If you haven’t chanced upon it by now, a letter issued by Nanyang Junior College has been making the rounds on social media these past weeks. It starts with an encouraging title that reads ‘More Sexuality Education in Schools – The Growing Years Programme’. Unfortunately, the content only takes a nosedive from there. Let’s unpack it.
https://twitter.com/jwlltn/status/1490198986581737472?t=9ShQ7JAc3RZWD79-8HR6Og&s=08
The most glaring sentiment reflected in the entirety of the letter was the barely veiled heteronormativity. In the first paragraph itself, there is a blatant assertion that Sexuality Education (SEd) is to enable students to “understand the physiological, social and emotional changes they experience as they mature, develop healthy and rewarding relationships including those with members of the opposite sex”. It does not stop there.
The letter goes on to explicitly state “this means encouraging healthy, heterosexual marriages and stable nuclear family units” – just in case the previous sentence was too subtle. One of the goals of SEd identifies is the “inculcation of positive mainstream values and attitudes about sexuality”.
The only item that mentions consent in the entire letter about sexual education is the consent form at the bottom that requires a signature for receiving and reading said letter.
Overall, the main emphasis of the letter is abstinence, and it links “good” sexuality education to “stable nuclear family units”. Nowhere was there even a notion to teach the youth about the concept of safe, consensual sex. To echo the tweet below, everything about this, was indeed truly ‘sed’.
https://twitter.com/babat_pouch/status/1490591350122680322?s=20&t=5HCty9SoaIWiuJqwialCQw
MOE’s Stance
To understand the severity of this, we need to keep in mind that this is not a decision or venture made autonomously by a private school funded by a board with specific interests for the school and its students. This is a government-funded school. The Ministry of Education’s (MOE) website outlines its stance on sexuality education.
We can see that the goals are highly aligned here. The website states that the Sexuality Education curriculum is secular, and that it promotes abstinence before marriage, how to say “no” to sexual advances and the consequences of casual sex.
Again, there is no mention of consent, how to practice safe sex, or anything relating to actual topics on sexual health.
Even further, they “teach students what homosexuality is, the importance of respect and empathy, and the law concerning homosexual acts in Singapore”. It is almost laughable that they inserted ‘the importance of respect and empathy’ in the middle of that sentence.
From this, we can conclude that the contents and curriculum of Sexuality Education is an intentional, consolidated message from the Ministry to young students in government-funded schools, which make up about 85 percent of all primary, secondary schools and junior colleges in Singapore.
Implications
The most dangerous implication is easily the potential harm this can cause to members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
This is so incredibly harmful to the young LGBTQIA+ folk in government funded schools in Singapore. https://t.co/ANojAvuOHI
— sharv (@s4dindian) February 6, 2022
To inform students of “what homosexuality is” in the context of how it is prosecutable by law, can be highly damaging for young students who identify as such. Sexuality education is, more often than not, a Singaporean student’s first experience of learning things pertaining to sexuality and sexual health within a school environment. Imagine when such an exclusive approach is used, most likely by a teacher. Students often turn to and confide in their teachers – even on sensitive or personal matters. Having teachers espouse this narrative can make LGBTQIA+ students feel isolated, unvalued or ostracized by society – just as they are exploring and coming to terms with their own sexual identity. In other words, such students may effectively be deprived of a core space. Parents have also come forward to express their disdain for such “rubbish that harms children”.
Moreover, the stress on abstinence as the only failsafe for avoiding unwanted scenarios like unplanned pregnancies, transmission of sexual diseases, or even sexual violence, has been proven to be highly ineffective. The fact that this is the main focus of SEd is not only unscientific but also very harmful. On the whole, studies of abstinence-only programmes are either inconclusive or show that abstinence-only education is ineffective at improving health outcomes.
https://twitter.com/fisheyeun/status/1490524006088609799?s=20&t=5HCty9SoaIWiuJqwialCQw
Using sexual education as a moral purveyor of the youth is highly intrusive and frankly, unnecessary. These sexuality education programs are usually taught in science lessons. In that regard, the least to be expected is a program that objectively displayed the facts of sexual health, not a curriculum of subjective morality and ideals from an authority. Abstinence-only programmes are not only unrealistic, but they are also highly unethical – By not providing our youth with the information and skills needed, they are left vulnerable to coercion, sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies.
