Nowadays it is not difficult to find any information about the sexual life due to the Internet, TV programs and films. Besides there is a growing tendency and even a 10-year-old kid knows a lot about the sexual life or how babies are born.
I saw how babies are born on TV and asked my mum, she said it is not time for me to know but I guess I already know about,” says 10-year-old Mary from Tbilisi.
While there is a stereotype among the people in Georgia that the society doesn’t want to have sexual health classes at schools, the statistics show the opposite.
According to the last survey of National Democratic Institute (NDI) conducted in 2007, more than 70% of the Georgian population wants to have health education classes, including information related to sexual health and family formation at schools. There is a percentage disagreement in the capital, which is higher more than twice from that of rural areas of Georgia welcoming the idea of having such kind of classes at schools.
Nowadays it is not difficult to find any information about the sexual life due to the Internet, TV programs and films. Besides there is a growing tendency and even a 10-year-old kid knows a lot about the sexual life or how babies are born.
I saw how babies are born on TV and asked my mum, she said it is not time for me to know but I guess I already know about,” says 10-year-old Mary from Tbilisi.
While there is a stereotype among the people in Georgia that the society doesn’t want to have sexual health classes at schools, the statistics show the opposite.
According to the last survey of National Democratic Institute (NDI) conducted in 2007, more than 70% of the Georgian population wants to have health education classes, including information related to sexual health and family formation at schools. There is a percentage disagreement in the capital, which is higher more than twice from that of rural areas of Georgia welcoming the idea of having such kind of classes at schools.
The report of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shows that the main problem is the lack of information on reproductive health and other related issues. In most countries, the report found no universal or reliable sexuality education programs. The report finds two main reasons for these problems. The first reason is related to prevalence of a strong nationalist discourse like in Poland and Macedonia, the second one – to a strong influence of religion. And in this case Georgia is on the same list together with Macedonia and Poland.
“I have 2 daughters: one is 12, the other 13, but I still feel uncomfortable to speak to them about sexual health and life,” says Eka Gamkrelidze. This is one of the character features – “embarrassment” – of the post-Soviet parents have.
“First time, when the Ministry of Education discussed the issue of involving such kind of subject in the curriculum of schools, the parents were against,” says Georgi Andjaparidze, the principal of school N67. “But now a lot of things have changed, but there is another issue – how these classes should be conducted? Is there an adequate methodology? There are no yet answers to these issues. The school has its own strategy to keep the pupils far from the internet tempting websites via limiting and blocking the access to such kind of pages.”
Galaktin Tabidze, the biology teacher of school N51, says that now the program of Georgian education is expected to involve biology lessons twice during the educational cycle. The program includes several subjects – the 5th form pupils study “Only Nature”, the 6th form pupils – “Me and Nature”, the 7th and 8th form ones – the overall view of “Biology” , the 9th form pupils – “Anatomy” and the 10th form pupils go back to “Biology” and study the subject more detailed. All the basic information regarding sexual health is learnt about in the texbooks of Anatomy and Biology.
According to Ekaterina Slovenskaya, biology expert of the National Curriculum and Assessment Center (NCAC) of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, there is no separate subject for sexual health education yet. “Whenever we have standards’ check-up at schools, we discuss this issue again and again, but nowadays there is no special subject in any school of Georgia, though the school principals are free to choose whether to have separate classes for this subject or not,” says Ekaterina Slovenskaya.
However, mother of 2 daughters Eka Gamkrelidze agrees that the school needs to have classes on sexual health education. “Maybe it could be somehow connected with Anatomy lessons and provide not very detailed information,” says Eka. As a parent Eka is worried that TV programs, films and internet could have a bad influence on her daughters, and she would like to somehow protect them and perhaps relevant education at schools could be the very acceptable solution for her and her children.