“I believe that sex education will equip our students to understand its meaning rather than doing an experiment on it that may later result to teenage pregnancy,” Nenita Rodriguez, the principal-III of the Kidapawan City National High School, (KCNHS) said.
Rodriguez added that sex education, when properly taught to students, “would correct all sex myths among the teenagers.”
KCNHS has more than 5,000 students.
The principal said KCNHS teachers were already prepared and willing to teach sex education if the Department of Education would order its implementation.
“We have plenty of teachers who could handle the subject carefully since the topics are sensitive and might be misinterpreted by some of our students especially in the lower sections,” she said.
But the city’s biggest private school believes otherwise.
Brother Noel Fernandez, FMS, principal of the Notre Dame Kidapawan College –High School (NDKC-HS) said “teaching sex education is a responsibility of the parents and not of the school.”
“We support the CBCP’s (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines) stand pertaining to the issue. Sex education is a very sensitive issue that needs competent teachers to teach in relation to the subject,” Fernandez said.
But majority of the 3rd and 4th year students of NDKC favored the integration of sex education in the high school curriculum. Some of their students though, would agree to a sex education subject to be taught in their school.
Senior high school student, Carl Cagoco, a member of the Knights of the Altar of Our Lady Mediatrix of All Grace cathedral, said “sex education will help us to fully understand especially in the context of their identity crisis”.
“Since we were young, most of us were taught the wrong notion regarding sex issues. For instance instead of saying the right terms of our sex organs, our parents used birds and flowers,” Cagoco said.
Cagoco said that if his school would not implement sex education, he would respect and follow the stand of the religious Marist brothers. The Marists run the school. (Williamor A. Magbanua/MindaNews)