IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL-BASED SEX EDUCATION IN
INDONESIAN NATIONAL CURRICULUM
Sex education, without doubt, has become a debatable issue in the formal education world. This subject certainly has been mandated by UNESCO in order to attain two of seventeen sustainable development goals, namely gender equality, and good health and well-being. In recent times, numerous nations have already introduced and some are currently introducing school-based sex education in their national curriculum (e.g. Finland, the UK, the USA, and Thailand). Indonesia, however, has still not implemented it to be a compulsory subject, yet only includes it as a chapter topic in biology, sociology, and religion class. The inclusion of sex education in core subjects, as a result, only covers limited range of aspects, such as abstinence and sexually transmitted disease (STD) in correlation with norms and religious perspectives. Ironically, the common and rising issues in Indonesia, such as consensual sex, sexual abuse, relationship, and contraception seem to be neglected, because sex education is not taught as a subject, but only included in limited units.
This essay evaluates the effectiveness of sex education as a compulsory subject based on scientific evidence, such as promoting abstinence, decreasing teen pregnancy and STD rates. Despite the fact that sex education is beneficial for youth’s sexual and reproductive health, there are several obstacles regarding people's assumptions about this subject and how taboo is it to talk about sex to the children and adolescence. These include parents’ concern about the values in sex education that will promote premarital sex and LGBTQ orientation; lack of teaching resources, and human resources to teach this subject. Notwithstanding, this essay will propose that in spite of these concerns, sex education is a vital subject to tackle sexual and reproductive health problems. Sex education, therefore, should be implemented in the Indonesian national curriculum.
Key Points and Forms of Sex Education
According to Kearney (2008), sex education is
"Involving a comprehensive course of action by the school, calculated to bring about the socially desirable attitudes, practices and personal conduct on the part of children and adults, that will best protect the individual as a human and the family as a social institution”.
In sum, by learning sex education, the students will obtain extensive information about the cognitive, emotional, social, interactive and physical aspects of sexuality through key concepts established by UNESCO in 2009. These are relationship; values, rights, culture, and sexuality; comprehending gender; violence and staying safe; skills for health and well-being; the human body and development; sexuality and sexual behavior; and sexual and reproductive health. This subject aims to create healthy and responsible young people to accomplish a successful life in the future.
Attributed to its practice, there are two forms of sex education, namely abstinence-only sex education and comprehensive sex education. The abstinence-only program emphasizes that sex ought to be postponed until marriage, and it often covers limited or no information at all related to the birth control methods, contraception, relationships, and consent, and it tends to be culturally biased (Kohler et al., 2008). It is certain that this form of sex education neglects the fact that juveniles have a tendency to be sexually active and have the right to acquire comprehensive knowledge to guide them into responsible adulthood. Whereas comprehensive program involves the prominence in the abstinence-only program, it broadly includes all key points of sex education by still considering age-appropriate contents and reflecting cultural background. Kohler et al. (2008) claim that comprehensive sex education is more successful than abstinence-only in resolving the issues related to sex and reproductive health.
Sex Education as a Problem Solver
One of the primary advantages of sex education is eradicating teen marriage and child marriage. In Indonesia, the Child marriage rate is relatively high. There are 457,600 20-24 year old women who had married before their 15th birthday, making Indonesia 7th for child marriage in the world according to UNICEF (2016). In addition,the Ministry of Health of Indonesia (2019) reports that just over a third of Indonesian girls already pregnant at the age of 15 to 19. This social turmoil is worsened by the fact that cohabitation culture and unintended pregnancy have become the major factors. However, there is a decline in the rate of teen pregnancy in many countries with school-based sex education. A good example of this is Finland where the adolescent birth rates declined from 27,000 to 10,000 cases after sex education has been established since 1990 (UNPFA, 2015).
Other cases that urge sex education to be implemented as a compulsory subject are the violence and rape crisis in Indonesia. As UNESCO (2016) points out, 25% of children undergo physical violence and 36% have emotional violence at school. The cases include gender-biased violence linked with gender expression and sexual orientation which is triggered by poor gender knowledge. Besides this, the Indonesian Children Protection Commission (2018) identifies 122 male kids and 32 female kids in Indonesia are assaulted in 2018. However, this data might be invalid, since, ironically, nine out of ten sexual assault victims in Indonesia remain silent and the cases themselves go unreported (Yi, 2016). Why did this outbreak happen in Indonesia? This might be because of the widespread rape culture in Indonesia where commonly people will blame the victims because of their appearance or clothes. Without putting aside the law enforcement for rape cases, we need to examine the preventive actions to reduce rape culture and sexual assault in Indonesia. One of them is through sex education which teaches basic information about sexual harassment, including recognizing sexual harassment as a crime, acknowledging local and national law about sexual abuse, until how to confront and resist coerced sex and seek help (UNESCO, 2018).
