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The class of 11-year-olds became restless when the word "penis" was written on the blackboard. Some pupils burst into laughter and others lowered their heads as a red-faced boy was requested to stand up and read it aloud.
This was what happened in the first sex education class for about 50 fourth-graders at a primary school in Chongqing Municipality in the southwest.
"The class aims to help the children know more about their bodies and learn to protect themselves later on in life," said Dai Jingxi, the 28-year-old teacher.
Dai's class, one of the first taught in Chongqing, has been held amid nationwide endeavors to end children's ignorance of the issue.
Early in 2002, the country's first textbook on sex education was published and put into use at primary and secondary schools in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast.
Also, China's Family Planning Association has carried out extensive cooperation with a United States-based health organization to promote sex education among teenage students.
In the past, most children got only evasive responses or even a scolding for "embarrassing" questions, such as "How was I brought into this world?" and "What are the differences between men and women?"
Some parents would simply say, "Mom picked you up on the road," while others would not answer at all, taking it for granted that the children would learn about it themselves when they came of age.
Chapters on sex in physiological textbooks for junior high schools were always assigned for self-reading as most teachers felt too shy to touch upon the subject.
Today, however, confronted with the constant questions by inquisitive youngsters, the conservative, self-conscious Chinese -- for whom discussion of sex has traditionally been a taboo -- have finally started to confront the topic.
"The move represents a social progress," said Liao Wensheng, an expert on juvenile education.
But the move was by no means easy.
"The teacher must have the right attitude toward the issue to begin with," said Ms. Lan, a school doctor in Chongqing and one of the first primary school teachers to teach sex education.
"You cannot enlighten the students if you yourself feel shy."
"Even the textbook took many students by surprise -- they thought the teacher had presented them with a porn book," recalled an editor with Chongqing University Press, publisher of a textbook on sex education recently compiled in the municipality.
"The children have obviously inherited their elders' prejudice against the issue."
The textbook contains many color cartoons.
The editor said he had taken great pains in persuading the artists to draw genitals. "Three of them bluntly refused to do the job."
(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2003)
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