Sex is still a taboo in many cultures around the world. Has it always been this way? Today in many countries, we see sex education is being provided in schools. Proponents suggest it is important, even necessary, to provide fundamental knowledge as children grow and their biology and psychology change. If so, what is the best way to provide sex education? Sadhguru talks about the importance of introducing such education to adolescents and how one could approach it in today’s day and age, where children are subjected to deception and misinformation on the internet.
Sadhguru: “See, this was a culture where families means…I have – not my family – but I have been to… I have visited some families where when I went, there were over 430 people in one family, in one large house in Gokarna, in Karnataka. I spent 3 days with them – it was an incredible experience to see how division of labor happens, how everything happens, and one man, what he says, everybody follows. When they grew up like this, for boys there were many male members, for girls there were many women behind them. They would educate them about their biology without making it into sex education.”
“But today we have come to a place where everybody has to educate themselves; that means, minimum 23, 24. So, their puberty might have happened 12, 13, but there are 10, 12 years of space where lot of them may not figure thing out by themselves. So, somebody has to tell them.”
“Today, by the time they’re 12, 13, they are online, they have social media friends, all kinds of things. Misuse is happening at various levels, deception is happening. Just now they brought a law, any deception if you use, there will be 10 years imprisonment. So, this is for the times in which we are. Maybe in another 50 years we may not need such things, but right now our society needs it because this is just the first generation, gullible generation, stepping out into a world that they are not familiar with, stepping out into… from an organized structure to a wide open structure.”
“I feel any education is good education. What form of education? That mode changes from time to time. Right now that onus has fallen upon the schools, because the family structure is no more that organized as it used to be, it has just come down to 2, or 3, or 4 people. So it’s very difficult to do these kind of things there, unless they’ve built that kind of relationship. Many parents are doing that, but that’s not possible for everybody. So I think the onus definitely goes into the education system, but at the same time, these are kind of things that must be told to the child from somebody that they trust.”
“Someone else who you don’t care for, if they come and say all these things, I don’t think it’ll work. So, creating those people in school that children trust them, that they can talk about these things, and the children will be open enough to ask the right questions, I think this is very needed to create a healthy situation, especially to create safety for girl child in their adolescence, and safety in terms of various other diseases and other things that spread. Otherwise, they’re getting wild information all online, they’re researching everything, and whoever guides them, that’s how it goes. It is better at least a responsible person says this, even if you don’t like him; at least a person if he makes a mistake, you can hold him responsible. You can’t hold anybody online responsible.”
“But it’s needed in the society, because we are a society at crossroads. This is the first generation of women who are stepping out of their homes to go to work; they need to be educated – they may be adults, but still, lot of them have no clue how the world works, and they can be very easily misused, it’s happening on a daily basis. I think it’s very needed for women’s safety, responsible behavior from the young males, all these things not that everything can be fixed, but it is definitely better if they’re educated about this rather than playing hide-and-seek and learning it in the back street.”\
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