CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Sex education is a crucial component of health education curriculum. It gives factual knowledge to enable parents and teachers, children and adolescents to prevent sex related problems (Kumar et al., 2017). The information also includes strategies of helping children develop self-respect, sexual understanding, identify the ideals of interpersonal interactions and enhance communication skills in sex and education. This fosters a healthful and steady sex life. It is important for parents and teachers to obtain scientific, social, and psychological knowledge of the necessity for sex education (Guzzo and Hayford, 2018). The sexual revolutions among current youngsters suggest sex education as an important for teenagers that should be safeguarded from the detrimental impacts of aberrant sexual practices.
Sex education is essentially the systematic effort to create healthy knowledge in the person on issues of his or her growth, functioning, behavior, and attitude via direct instruction (Mobredi et al., 2017). Most individuals don’t like to speak about sex since it’s a taboo subject. Nigerian parents believe that their children would learn about sex as they grow up. Even the teenage kid is kept out of sight when parents are addressing sex problems in the household (de Castro et al., 2018). Inquisitive children who ask inquiries about sex are considered “bad” children by society. Discussion of sexual problems is forbidden in many cultures and households. This is the main reason why most parents find it difficult and unpleasant to address sex-related topics with their kids (Ngabaza and Shefer, 2019). You may be in trouble for saying anything about a sexual organ or act to your children. When infants play with their genital organs, even their hands get slapped. Youth in the nation learn about sexuality in a variety of methods during adolescence, sometimes lacking of real and empirical knowledge as well as being taught in secret (Engelen et al., 2020).
Sex education begins at an early age for children via family and friends, elders and movies as well as artwork. ‘In the streets,’ said a 14-year-old kid when asked where he learnt about sex from. On the question of where he had acquired it, he said that “part of it I learnt from playboy and some from sex mags”. Was he going to school, someone asked him? They speak about cleanliness, but there isn’t much that can assist you out, he said. When questioned about his parents’ involvement, he said, “They have not told me anything” (Mobredi et al., 2017). When asked about adolescent physical changes in a comparable poll published in the Population Report (2015), seventy-five percent said they preferred to talk about it with their friends. In many poor nations, teenagers seldom discuss detailed sexual issues with their parents because of a cultural taboo that prevents them from doing so openly. It’s not uncommon for them to rely on ignorant or wrongly informed peers of the same gender to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. For example, experimenting is used to learn more about a person’s sexual development. When it comes to sexual education, there are two opposing schools of thought that have emerged (Utibe, 2017). It has attracted the attention of policy leaders and governments across the globe, religious organizations, parents, and even young children. As a result of the seeming devastation caused by unplanned sexual behavior, many have advocated for its inclusion. Children’s interest in the opposing gender increases as they enter puberty (Utibe, 2017). When an adolescent is young, he or she develops a sexual desire that drives them to pet, kiss, and control the sex organ, among other things. Sexual curiosity and experimentation, which may lead to teenage pregnancy or STI (sexually transmitted infections), are common during this period of adolescence.
