It sends a wrong message

We live in an era which is absorbed in great compromises cropping from advances in modernity and science; unfortunately, this is something we cannot run away from.

Whenever a society realizes that a certain crisis overwhelms it, the first feature usually done away with or compromised, is the morality of a nation and certain cultural values deemed as "unimportant”.

In my days as a secondary school student, sex at school was the ultimate sin! For a couple of students to be promiscuous, it took courage, cunningness and luck. If they were ever caught in the act, they were instantly expelled or publicly whipped during the general assembly on Mondays.

These techniques worked basically because they were supported by both the school administrators and the parents. The duo understood that being strict on students would help them grow up in a respectable manner with good principles.

In the end, this stringency paid of significantly; students from stricter schools regularly performed better than those from "modern schools”, which faced waves of pregnancies term after term.

Now here we are, a few years down the road and ethics like self-discipline are being discarded in favor of fornication and safe sexuality at an early stage of life.

Yes we do have a fat challenge on hand which must be addressed. The number of high school students getting pregnant is on the increase and HIV is a constant threat, perhaps just like in our bordering societies as well.

Right as that may resonate, it does not indicate that condom distribution in schools is the immediate answer; neither will it solve the problem and bring about desired results.

The first best alternative, in my opinion, is to introduce sex education in all schools on a wider scale. Parents and teachers must converse openly and honestly with the adolescent children about sex and tell them precisely why their bodies are changing and what it means.

The dilemma is that parents don’t often talk to these youngsters; when they do, they threaten them by telling them that sex is a bad and terrible act. Rather than that, they must brave up and tell them that sex is in fact a good thing as long as it’s done at the right time and in the right context.

What the condom campaign in schools plainly indicates is that parents have failed their role of upbringing children in an upright conduct.

It is also informing a young student that "yes, you can go on and have sex because you can protect yourself”. This is a puzzling message which contradicts the original role of a school. Does it mean that secondary schools have finally legalized sexual activities for their students?

What happens when a teacher catches two students having sex and wants to punish them? Won’t that teacher be crushed logically if in their argument the students say that they were using a condom which was freely distributed at school?

For God’s sake these are young people! Instead of opening a Pandora box for them, the elderly in society must use their moral guidance skills and impart children with abstinence values.

Let us remember the very little ones in senior one- what message are we sending them when we make condoms available at their school? We must rethink this whole condom campaign because in my view, its effectiveness is highly exaggerated.

Let us not blindly copy and paste what is done in the Western world, because we do not share moral and cultural values with them. For them, children are encouraged by parents and society to explore their sexuality when they are hardly thirteen years old. So they have every right to promote condom use in their secondary schools… we don’t.

mugishaivan@yahoo.com
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