We cannot stop demanding for actual comprehensive sexuality education in Singapore. To conflate ideology and propaganda with sexuality education is such a disservice to the nation’s sexual well-being and health. https://t.co/jXdC8g07vL
— Rayner K J Tan (@raynerkjtan) February 6, 2022
Finally, and this is the big one, the contrived link between sex (marital sex, of course) and nation-building. The only instance of deviating from this concept of abstaining from sex is when the state encourages married couples to have babies. They do this in a very active manner, both with rhetoric and policy. While this may be purely rational and even understandable in terms of maintaining a vibrant population, the downside of this is surfaced when we examine who gets excluded from this. The policies pertaining to having children are only beneficial to married couples, or to individuals who subscribe to the state’s idea of a nuclear family unit. In other words, single mothers, unmarried couples and other people who do not fit into this ambit are severely disadvantaged in ways more than one, especially considering that other extraneous policies such as public housing, medical benefits are all tethered to the condition that the criteria of a nuclear family unit be met first.
"Stable nuclear family units"
Loving family units include single parents, extended family as caretakers, LGBTQ partners, housemates, communes with specific interests etc.
There are examples from every category that are WAY more stable than some nuclear heteronormative models. https://t.co/6lnbG9Stab— Colin Cheong (@colinctc) February 6, 2022
The irony some point to is that Singapore’s watered-down level of sexual education may be one of the very reasons for low birth rates in the first place because it has been hammered into our minds while we were young and impressionable.
Singapore probably has low birth rates because the only thing students learn in sex ed is A for abstinence
— – (@_pffffft) August 12, 2015
How did we get here?
Such gross instances of capturing sexuality education as an avenue to push ideals of heteronormativity, abstinence and regurgitating the state’s stale narrative of encouraging sexual activity mainly for building family units have happened time and time again, with varying levels of harm.
In 2014, a relationship programme by Focus on the Family Singapore, a pro-family Christian charity, was ceased by MOE. This programme was mandatory for students of Hwa Chong Institute, unless they opt-out, and was criticised for its learning materials, which had highly sexist sentiments and was rife with bigotry language. One vocal student, Agatha Tan, wrote a letter to that garnered 300 signatures and led to the eventual termination of the programme.
As of 2017, MOE has not engaged with external vendors for sexuality education, as they feel that “the MOE sexuality education programme is able to meet the developmental needs of students”. It is time we ask ourselves if this is truly the case. Is this the content are willing to settle for and pass off as sexuality education?
For a country that prides itself on its education system, it is extremely disheartening that its pursuit of designing the best curriculum for students halts at sexuality education. There are a plethora of alternatives and best practices that are scientifically proven to be more effective and nurturing for the youth.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education
According to the International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education, effective sexuality education must be scientifically accurate, incremental, age and developmentally appropriate, curriculum-based, comprehensive, based on a human rights approach and gender equality, culturally relevant and context-appropriate, transformative, and able to help develop life skills needed to support healthy choices.
Not even needing to go so far, Singapore’s own Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) had developed a curriculum called Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) that encompassed a wider range of topics and issues, adopting a different lens to the current MOE framework. In 2010, AWARE announced that they will not be venturing in providing sexuality education for schools anymore, following a huge controversy and outcry from certain groups in society. Till the end, AWARE was unsuccessful in being listed as of one MOE’s possible vendors.
For context, the United Nations recognizes CSE as the gold standard framework for sexuality education to empower young people. CSE includes scientifically accurate information about human development, anatomy and reproductive health, as well as information about contraception, childbirth and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. With such options to incorporate a high standard curriculum for sex education, why are we succumbing our students to such archaic teachings?
Moving Forward
The letter from NYJC was released on 3 Feb 2022. As I was mulling over the egregiousness of it for days after, I happened to chance upon this headline.
While it seems benign, putting this into context however, makes it clear as day that this problematic narrative, that only martial sex for the purposes of procreation for the state gets the ultimate thumbs up from society, is prevalent in many mainstream forums, and unwittingly becomes embedded into the collective psyche, unless we become both aware and critical of it.
We have been abject to this top-down narrative since young, that intrudes into deep, personal recesses of our lives, coupled with constant reminders by both rhetoric and policies that emphasise any lifestyle or orientation that does not subscribe to this are simply disadvantaged or unvalued in society.
It is up to us to change this – for the sexual health of our nation, for the preservation and safety of people in groups that have been marginalized by the current exclusive and narrow system, and for future generations to come.
Fix Schools, Not Students.
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