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Just for background information:

Sexuality education becoming increasingly popular in schools
source: ChannelNewsAsia, 21 January 2006, by Pearl Maria Forss

More schools are conducting sexuality education programmes over and above the number of hours stipulated by the Education Ministry. And many are getting external help for this as talking about sex in schools is getting more popular.

Although the Education Ministry expects junior colleges to meet 4 hours of sexuality education in a year and secondary schools 6 hours as part of their Civics and Moral Education classes, some schools are giving their students more. And concerned over the growing incidence of teen sex, they are working with external organisations to fill in certain areas their teachers lack expertise in.

Anderson Junior College for example is holding four 4-hour sexuality education talks this year. Students there will spend 1 to 2 hours discussing the topic with their teachers in class and there’ll also be a week-long sexuality education exhibition.

Woo Soo Min, Vice Principal, Anderson Junior College, said: “It is not just about sexuality, it is touching on the values of the students, how they perceive themselves. We feel this topic should be broached with greater depth, that’s why we feel that we would like to spend more time on it.”

Mrs Woo’s view seems to be shared by other schools. Last year, the Family Life Society conducted sexuality education talks in 29 schools, Focus on the Family in 25 schools and newly set up non-profit groups ALife and Liberty League in 10 and 5 schools respectively.

With such a growing interest, more are entering the lucrative sexuality education business.

Kenneth Ng, Managing Director, Synergy Coaching, said: “Competition is very stiff in this market, there are people who freelance, and they don’t have much cost, and they come in and charge one or two dollar per student for a 3-hour programme. We don’t go by price war, price war we will die. Some schools pay directly to us, in some schools they use the Edusave fund and for some students who do not have much fund left, they use their own money to pay for the programme.”

Businesses like Synergy Coaching charge about S$1,000 for a 3-hour sexuality education talk. Its programme focuses on the importance of abstinence, and uses graphic realities of irresponsible sexual behaviour to get the message across.

Four schools used their services in 2005. But it may be too soon to say if the message of abstinence and safe sex is getting across. All the organisations involved in sexuality education concur that currently, about 20 per cent of the teenage population is sexually active. And the figure for sexually transmitted diseases infection among youngsters has more than doubled in the last 3 years to over 600.

Andrew Kong, Senior Executive, Family Life Society, said: “Those figures would be much much much higher if it weren’t for the programme by MOE and the VWOs. The success of our programme is not measured by whether or not people do abstain but whether or not they are trying to abstain.”

These organisations believe more teenagers will be open to the concept of abstinence once they are convinced of the dangers of irresponsible sexual behaviour. The difficult task, they say, lies in convincing them, particularly when sex is often glamorised in international popular culture.

Yesterday, I was forced to attend a sexuality talk held in Anderson Junior College that was reported in the press. However, despite the general public’s positive interest brought up by the press and “marketing executive cum vice principal of AJC” (as I call her) that AJC is conducting a 4 hour long sexuality talk that will “touch upon the values of the students”, I, Tay Wei Kiat, speaking as someone who had personally experienced the 4 hour long talk, would like to point out that the talk was filled with so much misinformation that the only effect it achieved was to brainwash everyone with religious advises and believes that has no firm scientific backing. The talk, for your information, was conducted by a particular Catholic group. However, we were not told about the nature of their organisation throughout the entire course of the talk.

The speaker mentioned that pornography can be found in the house of almost every criminals. Hence pornography promote violent acts and thoughts. Hearing this, i would kindly add on that since toilets can be found in those criminal’s house as well, why aren’t everyone who owns or visited a toilet a criminal as well. Toilets, you can find in almost everyone’s house. Same goes for pronograhy, whether a person admits it or not.

“Condoms are not safe. According to research conducted, it has a 85% success rate.” Strangely, to date, i am still stuck with only one sibling. However, the 85% figure is true. By “Condoms are not safe”, he was refering to safety from STD, not pregnacy. However, he did not clarify this and refered to this 85% statistic when talking about condom’s role in preventing pregnacy. He carry on talking about all the negative aspects of condom, almost making it a sin to use condoms. According to condom companies, condoms has a 99.9% success rate.

