Life is Healthy

Students in Surabaya getting a lesson on the female reproductive system. Sex itself is a taboo subject in class.  (Antara Photo/Eric Ireng)

For Jakarta housewife Rika Henria Ardanesworo, sex is one of the most difficult topics to discuss with her two daughters, and she wishes schools would play a bigger role in teaching students about the subject.

Rika said her daughters, Khesia and Archie, now both in their early 20s, learned the basics of sex from their peers. All she can do now is try to convince them to stay away from it.

“Communication is the key,” she said, adding that she had never formally prohibited her daughters from engaging in sex.

Instead, she tells them horror stories that could result from premarital sex, such as unwanted pregnancies, failed marriages and diseases.

“That is how I teach my kids and hopefully, they can learn from it,” Rika said.

The issue of teenagers engaging in sexual activity again became a hot topic recently after a survey conducted by the Indonesian Commission for Child Protection (KPAI) was leaked to the media.

The survey, which KPAI chairman Hadi Supeno said constituted preliminary research and was not meant to be published, showed that 32 of 100 teenagers claimed they had had full sexual intercourse.

Hadi quoted the teenagers, aged 14 to 18, who came from middle-upper-class families, as saying that they did not receive adequate attention from their parents, thus they were left at home with little supervision over what they accessed on the Internet or watched on television.

“Those teenagers had become curious, and without tight monitoring they could easily satisfy this [curiosity],” he said.

In response to the survey, Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring called for more stringent controls over the Inter net.

However, Hadi said that would not solve the problem.

“Let’s not be naive and just blame technology,” he said. “Like it or not, there is greater access to information these days.”

To address the issue, the KPAI is pushing for a program that would teach parents how to educate their children at home.

“We have been recommending this program to the government and now it is being discussed together with the BKKBN,” Hadi said, referring to the national agency for family planning and population control.

The program, he said, would see health institutions from the city level down to those in villages providing lessons for parents in how to talk to their children about sex, a subject that is still widely seen as taboo.

So should schools also be involved? Wahyu Hartomo, an official at the State Ministry for Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, said that ideally, sex education would be given to students as early as elementary school. “[Sex] education should start from about 12 years of age, ideally,” he said, adding that children should know how to protect themselves against sexual abuse.

The tricky part in the classroom, however, is to provide education without promoting sexual activity. Suparman, chairman of the Indonesian Independent Teachers Association, said teachers should know the boundaries when talking about sex in the classroom.

“Bearing in mind the culture here, it would be difficult not to feel awkward when talking about this,” he said. “If they don’t deliver the message in the right way, it will be seen as too vulgar.”

Suparman said that since we now live in the information age, teachers must find new ways to handle the topic.

“With globalization, teachers must find new methods of giving sex education,” he said.

Suparman added that teachers themselves should receive more lessons before broaching the subject, because sex education “cannot be regarded in the same way as other subjects.”

Religion also complicates the topic of sex education. Amidhan, the chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), said that the lessons must be restricted to the scientific aspects of sex.

“It is permissible to teach children about the dangers of casual sex,” he said, “but do not give them ideas on how to have casual sex.”

He said the most important lesson to be taught in sex education classes was the matter of faith, since the stronger a child’s faith, the more aware he or she will be that premarital sex is a sin. “Faith is the basic lesson,” he said.

In Gorontalo, legislator Adnan Entengo said he felt there should be thorough research before introducing sex education classes in schools.

“We don’t want to steer children to sex instead of teaching them about it,” he told state news agency Antara.

Experts agreed there should not be a dedicated class for sex education because of the sensitivity of the subject. Suparman said sex education could instead be integrated into other subjects such as biology or religion.

“For example, there should be a greater focus on anatomy during biology,” he said.

Hadi said sex education could be incorporated into many subjects, including Indonesian and English lessons.

“Make the students read informative articles and books about sex,” he said.