By Pr Isaiah T. White
Recently, the government of Uganda officially included sexuality education in its academic syllabus for schools. The Ministry of Education and Sports endorsed the Sexuality Education Framework on behalf of Uganda’s children. The inter-religious council and some individual Ugandans are not comfortable with the subject. However, the architects of this policy insist it is necessary our children be exposed to this information as early as possible. The opponents tell us how evil, but nothing about how good it is. The proponents also tell us how good this is, but nothing about the evil in it. Sexuality education is about informing pupils and students about the physical, biological, social, emotional, and spiritual dimension of their sex/gender. Fundamentally, sexuality education is about information, and since information is paramount in our generation, we can conclude that sexuality education in schools is a fundamental good. The question, however, is: is information always good and ignorance always bad? Do the evils due to ignorance about sexually surpass the good due to an informed mind on sexuality? Or, is the reverse is true? If pupils from Primary One to Primary Seven are ignorant about sexuality, is it safer than them being exposed to this kind of information? I don’t see how it affected my knowledge about sexuality (as an inquisitive kid) when my mother told me she birthed me and my siblings through her navel. Why does our modern world assume it is the first sexual generation? How come we did not have numerically the same STDs, early childhood and unwanted pregnancies, etc. as we have in the so-called information age? I think this is enforced into schools for two fundamental reasons:
1-The real modern parents are not the biological ones but the academic ones. And since most biological parents have little or no physical presence and relationship for their children, teachers who share the same geography and time with these students closely relate to them more than us, the visiting (visitation day) parents. In the end, teachers (academic parents) will most likely have the final say on our children’s sexuality.
2-The world is innovative and has become creative in all spheres of life and living. In sexuality, there is a new invention – homosexuality. This is new at least to most of our societies, especially in Uganda. One of the core values of sexuality education is respect to other’s right to bodily autonomy. Under this is an obligation to show dignity and respect for all people regardless of their sexual orientations or gender identity. Our children, from class one to university, are going to be indoctrinated with a lot of information about both heterosexuality and homosexuality. All this is engineered by the west and since our politics thrives and survives on their aid, we have to suffer the consequences of their aid, whatsoever. It is, therefore, incumbent on us to revive our parenting and become not just biological parents but also teachers to our children, as well. We must begin the system of home schooling and make sure we detoxicate our children from the venoms of this generation. We must be vigilant, informed and critical thinkers to objectively win an argument fostered by the devil in such syllabuses. Pastors and preachers must up their game and help parents and children. Teachers must be of good will and downplay the message in their presentation where they are not directly supervised. We need to pray and invoke God’s activeness in this whole matter.