From a health perspective, sex education also plays a critical role, such as preventing and eradicating HIV and STDs. As reported by UNAIDS (2019), there are 640,000 adults and children currently living with HIV in Indonesia. Since 2010, the death toll due to AIDS has increased dramatically (60%) from 24.000 to 38.000. Eventually, in 2006, WHO provided solid proof that sex education is effective to reduce high-risk sexual behaviors, postpone the initiation for pre-marital sex, increase the use of protective contraception, and lessen the number of sexual partners. This subject is also a very economical way to prevent HIV and STD (Kivela et al., 2013). It is obvious that the evidence is indicating the positive attitudes to decrease the risk of STDs which might be a relief for the HIV/AIDS outbreak in Indonesia.
In addition, sex education also brings other positive impacts on students’ life. Based on the International guidelines from UNESCO, sex education will explore vital information related to puberty. This is very necessary as it will give access to scientifically precise information for young people about the natural process in their life, for instance, menstruation and nocturnal emission to reduce inappropriate reactions from peers such as period shaming. As reported in New York Post (2018), just over 42 percent of women have undergone period shaming. Sadly, period shaming already took a 14-year-old girl’s life in Kenya in 2019 as broadcasted in The Guardian (Hervey, 2019). Another benefit is related to maintaining a safety and healthy relationship. In sex education, students will learn key points to maintain their relationship, especially for the future in the marital institution where they will be sexually active. They will also study the importance of consent and body authority to give them self-confidence to resist unintended sex activity.
Sex Education and Its Assumption
Even though school-based sex education brings many benefits in terms of juveniles’ sex and reproductive health, some parents propose to ban sex education due to cultural norms. Parents in Africa also raised an online petition to stop the subject because they find it inappropriate to be taught at school. Sex education is also considered as taboo for Indonesian (Dzulfikar, 2019). This apparently because of assumptions that some value is opposed to Indonesians’ norms, for example, LGBTQ and pre-marital sexual intercourse. This misleading understanding of sex education makes parents worry if sex education is taught at school. Whereas, as Joannides (2014) argues, before judging sex education as a subject, people need to separate it from sexual activities portrayed in porn. Moreover, UNESCO, through International technical guidance on sexuality education 2018, has already regulated the worldwide curriculum and divide the key points based on age levels, and also respect the diverse cultural and social norms. UNESCO (2018) also suggests that home could be an alternative place to teach sex education which requires parents to be the facilitators for their children.
On the other hand, in Indonesia, children present an awkward situation to discuss sex with their parents or adults, while parents are reluctant to talk about it with their children (Kirnandita, 2018). It should also be noted that parents’ attitudes towards sex education and the limited information provided at school have become the major factors of why children prefer to do web surfing to fulfill their curiosity (Ybarra &Suman, 2008). In spite of some proper websites that provide comprehensive knowledge about sex education online, for instance, TECHsex Youth Sexuality and Health Online, some young people might be trapped in a dark web. Google Trends data in early 2020 shows that Indonesian kids and adolescence tend to search using “sex” related queries on Google. It marks Indonesia to be the 15th rank looking for sex content through this search engine worldwide. This attitude can be dangerous because they can access all information without age filter and strong proximity. Hence, porn addiction and high-risk sexual behavior may occur.
Further Consideration of Sex Education in Indonesia
Looking into the problems concerning the implementation of sex education in the national curriculum, there is a pressing need for human resources, in this case, teachers. Teachers found that it is difficult to implement sex education due to their responsibilities to teach another subject (Kay et al., 2010). This might be because of the workload of administrative tasks and lack of human resources. In other words, by the emergence of sex education at school, the educators have to teach multiple subjects and allocate extra time, because there are merely small numbers of teachers who are competent to teach sex education. However, research in Finland on the effect of sex education as a compulsory subject on students’ sexual knowledge and behavior indicates that the beneficial outcomes are gained due to the advanced skills of teachers and their teaching method (Kontula, 2010). Thus, if the teacher quality improves, the effectiveness of sex education will be achieved. So, how could Indonesia obtain their competent teachers for this subject? There are two scenarios for this. It can be obtained through teachers training by inviting qualified trainers for sexual and reproductive health or opening a sex education major in the faculty of teacher training and education in local universities.
Furthermore, it should be emphasized that the technical supports for introducing sex education in Indonesia have to be taken into consideration. For instance, the creation of concrete material and assessment material for the sex education subject in Indonesia should be prioritized (Safitri, 2017). This means that the government should contribute to providing the appropriate and standardized teaching resources which are comprehensive and scientific-based by reflecting the international guidelines from UNESCO. It should be noted that the provision of teaching materials needs high financial and coordination commitment. Safitri (2017) also suggests that Indonesia needs a framework and strong regulation to establish a safe and supportive environment to learn sex education. This can be done by cooperating with various local and international non-governmental organizations focusing on the subject and health authorities for access to sexual healthcare and contraception if necessary.
Taking everything into account, the introduction of sex education in the Indonesian national curriculum will be an effective way to create a responsible and healthy generation to achieve sustainable development goals. It enables this country to cope with social and health problems, such as teen pregnancy, sexual abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. Despite the reservations, sex education is absolutely worth implementing in Indonesia's national curriculum. Nonetheless, the government needs to cooperate with NGOs and health experts in order to establish the framework and resources of this emerging curriculum and provide qualified teachers for sex education subject.
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