ZAMBIA: Catholic Bishops in Zambia Call for Review of Sexuality Education Materials
Mwenya Mukuka
Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB) says Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) materials in the current form cannot be taught in Catholic Schools.
Recently, pictures emerged on social media allegedly extracted from the yet to be introduced school text books on Comprehensive Sexuality Education. The pictures showed families of same sex marriage.
The ZCCB National Education Secretary Fr. Leonard Namuhuma says the Catholic church holds on the biblical understanding of family as designed by God and its definition of a family ‘as those of the same household, the pairing of a man and a woman, along with their children.
He explained the other five well known types of families as nuclear, single-parent families, extended families, childless families, stepfamilies and grandparent families.
Fr. Namuhumba said the text books need to be revised so that there is the right material for the right age.
Fr. Namuhumba added that the books that have been published do not stress the role and place of cultural and Christian values on family, marriage, sex and sexuality.
“Sex and sexuality education need to be contextualized in such a way that only the right material is given to the appropriate age group unlike a situation where pupils are being exposed to unnecessary information,” he said
The ZCCB National Education Secretary further explained that the Catholic teaching on family structure, gender and family life is not by human design, a reason it cannot be changed.
He revealed that ZCCB submitted a number of suggestions to the Ministry of Education which included careful consideration of teaching of children in matters of sexuality in social, cultural, religious and political contexts as the issue has been a challenge.
He said while the curriculum is well intended, and has always been taught in carrier subjects, the framework and all the learners’ books must be re-packaged and made age appropriate, and introduced diligently and gradually.
“Care must be taken not to sexualize the children which may lead to moral degradation of the learners and allow room for perverts to take advantage of the created ‘fertile’ mind to abuse them. All efforts must be made to protect the cultural, traditional and religious fibre of our society,” Fr. Namuhumba said.
The Ministry of Education (MoE), through its Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) with the support from UNESCO and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) has produced a curriculum in life skills that focuses on the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE).
The curriculum framework was developed to enrich the provision of Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education (RHSE). In its introductory comments of the framework, the MoE explains that this curriculum framework was prompted by data from research indicating high alarming numbers of school dropouts due to pregnancies.
The Catholic Church teaches that a family naturally springs from marriage of man and woman. And this marriage is “ordered to the procreation and education of children.”
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