Teachers Not at Ease in Giving Sex Education

This brief article, published in The Financial Express, traces trends in interpersonal communication among adolescents and their teachers and parents in India.

As detailed here, the Centre for Adult, Continuing Education and Extension (CACEE), Panjab University, undertook a study on "adolescent behaviour and role of teachers and parents" which involved interviews with 450 students, 20 teachers and 30 parents during a series of workshops and seminars in various urban and rural schools of the city. The interviews explored adjustment to physical growth, peer pressure, emotional disturbances, social adjustment to home and family members, and social adjustment with friends.

Among the key findings:

• The majority of Chandigarh's schoolteachers are not comfortable talking about HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health with their students.
• As many as 50% of adolescents studying from classes IX to XII have problems related to education; 60% have problems related to sex.
• "We found that most of the boys and girls had many inhibitions about sex, their physical self and the whole growing up process. The problem was compounded because they did not get enough support from their parents and even teachers failed to help them. Then in many cases, the adolescents bank upon cheap literature, Internet and consume the information from their peers, which...does not guide them rightly."