PD classes causing more harm than good

SINCE the introduction of the education reform in the 1990s, our secondary school teachers have been teaching an academic subject called personal development.
After implementing the government’s education policy for over two decades, the policy implementers on the ground are now saying that the teaching of this particular subject is causing more harm than good in our youngsters.
The policy makers and education planners should scrape this particular subject off the curriculum altogether.
The teaching of this particular subject has been found to be causing an upsurge in sexual activity among young secondary students.
Every year a good number of teenage girls in our secondary schools are becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
Our teachers have been teaching PD in the classrooms for over 20 years now.
And the outcomes which we have intended to achieve have now become very apparent.
No one understands this scenario better than the teachers.
We are creating a generation of youngsters whose appetite for sexual indulgence has totally spiralled out of control.
Our secondary teachers are teaching sex education in the classrooms and calling names of private body parts in the presence of teenage girls and boys.
They sometimes use diagrams depicting male and female private body parts.
Making mention of a female or a male’s private body parts has always been a taboo subject in our traditional Melanesian society.
The more we talk about these things in the classrooms, we are stimulating rather than inhibiting or suppressing a youngster’s particular biological drive.
Let me also tell you something from a psychological point of view.
If you continually expose a teenager to sexual materials, you are going to cause a significant shift in their psychology and emotion.
It has been found that consistent teaching and exposure ultimately result in an upward surge in sexual feeling and excitement.
Given the fact that these youngsters are at a stage when their sexual drive is quite high, it is better to circumvent the topic rather than teaching it explicitly in the classrooms.
We come from a culture in which certain words with sexual connotations are not supposed to be explicitly mentioned during formal as well as casual conversations.
As an adult inculcated and mentored in the ways of my noble Melanesian tradition, I simply cannot make explicit mention of a person’s private body parts in the presence of my grown children.
Young people, regardless of their ethnicity or cultural background, are biologically predisposed to learn most if not all of the necessary and acceptable life skills over time.
They learn so many things outside of the classroom.
The classroom is not the only place in which we teach a child all the necessary life skills.
Youngsters can learn so many things in their homes.
They can also learn interpersonal skills as they grow up and naturally interact with other humans in their respective communities.
Most importantly, our children are also taught sound moral principles and values in our Christian Churches.
Paul Waugla Wii