Each time, he says, a male can “shoot out” 500 millions sperm, and it only takes one to fertilise the egg. However, for a sperm to fertilize an egg (ovum), the sperm must penetrate the mucus at the opening to the cervix and travel through it into the uterus and up the fallopian tube. It takes more than 2 hours of constant sprinting by the sperms to even get close to the fallopian tube. By 2 hours , only less than a hundred sperms would be remaining. In most cases no sperms survived long enough to reach the egg. He failed to mentioned all that, making it seems like every single sex will result in pregnacy.

He even showed us a diagram taken from John Hopkins Unversity’s population report. It shows the size of a sperm with respect to viruses that can cause STD, arguing that since a condom can even fail to stop a sperm, why not viruses. He failed to mention that most, if not all condom failures were due to damage to the condom or improper usage. He even continue to add that the pores of a condom are much bigger than that of those viruses and since sperms can get through these pores, why not STD virus. This, i found, contradicts the government’s message of sex safe using condoms despite the fact that the speaker is paid by government’s money. Further more, from reliable internet source,

Latex condoms, which are the least expensive, most accessible type of condoms at the moment, are designed so as not to allow transmission of the HIV virus, or any virus for that matter. The HIV virus is larger than the pores in condoms.

Lambskin condoms, on the other hand, are made from sheep intestines, and are now advertised as a contraceptive, but not as effective against STD transmission.

That guy is doing nothing but playing on our imperfect knowlegde of the different kinds of condoms and their properties. He may actually be refering to lambskin condoms, although lambskins condoms are rare in Singapore. By instilling fear in us by falsly acrediting a 85% success rate in preventing pregnacy when the figure was refering to STD, and also spreading misinformation about condoms, he successfully discredited the usefulness of condoms, without which condoms would not exist in the first place.

“Masturbation is bad. By making yourself as an object to obtain pleasure, you are actually abusing youself, by treating yourself as an object.” Since he is all-knowing and smart, does he know that just last year the medical community has got ultra-sound scans showing unborn child stroking their genitals when they are still in their mother’s womb? They would stroke continuously for some time, stop, and then begin this cycle again at a later time. What’s more, this is not a unqiue case. They are reports of this observation all over the world. If masturbation is self abuse and bad, why are we born with the ability and instinct to masturbate? If i want to get religous, WHY ARE WE CREATED BY GOD WITH THE INSTINCT TO MASTURBATE IN MIND? This guy may be condemming a will of god.

It is scientifically proven that masturbation has medical benefits, pretending prostate cancers, among a number of other things. Just google for “the benefits of masturbation” and you will find them. Masturbation allows human to satisfy their primitive need for sex when law and morale forbids. Now he is labeling all those who masturbates as self abuse. Well, lets all stop abusing ourselves and starting raping people then. Perhaps that is what he wants?

All in all, although certain parts of the talks, such as the video of corpses of aborted babies, the talk was filled with so much misinformation that i noticed i’ve just wasted another 5 hours of my life (1 more hour so that channel news asia can get that 5 second shot of AJC you see in the tv).

You can also see the handbook given out by the vendors here.

It is also interesting that on the day this blog entry was posted, CNA ran an article detailing how “Education Ministry reviewing schools’ sex education programmes“.

Further Readings
1) Masturbation has health benefits:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3072021.stm

2) Websites that mentioned babies masturbating in children’s womb:
http://www.afraidtoask.com/masturbate/WhenMasturbate.htm
http://www.nvsh.nl/Website_Engels/Texts/Sexual_Information/Basics/Skills_2.htm
http://www.sfsi.org/ask-us/ask258.html

Extracts from those sites:
“S elf-exploration and masturbation is common among children and in fact begins in the womb. For example, there have been reports by physicians of the ability to visualize by ultrasound male infants in the uterus touching themselves. [1]”

“Most children play with their sex organs from early life on. Even before we are born, inside the womb, we can hold and suck our penis or vagina. Babies have been observed to get all hot and sexy and have orgasms.”

“Actually, we have seen sonograms of babies masturbating in the womb. So no, masturbation is no proof of molestation.”

3) I still don’t see how IVF which is meant to provide hope for infertile couples to create new life is actually not pro-creation.

4) Quoted facts about condoms:

Electron microscopy of condom latex has shown that there
are NO pores (sources include The Latex Condom: Recent Advances, Future
Directions. Family Health International, 1998, pg 9, book distributed by WHO as
part of the Male Latex Condom Manual.

