Sex education has always been a hot button topic in Malaysia, and with unwanted teen pregnancies on the rise, the debate on whether to introduce it to school curriculums has intensified. The National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN) has introduced “Modul Pekerti”, a series of sex education modules focusing on “preventing” students from engaging in any premarital sexual activity.
Dr Hamizah Mohd Hassan, who heads LPPKN’s adolescent reproductive health unit, told The Malay Mail Online, “Sex can happen any time. The module educates teenagers on risks that can lead to sex.. how you behave can lead to sex.”
The Modul Pekerti program will put a selected batch of Form Three students through a two-day, eight-hour workshop where they will be taught the consequences of having premarital sex: unwanted pregnancies, sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) and societal alienation.
Students would be taught how to identify situations where they would be exposed to temptation and to categorise these situations as falling under either a “yellow” or “red warning”.
Dr Hamizah said, “Yellow warning means that sex will come not so soon, maybe next month or next year. Having a boyfriend or girlfriend is a yellow warning, that means you are dating or thinking of having a date and that may lead to sex.” She mentions preventive measures that can be taken at this stage include keeping interpersonal interactions between teen couples in public spaces, and to bring along friends or relatives during outings. In short, teen couples should always be chaperoned.
A “red warning”, however, is when a couple finds themselves in a situation where they are alone and where things might get “out of hand.”
“In this situation the module teaches them techniques on how to refrain from having sex to rejecting a sexual advance.
“This ranges from creating an excuse to firmly telling the other partner that he/she is not ready to have sex,” explained the LPPKN officer, who also said that students are taught how to reject any sexual proposal “gently” without hurting the feelings of or affecting the relationship of the partner.
When asked if the module would trach teenagers about safe sex and contraceptive use, Dr Hamizah said those topics would form only a small portion of the module.
“The module is about preventing sex. We do talk about safe sex, but the demonstration of how to wear a condom for example is not allowed in schools,” she explained.
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Photo: Gary Cycles / Flickr
Source: The Malay Mail Online
