It is often reported that sex education is somewhat lacking in Hong Kong.
Yesterday, a group of 10 fourth-year medical students from the University of Hong Kong decided to put this to the test by setting up a stall on campus and asking students to try putting a condom on a dildo.
The results weren’t encouraging.
The group found that many of the students were committing faux pas such as not checking the condom for perforations or expiry dates, or not leaving a space or air bubble at the tip of the condom.
For some students, it was first they’d practised using a condom.
Ling Gee-yan, one of the students who organised the test, told hk01 that most college students didn’t know how to use condom.
Discussing the reasons behind the lack of knowledge, she cited her experience of sex education at school.
“I personally went to a Catholic girls’ school for secondary school, so sex education there was a bit more conservative,” she said.
“In our sex education classes when we talked about condoms and preventing STDs, the teacher gave us an expired condom.
She added that the expired condom presented in class was used many times for class demonstrations, was very loose, there was no lubricant, and they weren’t taught how to put them on properly.
Another student who helped organise the event, Chan Chak-ching, told hk01 that in the past students only learnt about condoms from textbooks, and that there were some misunderstandings about condom use such as people believing that it is safer to wear two condoms at the same time.
Ling added that some students disregarded the danger of sexual transmitted diseases, believing a condom is not necessary if the female is on the pill.
The experiment comes following the results of a survey in November by local NGO AIDs Concern, which found that nearly 40 percent of 112 university students they interviewed said they had had sex on campus, and that 80 percent of those surveyed said schools never provided them with information on sexual health.
In Hong Kong, sex education is part “an integral and core part of the current school curriculum”, which is taught as part of the Liberal Studies curriculum at secondary level, and the Moral and Civic Education at primary and secondary level.
However, critics argue that although sex education is part of the curriculum, it is not compulsory.
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