Furthermore, latex condoms are
double dipped. I’m sure you will agree that the water molecule is smaller than
the HIV virus.
HIV virus = 0.1 microns (ie: 0.1 x10^-6 = 0.0000001
metres)
Water molecule = 0.2 nanomicrons (ie: 0.2 x 10^-9 = 0.0000000002
metres)

so this too is a blatant mistruth.

5) Some discussion regarding Celebrate Life workshop
http://www.spug.net/forums/showthread.php?t=79300

6) Condom 85%
http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2004/yax-394.htm

7) Some debates going on
http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2006/01/22/brainwashing_sexuality_talk_cele.html

Important
It is NOT the catholic believes that pissed me off. I’m a free thinker, However, by presenting catholic believes as if they are cold hard facts in order to deceive, confuse or force the religous believes on those who listen to them is wrong. The talk did not state that those are catholic believes. If the talk had done so, we would have taken it with an open heart and just let the speakers say whatever they want. However, they did not clearly state the source of their opinions and instead attempt to spread their believes to everyone attending the workshop by asking EVERYONE, regardless of their individual believes or religion, to write down things like “I must condemn masturbation and IVF”, among many others. This is probably why people are making such a big fuss about such stuffs now.

And it all came as a total surprise when my simple and rather childish ranting brought the whole issue into public attention.

It is also with much joy that I present to you a letter from a particular Doctor in Straits Times Forum Feb 7, 2006.

Sexuality workshop an eye-opener for teens

IN THE article ‘Students cry foul over sexuality workshop that pushed these messages’ (Sunday Times, Jan 29), reporter Jeremy Au Yong said a four-hour workshop of the Family Life Society irked some students.

It was held under the Education Ministry’s guidelines to provide sexuality education for upper secondary and tertiary students. He said the teachings were ‘too strong’ because it discouraged contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilization and human embryonic stem cell research and allegedly infringed on other freedoms of thought.

As a parent of two adult sons, a practising doctor, and a volunteer helper in orphanages locally and overseas, I am grateful to see that the Family Life Society is bringing traditional values on sexuality to the sexually active young here.

As a young medical student, I learned about infectious diseases such as gonorrhoea and syphilis. We saw men and women in venereal disease clinics with fear in their eyes as they passed pus from their genitalia in pain. We also saw the tears of women who had repeated strictures of the fallopian tubes because of venereal-transmitted disease. These women remained sterile.

Later, I would be one of the first to see the early cases of HIV and Aids in the United States. There was fear in the partner, knowing that to contact Aids was a death sentence and ostracism from their sexual partners.

At an orphanage overseas, we find that without the exceptional love of the care-givers, these orphaned children would be dead.

Some children were dumped on the streets by the single mums. If they were lucky and got picked up, they were saved. In other instances, abandoned babies could be eaten by hungry dogs.

Locally, in one of the new homes for ‘battered children, and teenaged mums in crises’, we try to provide them a shelter until the mum can complete her studies and learn her trade. I wondered. Was this a price of the freedom of sexual expression?

When my teenaged sons were growing up, my wife and I would reflect on the question ‘what if both of us died suddenly, who would look after them? What if they picked up bad moral values and would not listen to our counselling?’ My experiences in a public school helped me to guide my sons but like in my time, masturbation and homosexual behavior were not rare in the schools, though dating with the opposite sex was not frequent. We were free and unrestrained in what we wanted to do as long as we did not breach school discipline.

Family Life Society has its opponents. While it champions responsible parenthood, the sanctity of marriage, the sexual act within marriage, and the precious value of all human life (regardless of how weak that life is), it also actively discourages euthanasia in all forms, such as contraception (where sperms are killed), abortion (where life is intentionally terminated), and embryonic stem cell research (where the hapless human life is destroyed).

My sons are now responsible professionals. While we disagree from time to time, my wife and I still keep our traditional values.

The teenage sexually active school children here have been given an eye opener. It is now their choice.

Dr Gabriel Oon Chong Jin

Which was swiftly rebutted by 3 other letters:

Feb 9, 2006
SEX EDUCATION
Educators should not favour any religion

I REFER to the letters, ‘Sexuality workshop an eye-opener for teens’ (ST, Feb 7) from Dr Gabriel Oon Chong Jin and ‘Don’t resolve social issues dogmatically’ (ST, Feb 2) from Mr Harvey Neo Choong Tiong.

Both letters discuss the recently reported sexuality workshop.

As a student who has recently completed junior college and is now studying in university researching on Aids and sex education, I feel that sexuality workshops go against the very principles of education and are very rarely secular.

While these workshops conducted by third-party organisations have some good intentions in spreading values, it must be stressed that in our multi-racial and secular schools, we must not allow a singular religious voice to dictate the sex education syllabus.

Take, for example, the Family Life Society, which is a ‘resource body for family life groups in the Archdiocese of Singapore, helping individuals, couples and families to live and love as God intends’ (Singapore Catholic Church Directory, 2006).

It is hardly secular to begin with.

To educate against contraception and force students to write down on worksheets that contraception is bad goes against our secular system of using contraception for family planning and using contraception to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Furthermore, we cannot assume that every student listening to the lecture is of the Christian faith.

In a public secular school, where different students from different backgrounds mix, it is important that the educators do not preach or favour any religion.

While it is easy to claim that the talk given by such third party organisation is secular, at the end of the day these are just claims.

As a practising doctor of the Catholic Medical Guild & the Archdiocese Bioethics Council, Singapore, and Medical & Oncology Clinic, Mount Elizabeth Medical Center, Singapore, Dr Oon certainly has seen many cases of STDs.

It is very distressing to hear of the examples he cited, but it also struck me that if these children have known that contraception is highly effective against the transmission of STDs and Aids, then perhaps they might not have been infected in the first place.

To argue that the condom is not 100 per cent safe and abstinence is the best method is to me a non-statement.

Following similar logic, since seat-belts are not 100 per cent safe in preventing deaths in accidents, one should not drive cars at all.

While the values Family Life Society champions are not inherently wrong, if it steps on the boundary of being overtly religious and dogmatic, then maybe we must re-examine contracting religious groups to give sexuality workshops.

For example, human life is indeed precious (as championed by Family Life Society) and euthanasia, while a very debatable topic, can be seen from one angle as taking a life which is wrong (as championed by Family Life Society).

However, it is important to note that euthanasia refers to the taking of the life of a suffering patient.

I have two siblings. I teach my sister about sex and how she should not be having sex, and that is my personal value. I also teach her how to defend herself against men should they force her.

But at the same time, I teach her how to use a condom.

I teach her what are the dangers involving casual and unprotected sex.

Am I an irresponsible brother?

I do not think so.

In fact, I feel that by equipping her with such knowledge, she would be better able to fend for herself.

Unlike me, who came out of the education system knowing next to nothing about sex, and having to find out all the information that I hold today through research on journals and on the Internet, I think she would know better what to do, should the need ever arise.

Teng Kie Zin

Feb 9, 2006
Scare-mongering is counter-productive

IN HIS letter, ‘Sexuality workshop an eye-opener for teens’ (ST, Feb 7), Dr Gabriel Oon Chong Jin makes the point that promoting ‘traditional values of sexuality’ among sexually active youth is beneficial.

Dr Oon’s point, that traditional and non-secular values be used as a conduit for sex education and sexual health promotion, is inherently flawed.

The examples he gives, such as those with venereal diseases suffering painfully for their past acts, HIV patients facing ostracism, orphans abandoned by single parents, all illustrate the point that there is a need for more constructive, well-rounded sex education.

As a medical student today, I am taught, as he was, how diseases like syphilis, gonorrhoea and HIV/Aids cause great physical suffering.

However, I have also been shown that countering these problems involves medical ministering as well as a firm grasp of the ethical implications of treating those who might have differing beliefs from myself, and that a sense of reality must underpin all efforts, at all levels.

The reality is that sex education has been inconsistently and inadequately propagated in schools.

With the accessibility and attractiveness of the lifestyles depicted and promoted in the mass media and the rising levels of education in Singapore today, it is to be expected that a changing perspective on morality, marriage and sexuality has also evolved.

No longer will the average youth be happy with force-fed messages - that students find themselves irked by the Family Life Society’s faith-centred workshop is evidence of this.

