Separate AIDS classes for boys & girls

 

New Delhi: Co-educational schools may soon have an allgirls and an all-boys class once a week. This special 30-minute session will discuss sexually transmitted infections and HIV, and forms part of the recommendations made by India's first official sex education manual, which is now open for public scrutiny.
    While male teachers will teach the boys, girls will be enlightened by lady teachers about how HIV is spread, what are the precautions one can take, is abstinence a good option to save yourself from the virus and what are the symptoms of a sexual transmitted infection.
    The manual, open for public feedback till August, is expected to be finalised by Oct. AIDS prevention to be part of curriculum
New Delhi: India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) on Tuesday presented the prototype of the Adolescent Education Manual to education secretaries and AIDS control societies from 20 states. NACO says to combat HIV, prevention is the best cure. The manual, it says, will educate youngsters — six of whom are infected with HIV every minute worldwide — about essential life skills and accurate information about HIV and STIs.
    The key concepts that will be promoted through the manual are what is an informed decision, risky behaviour and vulnerability of adolescents to HIV, peer pressure and how to deal with it.
    Students will be told how rash decision-making like unprotected sex can have severe and irreversible consequences like an unwanted pregnancy or infection. They will also be taught to identify various forms of sexual abuse and how to handle them and differentiate between a good touch and a bad touch.
    Words like condoms and sexual intercourse have been used in the minimum. NACO director-general K Sujatha Rao said the new manual, prepared by an expert committee from NCERT and SCERT after a series of consultations with parents, teachers, students, faith-based organisations and civil society members, had deleted all images and learning modules that states had found "too explicit and too graphic".