Sex education can reduce crime

This is understandable given that our learnings are encoded as electrical and biochemical messages which have a significant influence on our behaviour. However, the speed and extent of technological change in the western hemisphere are producing challenges and problems which will not be solved with the retention of antiquated ideas, beliefs, and values.

A couple years ago the Minister of Education was forced to censor some textbooks because some prudes objected to pictures of nudity. Never mind that the textbooks were designed to expand anatomical knowledge and to help students make rational sex choices, and never mind that even young students in Canada and the US are learning far more and in greater detail about the human body and its functions, these vociferous prudes did not want their children to see pictures of the human body in the nude. Presumably, their sexual self-explorations would make for greater awareness.

If parents do not teach their children about sex and if the school is forbidden to do so, where do the young learn to control their sexual stirrings in a responsible way? Might this cultural prudery be a factor why so many girls become pregnant at an early age? Early pregnancy might be one way of getting the attention and love lacking in their lives. The young who become pregnant lack both the emotional, educational, moral, and financial resources to raise their offspring responsibly. Early parenthood goes hand in hand with poverty, frustration, incompetent parenting, a home environment not conducive to learning, and subsequent failure at school. Such home conditions are not necessarily the “cause” of subsequent criminal behaviour, but they certainly provide a fertile ground wherein individuals may negotiate an identity linked to crime. It follows that appropriate sex education can be a major factor in reducing crime in TT. It is also an imperative for living in any modern society.