Singapore has a problem with sex – and it’s embarrassing.

Imagine the excitement of a 14 year-old kid after learning that you’re going to have to attend sex education classes in school. Finally, you’re going to have the “birds and the bees talk” you’ve never had. Then imagine going for 2 years’ worth of sex and moral education lessons and all you learnt was abstinence – the ‘A’ word was the key to happiness, the root of all things pleasant and apparently the only way to avoid pregnancy.

My country deals with sex ed in alarmingly problematic ways. In 2014, a Singaporean student made headlines when she divulged an open letter to her principal after a sex ed workshop, revealing photos of the workshop’s material and describing how the organisation responsible was overly conservative and that they tacitly made allowances for sexism and rape culture.

When I think of sex ed, I think of a video that was played to my entire cohort during one of our assembly sessions. One of the scenes from the skit showed a young Singaporean teen named Sally sobbing to her friend about how she hadn’t gotten her period in 2 months. She had sex and of course, got pregnant. Shame on her, that Sally. 

The video ended after she found out she was pregnant and faded to black with the words, “Abstinence is key” flashed in bold across the screen. The message of the video was loud and clear, do not have premarital sex or you will get pregnant and your life will be ruined. There was no mention of the actual act of sexual intercourse, nothing about consent or the types of contraceptive methods that were or were not used.

Further, any mention of homosexuality under the sex education curriculum, if any, is followed by “legal provisions concerning homosexual acts in Singapore”. Teachers are also discouraged to speak about – let alone speak up for – these “controversial issues”.

In my opinion, Singapore’s abstinence-based sex ed has the potential to cause more harm than good. The fact of the matter is, teens are going to have sex whether you tell them to practice abstinence or not. We have to accept that in this day and age, we can’t tell teens with their raging hormones and whatnot that abstinence is key and call it a day anymore. 

According to the Ministry of Health in Singapore, there has been a decline in the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions performed on teenagers over the years. However, it has been reported that this is certainly not because fewer teens are having sex but instead due to the fact that today’s teenagers are just smarter about preventing pregnancy. This is why educating our youths about all aspects of sex can only be advantageous.

By doing so, we are empowering our youths and educating them on the decisions they can make regarding relationships and their sexual health. If my country is truly lacking the capacity to distinguish between safe sex education and endorsement to have sex, then our education system – allegedly one of the best in the world – is overlooking a deeper failure than mere ineffective sex ed classes.