Sex Education & Gender: A Dilemma Between Knowledge vs Stigma
After years of logical demand and seeking upgraded knowledge by policy makers, civil society organisations and activists, the National Curriculum and Text-book Board (NCTB) brought revolutionary changes in the text-book by including reproductive health and gender education in Science Investigative Reading for the students of class six. This inclusion will certainly keep the adolescents informed about their body changes, reproductive health, reproductive disease and sexual violence.
The terminology sex and gender have an antithetical response in Bangladesh. It has been obstructive in bringing positive changes and new dimensions. For the past two years discussions have been going on in revising the NCTB books with inclusion of Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Sexual & Reproductive Health and Rights issues. NCTB has been working for years to create gender sensitive and interdisciplinary learning methods for proper understanding of sex and gender in a healthy approach. The step is expected to bring holistic change in the education sector and sex-literate generation ahead.
The provision for revision came as previous NCTB textbooks lacked in acknowledging proper topics and inclusion of exact information on certain sensitive issues. For which, adolescents had to depend on the misinformation they received from unknown sources.
This inclusion will also support gender orientation in transgender communities as well. Adolescents who are transgender go through unbearable mental compulsion when they cannot address the strange changes in their very own bodies. Their orientation on body features, reproductive organs, violence towards the body, will be cleared to some extent through when learning by the textbooks.
However, the inclusion of essential reproductive health issues has brought heated disagreement among the religious bodies. Basically, a chapter in the book Manob Shorir, has a discourse on the physical changes adolescents go through during their puberty has raised unwanted questions. While the issues are informative and well versed, just as a basic human body faces the changes within. Protesters have accused an article of a book of class six and eight educating homosexuality and demanded the immediate scrapping of the textbook. Demanding the prime minister’s intervention, they suggested religious texts to rewrite books as per Islamic perspective.
The fundamentalists have always inhibited sustaining sex and issues relating to sex as conservative elements supplicating Islam. For which the issue remains a taboo. The environment makes the madrasa going adolescents more uninformed and illiterate. Each of their statements has the reference of religion which makes them unquestionable.
Another myth that sustains in patriarchal Bangladesh is that men are not prone to being sexually harassed or abused. While in the recent past, the country has observed the trend of rape culture prominently even among male students in madrasa. Retaining these myths and taboos shall only bring high data of victims while knowledge on sex and gender shall obliterate the prevailing taboos, myths and conservative approach.
On the other hand, sex education is not a luxury rather a need in Bangladesh. The world has advanced to a certain age where neither the education, the knowledge, nor the methods or environment matches our previous generations. The digital world is running with scientific measures. Now adolescents need and have the right to learn about their individual beings biologically and psychologically. They need to cope with the sociocultural world which offers advantages along with disadvantages of being bullied, harassed, assaults and abuses. Because sexual violence is increasing at an alarming rate, the sex ed knowledge and knowledge on reproductive health will ultimately help this young generation in preventing sexual violence and protect them from abusers.
Rather than creating dispute, the veritable steps of NCTB should be acknowledged. There is no better option than learning the necessary reproductive health subject through educational institutions. When these topics appear in exams, the students will learn more attentively and raise questions to their teachers for clear concepts. This will bring up a properly educated and literate youth with a clear concept of gender variation and their own individual SRH Rights..
Source
https://www.newagebd.net/article/192888/scrapping-of-anti-islamic-texts-books-demanded
https://www.thedailystar.net/toggle/news/why-sex-education-important-now-more-ever-2059109
https://archive.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2021/04/08/rapes-in-madrasas-breaking-the-silence
