TEACHING children to read, write and cipher is no longer enough – there's sport and art and extra-curricular activities, there's playtime supervision and schoolbus drill, and lots more.

The latest, so a state minister told the press a couple of weeks ago, is that teachers must be proactive in identifying pregnant students.

In the old days, said Datin Fatimah, the school counselor used to sit back and wait till girls 'in trouble' came crying in her office. That is no longer enough – the counselor has to go out and spot the – well, what exactly is she supposed to spot? Victims? Culprits?

Anyway, she's got to spot them, and somehow counsel them.

'No, your father won't kill you. Yes it's perfectly all right to give your baby up for adoption...' does the girl believe all this? She knows she's bringing public shame on her family even unto the third cousins, she has seen enough films and read enough newspapers to know that illicitly pregnant females are sinners who will be ostracized, caned, stoned...

Surely it's easier to keep quiet, and dump the baby when the time comes.

Another public voice, a pop singer this time, advises the public at large to be 'kind to unmarried pregnant women so they won't abandon their infants.' For all that, our local press reports abandoned infants, murdered infants, secretly buried infants, with monotonous regularity. And the ones we read about are the ones whose mothers (very seldom, parents) got caught. Who knows how many other hapless babies never saw the light of day?

So what are the FACTS?

Why do unmarried girls get pregnant? I don't mean 'how', I mean why – does anybody out there believe they set out to get into that condition deliberately?

Of course not. But they don't know how to protect themselves. The amount of knowledge that's floating around in secondary schools, places of LEARNING, is pathetic. Sure, the youngster learn human biology – but
'you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up'
'you won't get pregnant during a monthly period' (yukk!)
'eating limes/cinnamon sticks/ tamarind prevents pregnancy'
'you can't get pregnant during the full moon', or maybe it was the new moon. The contraceptive 'methods' urged, usually by eager boys, are as useless as they are idiotic. And the girls believe them because
a) they fancy themselves in love and
b) they have no access to the relevant facts. They were never TAUGHT the necessary information to protect themselves.
Isn't that what they are in school for – to be taught the things they will need to survive in today's tough, merciless world?
Contraception is one of them, and if they ought not to need such knowledge now they will need it in later years, when they're married.

Why teach arithmetic?

It is hard to understand why our youngsters aren't taught knowledge that is absolutely vital to their life, now and in future.
Would anybody stand up and say that we don't want to teach school children arithmetic because it will make them greedy and mercenary? By no means tell them about 'pyramid schemes' and similar scams because this kind of information might interfere with their happy innocence? Don't teach them a word about fair wages, taxes, licensing laws because all that stuff is so worldly?

They'll go out into the world to get cheated of their wages and savings, they'll get into trouble with Inland Revenue, Road transport and a slew of other authorities.

Nobody from Tawau to Langkawi would endorse such a daft education programme. What the *&^%$ re our kids in school for, we would like to know? School has to equip them for the real world out there!

Gut education

A lot of our opinion leaders are horrified at the very idea of sex education not because of the subject as such, but because of the name. There is a strong objection to three-letter words in polite circles – if it's got to do with sex it just has to be wicked!

So, don't call it 'sex education'. The biology syllabus taught in our schools includes a thorough study of the digestive organs and processes, but nobody calls it 'Gut Education.' It's simply one segment of human biology. So is the study of, ahem, s**.
'Human biology' automatically includes the reproductive tract. The subject, let's call it 'Reproductive Health', must be taught in such a way that it is made very clear how a female gets pregnant, and how pregnancy can be prevented (tamarind and cinnamon sticks notwithstanding).

Then the moral and ethical teaching chips in. Students are informed that the normal reason for contraception is not the indulgence in illicit lust, but the need to space babies within the family context. No wife should be pregnant year after year after year, if only for health reasons.

Try a bit of newspeak

I trust our teachers with enough creative imagination to come up with socially acceptable words for notty-notty things like 'condom'. Let's try a bit of Newspeak. Could we call the offending objects 'natural rubber consumption incentives' maybe? The Ministry of Trade would endorse that one, so would the RRIM.

The general run of biology teacher has no problems with discussing contraceptive pills, patches or injections. Some might baulk at coils and caps (if anybody still uses them), maybe some sections of biology should be taught in segregated classes. But, please believe me – and if you don't believe me, read the daily papers! – it is very necessary that our young generation be fully informed about what concerns their own bodies.

We have to stop imagining that 'ignorant' means 'innocent'. It doesn't, and the confusion is lethal if it ends up with dead babies in muddy ditches!