After finishing a draft of a layout last night, I tuned in at the TV for some last-minute news before I go to sleep. Mind you, I don’t watch the news a lot so this is a big thing for me. Anyway, I caught a news segment on the Adolescent Reproductive Health (ARH) program of the Department of Education for high school students. ARH aims to teach high school students of how the reproductive system works, the various diseases that can happen in the reproductive system and how to avoid them. In simpler terms, ARH = sex education.
Of course, being in a “conservative” and highly “religious” country, there is much debate happening around this particular program — obviously it’s the Church against the pro-ARH people (I’m sorry for the lack of terms). That is expected, especially here where people debate about whether they’d show a certain kind of movie but end up showing it after all the hullaballoos. Anyway, from the news last night, the program has been shelved and there is still much discussion going on especially on the contents of the module.
My mom asked me last night what I think about it, and I told her exactly what I thought (and I think I came off a bit strong ^^; ). Now, I know how important educating teenagers about sex is. I’ve always believed that armed with proper knowledge about things, a person will be able to more or less make the right decisions in life. The same goes with having proper education about our reproductive system and how things work in our physical bodies; if you know how your body works and what happens, you will be able to take care of it better and avoid whatever would cause harm to them. So to be honest, I really think there’s nothing wrong about educating Filipino high school students about sex.