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Child rights activists and educationists in Chennai, India, have slammed the 'Committee on Petitions' for its view on sex education in schools, a view that calls it regressive. The committee, which comprises members of the Indian parliament, has recommended that there should be no sex education in schools since "our country's social and cultural ethos are such that sex education has absolutely no place in it." "In our country, physiological changes and understanding the body have been mystified. To understand this, we need sex education. In a closed society where there is moral policing, such knowledge is again being mystified. We cannot withhold such information in today's world. It should be provided to children without any distortion," says P Krishnamoorthy, state head, development support, Child Rights and You. "I have two daughters who are 21 and 24," says Jyoti Swarup, who has been implementing for three years now the adult education programmes drawn by NCERT in schools, "and have seen them go through all stages. Speaking more as a parent than an educator, I feel sex education must be made compulsory in schools because children otherwise don't have the emotional intelligence and maturity to cope with the consequences of experiments relating to their sexuality that could go terribly awry sometimes." Many educationists say that children these days actively discuss sex, and so, they might as well discuss the right thing. A high school teacher in a government school refers to one of her students who conceived a few years ago when she was in Class IX. The girl was raped by her sister's husband and did not even know she was pregnant until after four months. "The child was traumatised by the incident and did not tell anybody about it. She didn't know that she could get pregnant after what happened. So, she had to carry the baby full-term and then put it up for adoption. Many of our students come from poor socio-economic backgrounds that require them to live in single-room houses where they are exposed to various things early. Such exposure is dangerous unless understood properly," she says. "It's because there's not much of education on this issue in schools that websites like ours thrive," says P Vishnucharan, a director of www.teenfrage.com, a website that provides counselling to teenagers. "We have at least 100 hits on our website a day, of which 20 per cent relate to sex. We have teenagers asking about contraceptive pills, about whether their future spouse would be able to find out whether they had sex earlier. Children have information, but it is usually half-baked. This generation is impatient and cannot wait a week for an agony aunt to answer questions. That is why such knowledge must be imparted in school. This is the reality and the sooner we wake up to it the better. With most households in the city having working parents, many children have easy access to television and the internet. That is how they are kept occupied. But what they have access to is not monitored," he explains. Vidya Reddy, executive director, Tulir Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, says, "Often in our work we come across parents and teachers who want their children and students to be protected against sexual abuse, but do not want to talk about matters as simple as naming the private parts. This silence lends strength to abusers who use it to their benefit, feeling comfortable in the knowledge that children won't talk about it and if they do, chances are they will be muted by adults. Tackling child sexual abuse proactively also means lifting the veil of silence from sexuality." Further information