Sexual Education in Schools: Give the First Step

Universidad Nacional de Córdoba - Escuela de Trabajo Social

January 25, 2010
Lack of information about sexuality in teenagers is translated into early pregnancies, abuses
and gender violence, among other issues. That is why in 2006 the National Law 26,150
“National Program of Integral Sexual Education” was approved. From that moment on, it is
obligatory that education programs include this content in public and private schools since
preschool.

Paula Gaitán is a graduate student from the School of Social Work and works in the IPEM Nº
15 “Santiago Ayala”, in the neighborhood San Vicente in Córdoba, to incorporate these
contents to the education program and turn the institution in one of the first ones in applying
the law. “Sexual education has to be dealt with from an integral point of view, that is, taking into
account social, cultural, biological and psychological aspects. It is necessary to frame it in
Human Rights and an approach which considers gender social construction to understand the
historical evolution of men and women and the violence it generated in order to distort and
modify reality building gender equitable relations”, says Gaitán.

According to the researcher the main obstacles to apply the law have to do with the lack of
information regarding sexual and gender issues in high school teachers. Consequently, the
demand of information on the part of teenagers doesn’t find answers based relevant and
updated scientific knowledge and they solve their enquiries with their mates or in the media.

That is the reason why the work in Santiago Ayala started with the teachers, in order to
recognize their training difficulties about the topic and install gender view, which according to
Gaitán, is not considered in educational institutions or is not treated in school programs. “They
are key actors in the transmission of knowledge, values and behavior rules, that is why it is
fundamental to intervene in its subjective, cultural, conceptual and institutional obstacles to
implement integral sexual education actions”, she remarks. This is the first step to fight the
silencing of the topic in the classrooms or that the answers are biased by prejudices,
perceptions and positions.

“Some teachers -comments Gaitán- refrain from dealing with the topic in an explicit way in the
classrooms, some others do it with a biologist clipping and all of them, in a conscious way or
not, transmit their prejudices and reproduce the models which perpetuate inequalities and
gender violence, consolidating an approach with a moralist of biological tendency of sexuality”.

Sexuality, family and school

The certainty of the school’s direction about the need for children to receive sexual education
was fundamental. “From the direction we called the teachers to training courses, which are not
obligatory but necessary to get the knowledge to deal with the topic. Sexual education is a right
of the students and a way to manage correct information and the overlapping of issues, such
as discrimination, gender violence or sexual repression”, expresses the school’s (Santiago
Ayala) headmaster Cristina Trapote.

After the teachers’ meetings there will emerge the way in which the contents will be
implemented in the classroom. The headmaster states that “sexual education has to be a
construction of of all the educational community so that it goes on beyond those who start it”.

The treatment of this topic implies for the school to act in a field which was historically a “family
issue”. Many parents are not ready to inform their children. They have difficulties to talk about
the topic because they didn’t receive sexual information about basic issues.
And it is in this sense that the scholarship considers to carry out at least one educational
activity for the students’ families, so that they can exchange experiences and doubts. “The
National Constitution says that it is a right of the parents to choose the kind of education they
want for their children. Regarding the topic of sexuality, we will assume the commitment of
teaching what they demand according to the parameters, principles and ideology we agree”,
indicates Trapone.

This pilot experience is one of the few provincial initiatives to include the topic in its contents.
Seventy teachers, tutors and principals and 370 students of the IPEM Nº 15 Santiago Ayala,
apart from the intervention of the teenagers’ parents participate from the extension scholarship
“Integral Sexual Education in Public Schools. Approach Proposal from a Gender Perspective”.

Teenagers and sexuality

According to a survey carried out by Gaitán, there are multiple investigations carried out in
Argentina which show the vulnerability of teenagers in relation to the access to sexual and
reproductive rights, even more if they belong to poor sectors.

Some sexual health and reproductive data in our country:

-Teenagers do not have relevant and updated scientific information about their sexual and
reproductive rights, neither about analysis and reflection proposals about the relations between
genders which modify violence, inequalities and discrimination present in the different
scenarios where they develop.

-Gender socialization generates obstacles for the access to sexual and reproductive rights:
women’s difficulties, particularly young women, to negotiate with their partners the use of
condoms in sexual relationships, the initiation of sexual relations in female teenagers derived
from their mates’ pressure and not as an autonomous decision, greater women vulnerability to
contract HIV, strong association of women with reproduction and maternity, lack of perception
in women of their own vulnerability to sexual transmission infections and the validity of the
myth of “risk groups” facing HIV transmission (just the ten percent of teenagers has access to
correct information about AIDS).

-The mandates about sexual behaviors internalized by teenagers conclude in vulnerability

factors to face HIV-AIDS, as the hegemonic masculinity evolves into an unhealthy
psychosocial condition, as it promotes diverse risk conducts with the aim of reinforcing the
virile ideal.

-Family and educational characteristics, but also their expectations, their vision of gender
relations, their life projects (or the lack of them) help to understand the taking up of careless
reproductive behaviors, which put lower classes young people at risk of early pregnancies.

-Regarding HIV/AIDS, a work of Mabel Bianco states that the in the group of teenagers and
Young people from 15 to 24 years old there are more infections in women than in men; and in
the group from 13 to 19 years old the proportion of infected women is higher. So, the problem
is that they are early infected with HIV and cannot avoid it because they don’t know the risks
they run or because they don’t have free access to condoms when they know it and want to
take care of themselves, or because they don’t have the capacity to negotiate with their sexual
mates to use condoms.
Andrés Fernández