New Manual on Sex Education to be out by January

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New Manual on Sex Education to be out by January

New Delhi: The controversial UNICEF-NACO manual on sex education is expected to

come out with necessary changes by January 2008. The manual, however, will be

put for field-testing before being distributed to the teachers for training in

classrooms. The Rajya Sabha Committee of Petitions headed by M Venkaiah Naidu

decided in a meeting on Thursday that National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO)

should work jointly with CBSE to come up with the revised manual.

''The review of the earlier manual is being carried out and the revised module

will be out by January. However, we will put it for field testing to get the

feedback of teachers and parents before publishing it,'' said NACO chief K

Sujatha Rao. Views and opinions of teachers and parents will be registered on

the NACO website.

''There is a support and concern about these issues in the committee but it was

felt that the manual could have been less explicit and obvious. The same issues

will be addressed but the pedagogy and strategy would be different and better.

We stand by the commitment that the adolescent issues need to be projected

correctly but they will now be done in a subtle manner,'' said Rao.

The Naidu panel seized the issue on the basis of two petitions that Rajya Sabha

had received from the public in which introduction of sex education at primary

and secondary level for creating awareness about HIV\AIDS was claimed to be an

absolutely ill-advised step. Petitioners from Maharastra had also stated that

the available literature published by UNICEF itself was not worthy of being used

for teaching the students.

In this high profile meeting attended by CBSE chief Ashok Ganguly, joint

secretary of Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) SC Khuntia and

Expressions India chief Jitendra Nagpal, it was also discussed on having only

one manual for adolescent education. ''It was discussed that there shouldn't be

too many manuals for adolescent education. We would work with CBSE and

Expressions India to bring out the revised manual,'' said Rao.

Recently, the CBSE-UNFPA manual, which had first come out in 2005, was also

revised after receiving feedback from teachers. Words like masturbation, arousal

and sexual intercourse were deleted besides few colourful diagrams describing

the journey from puberty to young adulthood. A couple of new topics on gender

sensitivity were also incorporated in the revised version, like how to enhance

the respect for opposite sex, how to look at the perspective of life-skills, how

to cope with the stress and the role of teachers and counsellors in preventing

substance-abuse among schoolchildren.

This manual, monitored by NCERT and supported by the UNFPA so far, has trained

around 4000 teachers in CBSEaffiliated public schools, Kendriya Vidyalayas and

Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas.

Initially, it was designed according to various life-skill education programmes

practised worldwide. Some parts of it was adapted from the controversial

NACO-UNICEF's training manual on sex education. After the recent uproar by

Rashtriya Syamasevak Sangh (RSS) and the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti demanding

a ban on the UNICEF manual, which was introduced in schools by MHRD in 2004, a

need to revise the NAEP was also felt in the ministry.

The UNICEF-NACO manual was introduced in state boards in 11 states, who rejected

the same, calling it explicit. The petitions committee has been visiting various

states including TN and AP and discussing the manual with representatives from

NGOs, teachers and principals.

Those interested in joining the debate were asked to submit memoranda to Rajya

Sabha Secretariat Joint Director J Sundrial. So far, it has received around

40,000 representatives on the matter. (Times of India)

ICYO - YOUTH INFORMATION No 2007/76