I HAVE made a firm stand on this. My answer is NO! My wife and my daughter are secondary school teachers. They also share my sentiments. Sex education is not only a health issue. It is also an issue on morality, culture, and family.
We want our teenagers to be aware of their sexual maturity. This awareness should start at home. The parents should always find time to confront cordially their children on matters concerning their physical growth and biological needs. Mother and daughter could establish the familiarity when they have togetherness in the bathroom. Father and son can go on camping for a son to discover from his father what are needed to be a man.
The process on coach and pupil method on sex education involving parents and children may not be easy. Parents will transmit to their children not only the wonders of sex but also the responsibility of becoming quality parents in the future. The preparation made by the parents could be given follow-up by the Church in Sunday school activities, in holy retreats, or youth encounter.
In schools, the home room advisers are the secondary parents. They could always remind our young boys and girls on the proper social behavior, attitude towards the opposite sex, and proper emotional control. The guidance counselor could always conduct group dynamics to enlighten these young people on their social role. Values education classes can always take up issues on values formation, sexual relationship, responsible parenthood, and the spirituality of the individuals. The students should not be graded on how good they memorize the facts about how effective are they in understanding and practicing the lessons learned.
I disagree that the Department of Education and the Department of Health will give (distribute) condoms to selected students… to students who are in a hurry to experience (also to taste) the agony and ecstasy of sexual intercourse. In the first place, we (teachers) should not encourage our students to have sexual intercourse anytime they feel liking it. Our normal advice is for a boy and a girl to start with “knowing each other stage” as part of their active social life.
Sex should not be given emphasis like a commodity within reach. If you give condom to some students it is just like giving ice cream to them. You don’t just hold the cone with ice cream on top. You have to taste it, eat it, and later swallow it. I am just curious who among our teachers have the guts to open the condom in front of the class, demonstrate how to use it, and explain the difference in feeling with condom or without condom during the sex act.
Have we made a survey if how many men are using condoms? Some have tried but majority would still prefer to do the act without condom; the wife would always want the natural way. I suggest that DOH and DepEd will first bring this matter to the meeting of Parents-Teachers’ Association. Our condom laboratory schools and pilot classrooms should not be in Manila schools only. Our schools in upland barangays and shoreline areas in the provinces are very conservative.
Churches in the Philippines should look into this. You have to write and make a common stand. Are the parents happy to know that their boys have condom in their pockets? Are the parents excited that their young girls will have a taste of condom on different flavors? This is stupidity! This goodwill of distributing condoms to the deserving students is Satanic. Venereal disease and teen-age pregnancy could always be avoided without condoms.
If this cannot be avoided, I am challenging the adults who advocate the use of condom to try this with your children and relatives. I want you to appear in TV talk shows or have radio interview and explain the advantage felt by your children and relatives. We are not out of our mind yet. We can still do something for the good of our young people without the condom.
