IT?IS?NOT?SO?SURPRISING that the majority among NATIONNews.com readers polled are of the view condoms in school might not be so bad an idea after all.
Grounded on 52.63 per cent for versus 47.37 per cent against, the odds favoured contribution at school as “part of the battle against the spread of HIV/AIDS”.
It is not that surprising because, for one thing, it is the least difficult of tasks. Still, worrying is the ready acquiescence of those adults to the suggestion from regional educator Virginia Albert-Poyotte of St Lucia.
Said Ms Albert-Poyotte: “We are promoting abstinence as best as we can, but given the situation with our young people, it is one thing to preach, but another thing to practise; and therefore we have to give them the alternative, which is the use of condoms.”
Nonetheless, the educator holds the view students should “be encouraged to stay away from sexual activity”.
And therein lies the rub. How does one encourage a pupil or student to abstain from sex, if it is being bandied about, to the best of the student’s knowledge, that there is opportunity for a condom pickup – at his convenience, at school?
Online readers on NATION?TALKBACK weigh in about the same percentage as above on this most controversial matter. Apart from the side who would have nothing to do with condoms in school, the gentle majority it seemed could live with the condom distribution, but insisted on structured school classes, with sessions in sex education.
This potpourri of suggested solutions will hardly have the desired effect Ms Albert-Poyotte and some of our online friends so glibly speak of.
At worst, this virtually guaranteed protection from HIV/AIDS infection by condomizing will do nothing for abstinence; at best, it is a cop-out for teachers, parents and guardians who have not the ability, temperament or will to so influence their charges that they do not go astray.
We must not and cannot throw our hands in the air, believing, as one onliner said, that “whether or not we want [students] to have sex, they are going to” anyhow.
Official response to the Virginia Albert-Poyotte idea has been slow in coming, but at least Antigua and Barbuda’s Minister of Education Dr Jacqui Quinn-Leandro has already made it clear condoms in school will not be any part of policy there. Hurrah!
We must set store by producing school graduates of wholesome minds and deeds in our little neck of the woods.