This article is from The Straits Times, Thursday, March1 2007. Its about something so close to every one of our hearts, it’s about the few periods of lessons in which we used to cringe at. This cringing slowly turned to enjoyment, as we would laugh at the teachers squirming at every question we would ask them.

What is this article about? Sex education.

How important is it really? A primary 3 girl, at only 9 years old, is pregnant with a 6 month old child. As most of you should know, sex education for kids only starts in primary 4. As for this girl, she probably had no idea about sex and contraception, leading to this disaster. Ah, so now we know how important it is REALLY. The main reason is that the unknown is dangerous, and therefore it is extremely important to introduce sex education to children as young as possible.

But when is an appropriate time?

I can still remember the time I was in primary 3, when we had not heard of a vulgar word, when we would nod our fingers at a person, saying "orhh-horhh" at the person uttering the vulgar word.

At the time, I thought that a condom was the short form for condominium. I shall not pen what I thought at that time here for fear of making you, the reader, cringe.

As we can see, the primary 3 girl’s parents had explained to her how to use a sanitary napkin, but had not educated her about menstruation or sex. This proved to be a disaster, with their daughter becoming pregnant. Apparently, she had experimented with sex with her 14 year old schoolmate at home.

This could all have been prevented if the parents had thought her about sex and the laws preventing underage sex, etc. But this is the government’s point of view. I am sure, however, that many of the government personnel are as squeamish about talking about the birds and the bees as every other Singaporean parent. Just imagine this conversation.

Parent: Okay girl, lets talk about the birds and the bees.

Girl: What’s birds and bees? What’s birds and bees?

Parent: Erm… its about sex.

Girl: Sex? What’s that mummy?

Parent: Never mind.

As you can probably see, its extremely hard to actually talk frankly about the subject of sex in front of your children. Why? This is because in school, we actually term the talk of sex in between friends as the corruption of mind.

In conclusion however, I feel that sex education should be talked about as soon as the child experiences puberty signs. And during this time, it should be the parent of the same gender talking to the child about it. It might be uncomfortable, but it is still extremely important.

However, not being a parent or teacher myself, it is very hard for me to comment on the actions of the parents and adults out there, but these are just my views on the subject