lack of information—or the provision of incomplete and often incorrect information—so that when faced with sexual and reproductive health concerns, they have no knowledge to call upon, and nowhere to seek assistance.
No knowledge means uninformed decisions leading to dangerous behavior resulting in unwanted pregnancies and STD’s, let alone other emotional, mental and physical traumas that can be associated with sexual misconduct.
“Vietnamese authorities should help the young feel healthy, not helpless, and provide them with information, rather than a lack of direction,” said Ian Howie, representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Vietnam.
With sex-ed coming 20 years too late, Vietnamese youths have borne the brunt of the problems resulting from a lack of sexual education. The time for fixing the mistake is now.
Lao Dong - July 16, 2006.
|