I got to thinking about sex education after reading this post. A lot of Desi Muslims I know who were raised in the US or UK skipped sex education at school due to their parents’ concerns. Does anyone have any data on whether this is generally true of Muslims in the West?
Did you attend sex education classes at school? What about your children?
Zack 4:48 pm on April 9, 2009 Permalink |
There was no sex education in the schools I attended in Pakistan. But I have every intention of letting my child attend those classes in public school here in the US.
Bhetti 5:03 pm on April 9, 2009 Permalink |
It doesn’t really matter. I lived in the UAE and all I had to do was go to the library, pick up a book, a dictionary, biology and there it was!
Still, the most inaccurate information came from peers and if the family didn’t let them go, they might definitely get a naughty kid or two trying to spook them out with their superior knowledge.
Best sex ed in modern society? You. You wish you didn’t have to tell them about it, but the earlier you do, the earlier you can make sure they can tell you and talk to you about it. The earlier they can tell you they have feelings for the wrong people. You can’t protect them from it: and sex ed classes are as sanitised & targeted as it’s going to get compared to the 100 million ways they can get that information from other media. Do make sure to have a look at the information they’re presenting and how, so that you can add or work around it.
Salamamama 5:48 pm on April 9, 2009 Permalink |
All 4 of my kids attend Health/Sex Ed in high school, this is the perfect chance for Muslim parents to show how profound Islam is in this area. It’s a perfectly open window for parents to educate their children in the correct way, after all it’s our responsibility as parents to teach sex ed to our kids, we will be judged one day.
razib 6:00 pm on April 9, 2009 Permalink |
my school was opt out, not opt in. so i attended. a few mormon kids opted out. the term ’sex education’ is a bit illustrative of the problem today with the internet. 7 year olds are deleting bestiality porn spam in their hotmail accounts. kids do need some basic guidance, but it needs to be more nuanced and subtle than biological primers, which are unnecessary.
Muse 11:13 pm on April 9, 2009 Permalink |
Never had sex ed in school. Got my first lesson on how babies are born in 5th grade from a friend named Sophia, whom I promptly informed that men and women are not allowed to do that in Islam and therefore there must be some other way. Then I went home and looked up “sex” in the World Book Encyclopedia and proceeded to be traumatized that Sophia was right after all.
I would totally let my kids attend sex ed classes, but I intend to be their primary source of knowledge.
Conrad Barwa 6:34 am on April 10, 2009 Permalink |
But what is actually meant but “sex education” here? Are you talking more about social/psychological concerns? Becuase as fas as I know the biological aspects have to be be covered as part of the normal Science curriculum. I can’t remember sex ed in any of the schools I went to it was sort of part of the Biology syllabus which we had to learn since it was part of the examination programme. Of course the teachers would then answer questions that people had that went beyond what was covered in the academic syllabus. There was no question of ‘opting out’ as such since nobody knew exactly when what would be tuaght. We just turned up at class one week and got told that we would be covering Human reproduction.