Changing the narrative of sex through sex education

Let’s make sex education compulsory

 Dear Editor,

 In Ghanaian society, issues relating to sex are not often talked about in our homes: Just, the mention of sex then you will see mama looking sternly at you. In some so­cieties the mention of it is a taboo, but the question is if these issues are not addressed by our own parents, then who should we run to, to make informed decisions on sexual matters. Is it when the girl-child is being influenced by peers to practise it as a form of satisfying her curiosity? Or when the boy-child under the influence of friends practises it to show how manly he is?

This is a million-dollar question begging for an an­swer. According to research, comprehensive sex education, (which emphasises the bene­fits of abstinence while also teaching about contraceptives and disease-prevention meth­ods) has been proven to re­duce teen pregnancy and STD infection. Thus, sex education explores values and beliefs about those topics and helps people gain the skills that are needed to navigate relation­ships with self, partners, com­munity and manage one’s own sexual health and to create awareness of its consequences of unwanted pregnancy, early parenting and others if not done safely.

Sex education highlights hygiene issues. It becomes more important for young people to keep their bodies clean at puberty. Compre­hensive sexual education provides essential information about how people can main­tain their hygiene. Since not all parents can instruct their children on these methods and may be embarrassing to talk about these issues with children. Sex education helps young people to understand what is normal. Adolescents do face a hard time when hit­ting puberty. They often take certain things as abnormal. Sex education helps them to understand that their body is changing physically.

In an interview with Mrs Helena Dickson, a Counsellor and Midwife with Pentecost Hospital at Tarkwa in the Western Region, she states that “not only does sex edu­cation have to be introduced at the early stage in adoles­cent life but its abstinence, too. She explained further that, at that stage they were so eager to engage in boy­friend-girlfriend relationship with the aim of knowing and feeling what sex entailed and this occurred because of the hormonal change in adoles­cents. Adolescents need to be educated about the conse­quences of sex so they don’t become pregnant”.

She added that this edu­cation would alert the young girls to be extra careful in their lives and slow down the eagerness to feel for sex. The education will let them know that these feelings they some­times experience are normal but it behoves on them to control themselves not to fall into temptation.

She concluded that diver­sional therapy like playing football, ampe, ludo, oware and others could be intro­duced when they felt for sex.

In conclusion, sex education is an important aspect in ev­ery adolescent life, so parents should be open for discussion when issues about sex are introduced by their wards. It should be made a subject in the secondary school just as physical education.

Alice Mensah

Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ)