EDUCATION-MEXICO: Sex-Education Classes in Elementary Schools

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Pilar Franco

MEXICO CITY, Aug 10 1999 (IPS) - Sex education will be part of the curriculum at Mexican elementary schools when students return to the classroom Aug 23 – ending a six-year debate on the content of teaching manuals to be used for sixth grade pupils.

Conservative groups fought a lengthy battle to prevent sex education, despite the figures produced by family-planning advocates that 500,000 Mexican women under the age of 20 become pregnant each year – 380,000 of whom produced a child while the other 120,000 lost their babies through abortion or birth-related complications.

The non-governmental Mexican Foundation for Family Planning, criticized by conservative sectors for offering contraceptives to adolescents, further calculates that between 300,000 and 600,000 women of all ages have clandestine abortions each year.

The government-run National Health System says four women of all ages die every day in this country from maternity-related causes, 40 percent of whom die from the consequences of induced abortion.

Boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 13 – guided by their teachers and a new manual titled “Natural Sciences and Human Development” – 2.8 million copies of which have been printed – will now be able to better understand sexual relations and their consequences.

School pupils will learn how condoms are used as an alternative to avoid infection of the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Students, however, will not receive information about other methods of contraception.

Since 1983, according to official data, 36,5000 cases of AIDS have been registered in Mexico; an estimated 200,000 people live with the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS.

Secretary of Public Education, Miguel Limon, says that teachers will explain to their students all about sexual relations and their consequences, including unwanted pregnancy and sexual-abuse situations.

Limon explains that contraceptives and abortion are not specifically dealt with in the manual because “from a teaching point of view” it is not desirable “for a book to delve too deeply into such broad subject matters, which will later be taught in high school.”

The text of the manual notes: “Those who do not wish to have children, or who want to space the birth between one child and another, rely on different methods, known as contraceptives, that prevent the occurrence of pregnancy.”

“These methods are available free of charge in Mexico at health clinics, but each individual must decide if he-she wants to resort to them or not; and if so, which of the methods to be used, for they all have advantages and disadvantages,” the manual adds.

Featuring the images of Mexican movie and TV stars such as Eduardo Palomo and Arcelia Ramirez, the book’s message is that “machismo must disappear…not only is it contrary to equality, but it is frequently the origin of aggression and violence toward women.”

Breaking with the traditional concept of the family, the text explains that there are cases “of fathers and mothers that live alone with their children because of the death of a parent or separation or abandonment or simply because of personal decisions.”

Limon stated that the new material’s greatest contribution is that it promotes values and a culture of prevention while it helps students through the changes that occur during adolescence.

The content of the manual was considered by representatives of parent, teacher, business and Church organizations with the Constitutional principle of secular education in mind.

Nevertheless, Limon said he is prepared to face the challenges of conservative groups, for “extreme positions, in one way or another,” are incorporated in the book.

Diverse organizations, led by the conservative group Pro-Vida (Pro-Life), have expressed their categorical rejection of the idea of sex education in schools.

The presentation of the natural sciences manual is the last phase in this year’s Free Textbook Renovation Program, which will provide elementary students with 33 new titles.

A total of some 160 million new Spanish, history, geography, mathematics and natural sciences textbooks – for 1st-6th grade students – will be distributed to more than 183,000 schools in Mexico.

The Citizens’ Observatory of Education, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), emphasizes that the far-reaching production of these books “represents an unparalleled achievement in the world.”

The free-textbook initiative has made a “fundamental yet insufficient” contribution to education. The NGO points out new trends in education that call for the inclusion of other materials and resources by the next century.

At the end of the 1980s, when President Ernesto Zedillo was the secretary of Public Education, thousands of history books were removed from school shelves following a furious debate among academics, intellectuals, politicians and even military leaders about the presentation of certain national heroes. (FIN-IPS-pf-mj-ed he hd pr-da-mk-99)