The Secondary School Students’ Assessments Of Sexuality Education In Curriculum

1. Introduction

Sex education is currently a heated issue that attracts a great deal of attention nationwide and worldwide. Despite researchers and educators’ persuasion that sex education can bring about several benefits, many people, including parents and teachers, are unconvinced of this program being a positive school subject. There are pros and cons in their arguments which need careful consideration before implementation can be realized.

According to Rosen, Murray and Moreland (2004) “Sexuality education is the lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs, and values about identity, relationships, and intimacy” (p.4). In other words, sex education should be part of an advanced education program in order to assist children with adequate knowledge of a physical life. In fact, human reproduction and modern civilization would be impossible without the young generation being academically armed with this knowledge.

Despite this fact, school children in Viet Nam seem to be left with the impression that sex knowledge should be grasped by the children themselves. In other words, few schools officially teach this knowledge to school children, fearing that it is too sensitive and it may arouse their curiosity to the extent that they might experiment themselves on this.

In order to find out what secondary school children think about this problem, a mini research was done, hoping that it may throw some light to such areas as the importance of sex education, the age of acquiring this knowledge, the content of the sex education, and finally the method of instructing it to school children.

2. Methodology

In order to collect the data for the study, a questionnaire (Appendix) was developed. The subjects of this study were the secondary school students; therefore, a bilingual questionnaire (English/ Vietnamese) was designed. It was divided into 5 main parts with 9 questions. Some kinds of questions such as multi-choice, scale, close-ended were involved. The first part of the questionnaire aimed to find out the students’ assessments of importance of sexuality education. The second one explored the subjects’ opinions on the ages suitable for acquiring the knowledge of sexuality and the next one discovered students’ opinions on the contents and then the students’ suggestions for teaching sexuality knowledge to secondary students. The last one found out students’ opinion on the counter effect of sexuality education at school.

50 students at Le Loi Secondary School were selected randomly from different classes. They are all at the age of 13.

Before doing the official survey, we had a pilot survey in our own class to see whether or not our questionnaire was acceptable. From the comments of our colleagues, some questions in the questionnaire were adapted to fit the purpose of our primary research.

The official survey was carried out during a break time. Handouts were delivered to 50 participants on a voluntary basis. All the participants had time to read bilingual questions before progressing to completing all queries in the questionnaire. It took 40 minutes to give out and collect the handouts. All questionnaires were classified as appropriate.

3. Findings and discussion

3.1. Importance of sexuality education

As is shown in chart 1, a significant number of students (46%) agreed that sexuality education was important and 38% of them strongly supported that it was very important. In other words, 74% of the respondents support the introduction of sex program at secondary school. Another 10% held the view that it is quite important. Meanwhile only 6% of respondents considered it as an unimportant subject, which may be understood that they do not want to learn this subject at their age or else.

One noticeable thing is that majority of students highly appreciated sexuality education at schools. In fact, many teachers and health educators believe that sexuality education helps to reduce the risk-taking sexual behaviors which might lead to negative impacts like unplanned pregnancy, infection with sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, sexuality education can provide “opportunities for young people to explore their attitudes and values and to practice the decision-making and other life skills they need to be able to make informed choices about their sexual life” (International Technical Guidance On Sexuality Education: An evidence-informed approach for schools, teacher and health educators, 2009, p.2). In brief, sexuality education encourages young people to live safely and enjoy their sexual life.

Certainly, sexuality education programs in schools should help minimize the risks that the youth might face in the course of their sexual experiences. Then, another question that needs clarifying is the appropriate age range for sexuality education. The next part of survey will focus on this matter.

3.2. The age suitable for acquiring sex knowledge

As can be seen from chart 2, most of the students (62%) would like to be provided with sexuality knowledge when they are at the age of the secondary school. It was followed by high and primary education (18%, 14%). Only 6% of them were in agreement that it was the best to begin introducing at high educational level.

Obviously, it is highly recommended by a large number of respondents that sexuality education be started at secondary school. It can be explained by the fact that most students start their puberty at the age of 12 or 13. Pubescence is a time of great physical and mental changes, especially sexual development. Young people are really curious about the development of their bodies; therefore, providing information about heath, sexuality for young people at this time is very crucial. Furthermore, Kelly (1998) claimed that the majority of youth experienced sexual copulation during the adolescence. Thus, sexuality education should be included in the education curriculum of the secondary school to help the students avoid harmful effects of unsafe sex and have good preparation for a mature life.

Along with introducing sexuality education at appropriate age, finding out the suitable contents to provide for students when studying this subject is also very important. The following section is aimed to discuss this issue.

