AWARE Saga (Part 2)

The second of my 2 unselected letter to the Straits Times Forum

I refer to the ST Editorial on the recent MOE's suspension of the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme conducted by external vendors, particularly that by AWARE, and wish to highlight some of the misconceptions perpetuated by both AWARE and ST.

Firstly, post-65er parents like myself are not rubbishing the entire CSE syllabus as it currently stands nor are we advocating an abstinence-only syllabus for sexuality education. If this was the case, we would have objected to the teaching of condom use and the role playing training in teaching a teenage girl how to persuade her partner to put on a condom before sex. This is also to assure current AWARE president Dana Lam that we are “not going to bring sexual education back a couple of centuries”.

We recognised the importance of such teachings since, despite our best intentions and advice, our children faced real internal and peer pressures to keep up with current trends and fads. Our issue with the CSE syllabus, as advocated by AWARE, is their insistence on introducing value-loaded statements contrary to existing societal and moral norms such as “anal sex can be healthy or neutral if practised with consent and with a condom”, “pain ... becomes positive when there is mutual consent and pleasure” and “homosexuality is perfectly normal ... it's simply the way you are”.

Secondly, contrary to what AWARE and ST would want Singaporeans to take away, these statements are not merely references in the AWARE CSE trainer guide that are not communicated to the students. The quoted statements above came from the ice-breaking activity module where trainers are instructed to ask the students to categorise 20 sexuality terms as positive, neutral or negative. In fact, if the students are 12-13 years-old, the trainers “must take the lead in explaining the meaning of the terms used”. The level of flexibility the trainers have is best inferred from one of the interview questions posed to these trainers - “Do you feel comfortable presenting on material you don’t necessarily agree with?”.

As MOE reviews its internal vetting processes, it should also look into the track record of the external vendors providing such services to see if it conforms to existing societal norms. Beyond the actual CSE syllabus, AWARE's, as well as other external vendor's, continued participation in the schools' CSE programme would need to be scrutinised based on their espoused values, background and wider advocacy focus.