By Shin Hui (P.104 Kelana Jaya Intern, 2017)
Executive Summary:
Lack of sex education in Malaysia has long been a problem. This paper explores how the youth of the nation have been negatively impacted by it.
The unwillingness to implement sex education in Malaysia emanates from the generally conservative and religious attitude of the government and nation.
Upon identifying the macro challenges of implementing sex education and analysing the consequences of not doing so, we consider the systems of other countries such as the United States and those in Western Europe.
We make the following proposals to implement comprehensive sex education: 4.1 Introduce compulsory comprehensive sex education as an independent subject within the national school syllabus; 4.2 Establish structured content for teaching, ensuring that broad issues are covered including sexual consent and contraceptive usage; 4.3 Provide teachers with formal training to enable them to teach in an informative and unbiased manner; and 4.4 Encourage cooperation between parents and schools to communicate about safe sexual practices (e.g. through national campaigns and compulsory programmes).
Comprehensive sex education is the first step that the Malaysian government must take in order to curb the rife instances of unwanted teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and baby dumping. Thereafter, strong political will and determination along with public support is needed to truly solve the social problems of our youth.