Condoms in schools

Martin Henry, Contributor

Two angry single mothers confront their teenage daughters. The first mother: "Siyah, gyal, a ooman yu waan tun pan mi een yah. Whey mek yuh a look fi tek man?" Her own first pregnancy was around the same age.

The second mother is more physical. She holds her daughter down, flings her legs open and rips from her body the contraceptive coil the pikni has had inserted 'behin' har back'. This is not made up. "Yuh fi breed fi di man." The mother has 'sold' the pikni to a much older man in exchange for him looking after them, and believes a child for him will cement the deal.

Into this sexual morass bordered by these two live cases, should condoms be made available in schools?

The minister of education says no (for the moment). Public opinion is divided. And nowhere more so than among school guidance counsellors on the front line, as The Gleaner's informal survey carried last Sunday highlights.

Depending on whose data you are reading, the average age of first sex is now around 14 years for girls and a year older for boys. But legal childhood does not end before age 18. And to complicate matters, the legal age of consent is 16. But the pikni dem a dweet anyway and they may need assistance to reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including the deadly AIDS.

A lot of the discussion is framed as if the situation is of recent vintage, with declining sexual standards. Statistical documentation may be better, but cultural patterns remain stubbornly stable. In another age, not so long ago, when secondary education was not universal, young people 'up out' of elementary school at age 15 and very soon thereafter would begin their first open relationship with parental consent, or at least no objection.

This was typically a visiting relationship, girls usually with somewhat older men. And usually they were not starting from scratch! This age-old pattern can be checked quite easily by asking older Jamaicans at what age their mother had her firstborn. If anything, teenage motherhood is trending down, as is the fertility rate.

The pattern of early mating starting with puberty, going through sequential visiting relationships and ending up with a stable common-law union later in life with children of multiple parentage, is deeply entrenched in the 'kulcha'. Extended schooling may simply be getting in the way of this way of life, which, by the way, is one of the major handicaps to the advancement of the country. The way of life, that is. And the pikni dem are not about to be hampered by education in their living out the culture.

STRIKING A BALANCE

The condom proponents, or at least accepters, are basically capitulating to the status quo. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Let's cut down on the pregnancies and STIs. So, the reverend guidance counsellor at Norman Manley High, Dwayne Gordon, can tell The Sunday Gleaner, students are going to have sex. It is not rocket science. If the ministry OKs distribution of condoms, I will do it. "Abstinence is the best way, but if these students are so highly exposed to sex, we must take a practical approach" - i.e., the condom-distribution approach.

Condoms in schools will still have to struggle with at least two other cultural sex factors: the impulsiveness of teen sex and the significant but underdiscussed role of coercion in first intercourse.

Now if youngsters can be taught to control impulse and in disciplined fashion to always have condom at the ready and pause to put it on, and boys/young men are taught to give up on coercion, perhaps the same approaches could be used to teach the discipline of abstinence.

Another deeply entrenched cultural factor, among the poor and least able in particular, is childbearing as a badge of honour for both babymother and the often absentee babyfather. The average age of first delivery for women in the 15-49 age group is 21. But an old lady of 19 or 20 without a child in some quarters is a mule.

MORALISTIC POSITION

The
condom-in-school opponents, like the reverend minister and some of his
guidance counsellors, tend to take the moralistic position. They
conveniently forget that the ideals of Christian sexual ethics and
marriage have never ever taken root in Jamaica, much less to flourish
here. There has been no better age of sexual conduct. The pattern has
been early initiation; multiple partners, sometimes sequential but often
enough concurrent; a general disdain for marriage; and children merely
as a by-product of seeking sexual gratification. There may be more data
and less discreetness now, but nothing has fundamentally changed,
really.

Not distributing condoms in schools cannot
preserve what has never been.

