Questions over teaching sex education in Indonesian schools

Updated June 14, 2010 18:57:21

Indonesia has never been a strong advocate for sex education in schools but now, the government's questioning the need for any formal teaching at all, on the subject. The Education Minister, Muhammad Nuh says he objects to sex education being taught in Indonesia's secondary schools. He says children don't need formal education about sex because they'll learn it "naturally". The Minister's comments follow a recent scandal, involving the circulation of sex videos featuring high profile local celebrities.

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Indonesia expert Professor Terence Hull, Australian National University

LAM: Professor Hull, what do you make of the minister's comment?

HULL: I am surprised that someone of that stature and also that responsibility would be speaking out with so little knowledge of the issues.

LAM: But what's the current state of sex education in Indonesia as far as we know?

HULL: Yes we've been doing some studies about the Indonesian school curriculum and we have found elements of sex education in all levels of school text books from first grade through to the end of high school, and it's also spread across a wide variety of different subjects. So bits of it are taught in religion, bits are taught in biology, sports and citizenship classes have issues of sex education. So I'm not even really sure that the minister understands what the sex education policy is in his own ministry.

LAM: So is it taught mainly as kind of a biology subject or are the more subtle nuances of sex taught in school as well do you think?

HULL: There are in different elements of the curriculum there are discussions about gender roles and mutual respect in gender roles. There are bits of the curriculum that talk about responsible behaviour and they mention staying out of pre-marital and extramarital sexual relationships as being part of responsible behaviour. But the curriculum has a heavy emphasis on HIV. Now of course considering that HIV is relatively speaking a minority behaviour, it's only a small number of people in the society who are currently infected and the fact that there are many other sexually transmitted infections that people have to be knowledgeable about and to avoid, the curriculum probably is too heavily focused on HIV and not enough on basic issues about biology that they should have better knowledge of.

LAM: So in your view how important is it for Indonesian children to learn about sex and what age group would you recommend?

HULL: Listen children around the world need to learn about sex, they need to learn about how to protect themselves. In every national sex education program that I know of, there's a heavy emphasis on making children aware of the behaviours that they need to avoid, they need to protect themselves in a wide range of settings. For teenagers, and you mentioned teenagers earlier, in Indonesia there is a revolution underway with the rising age of marriage. Two generations ago many teenagers would already be married and have their first child by the age of 18. Today the average age of marriage is up around 25 for young women. So they have to have a lot of knowledge about handling themselves in a sexualized society in ways that protects them from some of the dangers of the irresponsible sexual behaviours that abound in most modern societies.

LAM: So do you think that the social realities are very much different from what the government has in mind?

HULL: Oh yes, yes, governments around the world, this is not just Indonesia, tend to operate on issues of stereotype and issues where they think they can rile up the public and get them moving on a variety of sort of moralistic issues. The realities of Indonesia of course is that it has an enormously large commercial sex industry, it has a lot of exploitation, it has many, many issues that children have to be aware of in order to protect themselves in the society. The minister is really looking at a very strange approach when he says that children should be able to learn sex in the natural way.