英语阅读：Don't go too far in name of sex education
At the "Sex Culture Festival" recently held in Guangzhou, an official withthe city's Family Planning Commission advised parents to include condoms in
their 12-15-year-old kids' schoolbag to prevent unwanted pregnancy and other
consequences.
The suggestion was proffered in the name of sex education as part of the
"festival's" business to "promote civilized concepts of sex."
I wonder how much farther these "civilization" zealots will go in extending
"sex education" among children. I assume these "experts" will urge parents to
put condoms in their 10-year-old kids' schoolbag at next year's "Sex Culture
Festival." I am not exaggerating things. A certain expert said that "sex
education should start at the age of nine."
Chinese culture has been conservative in many aspects. Sex was - and still
is in some places - a taboo in China. After decades of opening to the outside
world, Chinese people have accepted the modern concepts and no longer shun a
talk about sex.
It is a blessing for the Chinese nation, for it represents a significant
progress in our drive for modernity.
However, some self-styled "experts" seem to be too infatuated with
regarding themselves as forerunners of learning, accepting and promoting "modern
concepts." Very often, they go too far. Suggesting the idea of giving condoms to
12-year-old kids is such an instance.
They defend their idea by arguing that the teenagers already have some
knowledge about sexual behaviors and that giving them condoms in open
acknowledgement of their sex awakening can prevent unwanted consequences.
The argument is erroneous.
Admittedly, children of today know much more about sex than their parents
when they were young, given the kids' exposure to man-woman intimacies exhibited
excessively in all media outlets. However, there is still no social endorsement,
either explicit or implicit, of teenage sex in this country. There surely are
facts of teenagers having sex but it is all done in secret and most do it with a
sense of guilt.
Now if we let condom find its way into the children's schoolbags, it would
amount to acquiescence to their puerile attempt at sexual life. Teenagers would
try it without scruple. Some would even feel encouraged.
Defenders of "modern sex civilization" may retort: "Why do you want to keep
that sense of guilt (about sex) in teenagers?"
I know that a major part in sex education is helping teenagers take sex as
a normal human behavior which is nothing shameful and thus the kids are taught
to be free from the sense of guilt when it comes to a thought or talk of sex or
pubescent masturbation. I fully agree with such understanding but I also think
that children should be told to put off their first attempt at sex intercourse
until later years when they are fully grown-up both physiologically and
psychologically, for instance, when they enter into their twenties.
We have to admit that it is just the remnant of the taboo on sex in
traditional Chinese culture that protects the majority of our kids from
surrendering to temptations nowadays when connotation of sex is ubiquitous - in
movies and magazines, in cyber world and fashion shows and even on sports
arenas.
Certainly, there should be no such taboo. But everything has its limit.
Call it taboo, or sense of guilt, or scruple, whatever, there must be some limit
in the relationship between sex awareness and children's education. The reason
is simple: children are not mature, or old enough to voluntarily refrain from
instant pleasure for their long-term good. The limit has to be compulsory.
Putting condoms in schoolbags crosses that limit.
E-mail: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn
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