To What Extent Does Sex Education Exert Impact on Teenagers in Hong Kong

Getting married, want to get pregnant, take care for their child… those are the steps of a normal life cycle that everyone should be looking forward to or experiencing. Thus, there should be so much joy to getting pregnancy if a married couple is expecting to have a new member into their family. Although a married couple is not wish to getting pregnancy, a normal sexual activity is still enjoyable for both of them.

In the old Chinese society, most of the people were start to having the sexual activity after they were married because there may not know what sexual intercourse is as there are lack of educations. As the technology improved, people may easier to get that related information from the web or others. It might be one of the fact leads people try to experience sexual intercourse before marry and even in underage. In the current Hong Kong society, this is not uncommon that there is an underage pregnancy victim in primary and secondary school. Most of the underage pregnancy victims are not know the right way to handle it. According to Mother’s Choice, there is around 1000 expectant mothers that age fewer than 18 to seek for help in 2008, which was increase 40% from the previous year. As there is a lack of sex education implements in primary and secondary schools, the number of underage pregnancy increases.

Literature Review

Lack of sex education will leads to a number of negative effect. One of the main effects is underage pregnancy. In 2007, there are 134 people who were give birth and 327 people who did a legal abortion in aged under 18 (DHHK, 2007).In 2008, there are around 1000 expectant mothers that age under 18 to seek for help, which was increase 40% from the previous year (Mother’s Choice, 2008). One of the main reasons that lack of sex education leads to underage pregnancy is the underage does not know the right way to contraception. Nearly thirty percents of people who were know how to use a condom after aged 21 (Zi Teng, 2010). Also, most of the people in Hong Kong do not know the other way to contraception and disease prevention rather than using condom (Zi Teng, 2010).

In this case, over eighty percents of people think that it is important for schools to provide sex education for children (CUHK, 2008). Also, over seventy percents of people support to make sex education to be an individual compulsory subject in primary and secondary school (CUHK, 2008).

Lack of Sex Education

Although Hong Kong government states that they has set up a well organized plan of sex education which will be held in preschool, primary school and secondary school, there still have a large number of cases which is about underage pregnancy. One of the main reason is sex education in Hong Kong is not an individual compulsory subject for all primary and secondary students. There are usually combine with other subjects such as General Studies in primary school, Ethics and Religious Studies in secondary school. The teachers who are teaching those subjects are not well trained on sex education and they may not have enough knowledge for teaching the right attitude of sexual activities to their students.

Taboo of Sex

In the Chinese society, there is always having a taboo of talking about sex.

It might be possible for teachers to avoid those topics or just sketchy talk about those topics. According to Cheung Kin-Tai, the chairperson of Okamoto (Hong Kong) Limited Company says that one of their employees was brought a condom to his school for supporting his essay topic ‘My First Time’ while his , his teacher was gave him a major demerit. Some of the school realized that there is lack of sex educations, so they will invite some organizations such as The Family Planning Association of Hong Kong, Mother’s Choice, etc. to held a number of sex education talks regularly to their students; however, Prof. Ng Man-Lun, a sex therapist, think that most of the schools are still taboo on sex education and the talks which be held in a school hall will create some barrier for students to learn from the talk, ‘the presenter is having a long distance with students for teaching how to use condom and students may not have a chance to touch it, or even watch it clearly, so how can they learn to use it? ’

Lack of Sex Education Outcome

As the resources of putting onto sex education is not enough and the education plan was out of dated, it may leads to affect the attitude of students on sexual activities. According to the survey which was be held by Zi Teng and Okamoto (Hong Kong) Limited Company in 2010, it stated that only one third of the interviewees learn what condom is from the school. Also, 27.

4% of the interviewees know how to use condom after aged 21 and some of the interviewees know how to use condom when they are aged 60. Moreover, one of the questions asked the interviewees how to contraception or disease prevention rather than using condom and the answers from the interviewees were including stop sexual intercourse, other activities instead of sexual intercourse such as kiss, masturbation, etc. In addition, a number of interviewees think that using condom is not the right way to show their love to their partner and some of them think using condom while sexual intercourse is showing their distrust to their partner.

Suggestion

To decrease the number of underage pregnancy, there should have a number of improvements on sex education. In my suggestions, firstly, the Hong Kong government should make sex education as an individual compulsory subject in both primary and secondary school. According to a public survey which conducted by CUHK Social Work Department in 2008, there is 70. 1% interviewees support it to be a compulsory course in primary school and secondary school.

Also, the Hong Kong government and schools should place more resources on educate teachers about sex educations so it may leads them to give out accurate information and teaching right attitudes to students on this topic. Moreover, schools should cooperate with the related organizations to hold a number of talks in a small group of students which should cover different areas such as contraception, puberty, etc. so students may feel easier to learn from the talks. Finally, educate a child is a cooperation between school and family. In this case, schools should hold some sex education talks to parents so parents can have the ability to educate their child during the family time.