What is needed is a message of sexual health that is all-encompassing in its reach, grounded in scientific and medical fact, systematically and consistently taught, and which seeks to embrace the reality that sex is a part of life.

Any programme which purports to do so while ignoring, or worse, condemning, what the civilised world has already accepted - condom usage, HIV and Aids sufferers, homosexuality and responsible stem-cell research, among others - cannot expect to succeed.

Youth-centred programmes in European countries, and even in South-east Asian states like Thailand, focus on responsibility and the ability of the individual to make rational decisions.

Anything less will only alienate those whom the authorities should seek to reach out to the most.

To want to give school- goers the choice of determining their own sexual health, and yet to support scaremongering and non-secular moralising in the context of a multiracial and multi-cultural education system and society, are contradictory and counter-productive.

Wong Chen Seong

Feb 9, 2006
Sex education should be objective and balanced

I WRITE in response to the letter, ‘Sexuality workshop an eye-opener for teens’ (ST, Feb 7) by Dr Gabriel Onn Chong Jin. He is grateful Family Life Society is bringing traditional values to the sexually active young.

Some values championed that were mentioned in his letter included responsible parenthood, the sanctity of marriage, the sexual act within marriage and the precious value of all human life and objection of euthanasia in all forms, such as abortion, contraception and embryonic stem cell research.

He went on to cite very relevant and compelling personal experiences about people with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and orphans to substantiate the importance of these values.

I am a pro-life proponent myself and I have completely no objections to the above values being propounded at a sexuality workshop in school.

But the issue is not, as perceived by Dr Onn, a tussle between traditional and non-traditional values. Many liberals too treasure life and respect marriage and family. The fundamental question to ask is whether the workshop has equipped our youth with enough knowledge on the various kinds of values and perception pertaining to sexuality in order to make informed choices on their own.

I am inclined to think this is not so.

Mr Andrew Kong, senior executive of Family Life Society, reported that they had given a disclaimer before the start of the workshop that students are free to agree or disagree with ideas at the workshop.

Is such a disclaimer enough, without exposing the students to ideas and arguments from proponents of abortion, contraception and condom use in the prevention of STDs?

Other earlier newspaper reports also showed false information was also given to students, for example, that condoms are not effective in preventing the spread of STDs, contrary to advice from World Health Organisation and UNAids.

The workshop also asked students, regardless of their personal conviction, to write down statements like ‘I must condemn masturbation and in-vitro fertilisation’.

What this clearly shows is a lack of balance in exposing our youth a variety of viewpoints regarding the issue of sexuality.

We need to ensure that content of such sexuality workshops is objective and balanced, so that our youth can exercise informed, responsible choices.
Felix Ser Cherk Yen

And a very funny email from AJC’s vice principal:

Your negative feedback on the vendor has arouse the press
interest on the college’s programme. The public will still focus on the
college and question the college why was this vendor chosen as if we are
not able to make a good decision and have done something wrong to our
students (because you all don’t benefit from the programme) . They did not
question other JCs but unfortunately AJC became the centre of focus.
Anyway, this is already history, I was just using this incident to explain
to you the impact of students’ comments on the blogs and how it could have
created unnecessary publicity which does not add value to the schools. My
point is, your complaints about the vendor on the blog is not the best way
to get any problem solved and you have noted that . Thanks

You are our students so of course we will not sue you to court for
damanging the reputation of the college and staff. Please read the news
paper on what has happened to Dr Chee and you should learn to be
responsible and not to take things for granted. The aim of eudcation is
not to equip you with the skills in return to harm those people who have
imparted skills to you.

Remember the Sexuality Education issues , even if more than
90% of our students found the session useful and they have no issues, but
because of the complaints that was posted on the blog (I believe you have
contributed to the blog), it has aroused so much publicity on the presss
with the public giving their comments and questioning the college. It was
also mentioned by the MOE officials during meetings etc. It has created
quite a negative impact on the college and the school leaders

I wonder who is the one who went to the press (to brag) in the first place? And is the school’s reputation more important than NOT providing misinformation to the students which would cause students to be guided by the wrong set of values for life?

I believe I did the right thing to give insight on this matter, hence saving future students from such non-secular sexuality talk. Do you?

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