3.3. Contents of sex education programs should provide for children

As shown in the table, we can see the great difference among students’ opinions about the contents what students should be taught in sexuality education. The most obvious is that the majority of the students (72%) would like to study all of the contents recommended above in sexuality education. This is in congruent with the finding about information of learning including “growth and development, reproduction, contraception, interpersonal relationships, sexual behavior” (International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education: An evidence-informed approach for schools, teachers and health educators, 2009, p.5).

3.4. Students’ suggestion for teaching sexuality knowledge

As illustrated in chart 3, more than a half of the students (64%) wanted to have sexuality education taught as a separate subject. Nearly 30% of the respondents shared the idea that sexuality education ought to be integrated with another subject. Only 8 % of them were still unsure about how this subject should be instructed.

The results showed that the majority of the students are in favor of studying sexuality education as a separate subject. This finding is not in line with a recommendation from Sexuality Education in Europe (p.12):“Typically, sexuality education is taught in Biology lessons and in perhaps one other area of curriculum”. There are some reasons for the result of this minor research. First, if sexuality education is the part of other subject like biology, physical education and so on, it will be ignored by the teachers because “Experts are concerned that not only are many teachers under prepared, they are also being forced to teach material with which they do not feel personally comfortable” (Kelly, 1998, p.225). Second, if sexuality education is a separate subject, a lot of topics related to sexual life will be covered. It will help students get much useful information and avoid bad sexual activities which can bring about severe consequences in future.

As can be expected, students highly appreciated teaching sexuality education as a separate subject. Besides, concerns have been raised over the type of sexuality education class. The next part will concentrate on talking over this issue.

It can be seen from chart 4, 62% of participants liked learning sexuality education in the single-sex class. Meanwhile 30% of them supported co-ed class and only 8% of respondents still did not know for certain about which type of class organization was suitable for sexuality education program at school.

As expected, most of the students supposed that sexuality instruction should be conducted in the single-sex class. This is perhaps due to the Vietnamese culture and customs which tend to disapprove of discussing this topic in public and with the presence of the opposite sex. This finding was in accordance with conclusion “separating students into same-sex group, for part or all of a programs, has also been demonstrated to be effective” (as cited in International Technical Guidance On Sexuality Education: An evidence-informed approach for schools, teachers and health educators, 2009, p.11). Many people, especially the young, are too shy to talk about sexuality because it is really a sensitive topic. A respondent reported that during a class on sexuality education, she had some queries about female sexual organs; however, she did not dare to ask because there were some boys in her class. She was afraid of being laughed at. Hence, single-sex is an effective type of class for students so that they can feel comfortable and safe when studying sexuality education.

Besides contents, type of class, methodology, instructor of this subject is an important topic in sexuality education curriculum. This issue will be taken into account in the following part of the research.

As table 6 shows, majority students (22 respondents) would like to be taught sexuality education by specialists (physician or nurses). It was followed by 15 students who agreed with teacher of school. Only 2 respondents thought that students can study sexuality education on their own.

After all, the role of educator is very important in teaching sexuality education. Most of the students wanted specialists (physicians or nurses) because some reasons such as “They can be specially trained to cover this sensitive topic and to implement participatory activities; they can be provided with regularly updated information; and they can be linked to community-based reproductive health services” (International guidelines on sexuality education: an evidence informed approach to effective sex, relationships and HIV/STI education, 2009, p.19). This will be the key factor to help students study this subject much better.

There is broad agreement among students that sexuality education is very useful. Nonetheless, some still fear that learning this subject will hasten early onset of sexual experiments among young people. This issue will be analyzed in the following part.

3.5. Students’ opinion on the counter effect of sexuality education at school

As can be seen from the pie-chart, more than a half (54%) of the students claimed that sexuality education at early age did not encourage young people to have sex. Only 16% of them gave opposite opinion. And lots of students, accounted for 30%, still did not know the answer.

This result pointed out that the majority of the students highly appreciated the effectiveness of sexuality education in delaying young people from curiosity and sex experimentation. This finding goes on line with the conclusion which is “sexuality education can lead to later and more responsible sexual behavior or may have no discernible impact on sexual behavior” (International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education: An evidence-informed approach for schools, teachers and health educators, 2009, p.8). Apparently, when students are taught about sex, they are aware of sexual demeanor, they know when and how to have safe sex, particularly they can take the cognizance of the existing health problems which are the consequences of wrong sexual activities.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, this paper has taken into consideration several issues of sexuality education, which shows some new information on the matter of teaching sexuality to school children. As a result of this some suggestions have been provided. However, a number of contents of sexuality education have not been covered yet because of this project’s small scale and time limitation. Thus, we hope that further research should be done on this topic. In addition, because of its benefits, sex education should be broadly implemented over schools.