GENDER affairs scholar and Newsday columnist Dr Gabrielle Hosein believes there is urgent need for comprehensive sexuality education in schools across the board.
She alluded to staggering statistics which suggest that one in three boys and one in five girls between 13 and 17 are already sexually active.
Hosein said the teenage pregnancy rate also suggests that nine per cent of births are to girls under nineteen.
“Additionally, child sexual abuse and forced sexual initiation are major issues as is sexual harassment in children’s and adolescent lives,” she told Sunday Newsday via WhatsApp.
“These are real issues that children are dealing with while adults refuse to talk about it with them using a national curricula to reach the most vulnerable.”
Hosein also believes there needs to be curricula that teaches acceptance of children that are LBGTI.
“This is because they are children who deserve access to schooling just like other children, and such curricula would focus on non-discrimination, non-violence, reduction of hate and fear-driven bullying and kindness toward others simply because they are human, not because they meet our ideals of being masculine or feminine.”
She believes it’s a “giant myth” that an LBGT-identifying adolescent will poison others.
“Far from it. More poisonous is teaching our children to treat each other with fear and loathing.”
Hosein argued comprehensive sexuality education isn’t just about sex, but about teaching consent, respect, self-determination, responsibility, health, self-protection and rights.
“Unfortunately, there is no political will for that here and so there is no risk of any of this being introduced at any time.”
She contends the only ones who will lose are the most vulnerable children.
Hosein was responding on Saturday to RC Archbishop Jason Gordon’s statement that comprehensive sex education cannot be introduced in the curricula of denominational schools without the consent of the denomination.
As it stands now, he said, the Concordat prevents this from happening. The Concordat, signed in 1960, is an agreement on the terms under which denominational boards would run assisted schools. It was signed by the government and the RC church, which had the largest number of denominational schools at the time.
Gordon, who spoke on Thursday during the Shepherd’s Corner programme on Trinity TV, also said he had heard that the US and UN were pressuring Caricom to introduce comprehensive sex education and that the government was going to face significant pressure from international agencies on the matter.
The archbishop, on the programme, also weighed in on allegations being made through WhatsApp statuses and voicenotes that consent forms for the TT National Learning Assessment were linked to medical procedures to be done on students. The Ministry of Education has dismissed these allegations as false.
There were also concerns that books featuring LBGTI characters would be used in schools because they were being sold in bookstores. Education Minister Dr Nyan
