A new school year is upon us all, and a new
format of schooling at that. Two years added to the number of years a child
must spend in school before taking up a course in college. Not all are happy
about the new set up, but whether we like it or not, K+12 is upon us now, and
the best we can do is to be optimistic about this new program.
One thing to be pessimistic about is the
sex education they are introducing to Catholic Schools this year. Although the
RH bill has not been passed yet, anti-lifers may have pulled a fast one on us
in the form of a book called PopDevEd –
Population and Development Education, a book meant for teaching sex education
in Catholic schools. A project by the University
of San Carlos in Cebu,
this book is also supported by the Philippine Center for Population and
Development. The book looks and sounds harmless enough, but when Pro-Life
Philippines took a closer look into the contents of the book, it was found that
there were anti-life, depopulation, and contraception ideas that were
sugarcoated in order to make it appear that the modules do not run counter to
the teachings of the Catholic faith. This is a sneaky way to introduce
anti-life concepts to our children, and therefore should not be used by
Catholic schools. How this book has passed through and gotten the approval of
CEAP (Catholic Education Association of the Philippines) still baffles me to
this day.
Taking
Responsibility Away from Parents
Parents should be the primary teachers of
sex education. This responsibility should not be taken away from them, to be
substituted by teachers who do not know the students well enough to know if
they are ready for sex education or not. Sex education can be compared to a
knife – it is useful to those who understand how to use it, but dangerous for
those who do not. As parents, would you leave it to someone else to explain
something potentially damaging to your children? Just the other day, this was
on the news:
Parents
Furious After School Teaches Graphic Sex Class
Parents in a small Washington State
community are infuriated after their 11-year-old children were given graphic
descriptions of oral and anal sex during a sex education class led by an
elementary school principal.
Fifth-graders at Onalaska Elementary School
were supposed to get a lesson about HIV-AIDS, but the class discussion turned
graphic when a child asked about other forms of sexual activity. The principal,
who happened to be teaching the class, then told the children about oral and
anal sex.
Given that there are parents out there who
are neither knowledgeable nor capable enough to teach such a sensitive matter
to their own children, they should be given training and education in order to
empower them to be their children’s sex ed teacher. Besides, if a parent
realizes that teaching about sex is such a sensitive matter, does it make sense
that he leaves the matter of teaching it to another person whom you barely
know?
Let’s
Talk About Sex – And Sexuality
Many people are unaware of this, but the
Catholic Church does not oppose sex education per se. What it opposes is that a
secular version of sex education is *mandated* to all schools, private and
public alike, that run roughshod on religious norms whether parents like it or
not.
Monsignor Pedro Quitorio of the CBCP in fact asserts, in
this news report:
“Actually the Church has been teaching sex
education to Catholic schools for a long time. These bishops have previously
occupied positions as president or owners of Catholic schools,”. He explained
that the Church uses a different framework when teaching sex education. “The
Church sees sex education as human sexuality and not just for reproductive
health,” he said. He said that what some members of the House of
Representatives are proposing in the Reproductive Health (RH) bill “is very
limited. It should be the whole human sexuality and that is where the
difference lies.”
In fact no less than a Vatican Council
declaration, Gravissimum Educationis, recommends that “young people should
begin as they grow older to receive a positive and prudent education in matters
relating to sex.”.
More
than Body Parts and Functions
I think that the point of the Church, in
teaching sex education, is that we go beyond teaching reproductive parts and
how they function. More than those concepts we should be teaching our children
true and moral values. These values are not exclusively Catholic nor Christian
values per se; we get them from moral law itself, that which holds true regardless
of religion. This is why the Church, for example, teaches the inseperability of
the procreative and unitive aspects of the sexual union, because she believes
that this concept comes from moral law itself. The real goal of sex education
is for the youth to understand that the marital act is a precious gift from God
himself, and therefore should be used properly and within the bounds of moral
law.
Pro-Life Philippines
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