If we go beyond the
moral conundrum, there remain substantial practical problems for making
condoms available in schools. Minister Thwaites is quite right: "School
is not a romping shop." Furthermore, the law has prescribed an age of
consent of 16, and facilitating students having sex below that age is
plain unlawful. But then again, the law need not be a shackle. Virtually
all the students in schools up to grade 13 (upper sixth form) are under
age 18 and are, therefore, children, by United Nations prescription to
which Jamaica has signed on.

To further complicate
matters, a person must be a least 17 years old (still a child by one
year) before they can marry without parental consent! We already have a
big problem of legal rationality with an age of consent below the age
when childhood officially ends. Facilitating children to have sex
against the law and through a state facility (the school) not designed
for that purpose can only aggravate the problem.

The
age of consent, as irrationally determined as it is, may have to be
abolished. The paedophiles are impatiently waiting for lawful access to
younger and younger children. There was even a political party in
Denmark, if I recall correctly, whose central platform plank was
advocating for the sexual rights of children and having an age of
consent abolished.

So, perhaps we should just set the
age of consent at the average age for the onset of puberty and let
biology determine readiness for sex as it does for the animals. Indeed,
this has been a widespread practice across cultures historically,
including the culture out of which Christianity emerged. The Christ
Child Himself is thought to be the child of a late teenage
mother.

But in recent times, the age for the onset of
puberty has dropped dramatically from late teens to early teens, and
even earlier, and is now nicely coinciding with the age for the Grade
Six Achievement Test and entry to secondary school.

A
huge problem arising from condoms in schools will be how that little
rubber wrapper, officially distributed, will mek the pikni dem bruk out.
Sex has long been a tacit line of separation between childhood and
adulthood, between children and adults. Cultures have used all kinds of
other markers. For men: hunting, smoking, drinking, and, in an earlier
Jamaican age, even whistling.

BREAKING DOWN
AUTHORITY

Fly high, fly low, condoms in schools can
only further break down adult authority in a school environment that is
already rife with indiscipline and disorder, obstructing the proper
functions of school as a place of teaching and learning. To an
extraordinary degree, which members of the public not in direct contact
with schools may not understand, a large number of children in school
have little or no real interest in the real business of school. They are
serving time, and while waiting to escape occupy themselves with
diversions, including sex. And condoms officially distributed
sanctioning that sex can only aggravate that
problem.

But proponents of condoms in schools are in
good company. As long as they understand that distribution must be for
homosexual sex as well as heterosexual sex, never mind that other
law.

A story carried by The
Gleaner's Flair Magazine last Monday,
'Health officials launch sex-ed app', reports that "as part of a
campaign against teen pregnancy, New York City health officials are
promoting a smartphone app that will help teenagers locate free clinics
that can answer questions about sex, prescribe birth control, test for
sexually transmitted diseases or even provide an
abortion.

"The Teens in NYC -
protection mobile app," the story says … "is
expressly intended to let teenagers get information about reproductive
health services confidentially, without having to go through an adult.
'Teens in NYC have the right to sexual health services without getting
permission from parents, girlfriends/boyfriends or anyone else,' the
application says on its welcome screen."

But
where do we stop? The Obama administration was the same time last week
scrambling to retain age restrictions on access to a morning-after
contraceptive pill.

Another story carried by this
newspaper, 'Gov't files morning-after pill appeal', says, "The
Obama administration [has] filed a last-minute appeal to delay the sale
of the morning-after contraceptive pill to girls of any age without a
prescription.

"The legal paperwork
asked the second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan to postpone a
federal judge's ruling that eliminated age limits on the pill while the
government appeals that overall
decision.

"US District Court Judge
Edward Korman had ordered that the levonorgestrel-based emergency
contraceptives be made available without prescription and without age
restrictions."

With condoms, we here in
Jamaica must not fail to progress to having schools arranging abortion
services, preferably right in the school clinic, for those who failed to
get covered and got caught. But then there might very well be a low
demand for abortion services as schoolgirls proudly opt to keep their
trophy babies whom grandma, herself a single mother, will raise in true
Jamaican stylee to become another teenage single mother or absentee
babyfather.

Martin Henry is a communication
specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and
medhen@gmail.com.