Keep sex education at home

By J.W. Katende

THE agenda to demystify and revolutionalise traditional values and practices looks attractive, but may be counter-productive in terms of human development. Such is the case with human sexuality. 

According to the 2001 UNICEF report, teenage sexual activity, teenage pregnancy, teenage birthrate and teenage-related abortions are more rampant in the Western world. This alarming index is directly linked to the sexual revolution introduced in the 1960s. 

Through the programme of sex education in the classroom and the media, rather than in the family, the sexual revolution endeavours to separate sexual pleasure from reproduction. Slogans like ‘sexual expression, free love and commercial sex’ belong to this revolution. 

Sex education refers to formal programmes of instruction on human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and other aspects of human sexual behaviour. 

Most of these programmes are known to give premature and explicit sexual information, exploring every graphic detail about sex, but with inadequate moral guidance. They give too much, too soon and too publicly. 

The World Health Organisation and international NGOs are imposing the sex education agenda in Africa under the guise of stemming the growing AIDS epidemic. 

But the approach is eroding the traditional African family and cultural values. Such values would have greatly contributed to the on-going construction of the global village. 

The traditional wisdom of the Church has always held that the sacred mystery of human sexuality should be prudently and delicately revealed by parents in the intimacy of the home. 

Parents are the ones who can best introduce the child to the beautiful love that comes first from the heart and the mind before being expressed in the body. 

Beginning with the changes which their sons and daughters experience in their bodies, parents are thus bound to give more detailed explanations about sexuality, in an on-going relationship of trust and friendship. This right and duty is deemed to be irreplaceable and inalienable.

Kampala Archdiocese