Parents’ associations yesterday criticized several junior-high and high school sex education textbooks for including “inappropriate and misleading” information about sex and gender issues.
The National Alliance of Presidents of Parents’ Associations and several local parents’ associations have rated junior-high and high school sex education textbooks for the spring semester based on whether the content meets students’ age-specific needs.
The health and nursing textbook for high-school students published by Yuida received the lowest score, mainly for introducing “diversified conceptions of gender” and a section on sex videos, association standing director Yang Chun-tsu (楊郡慈) said.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
The section features a picture of US celebrity Paris Hilton on the cover of Elle magazine, with a caption that reads: “While a US artist has become extremely famous because of her leaked sex video, a Hong Kong artist’s leaked selfies caused great controversy among the Chinese-speaking community.”
The section also asks students to express their views on whether it is a good idea to film themselves having sex and explains the legal consequences of distributing sex videos.
Two other health and nursing textbooks for high-school students, published by Yuida and Youth, were criticized for including a link to the Web site of National Central University’s (NCU) Center for the Study of Sexualities.
The Web site contains information about necrophilia, zoophilia, sadomasochism and group sex, said Wang Li-sheng (王立昇), who heads the association’s think tank.
“Those things are not normal and many of us do not even know what they are. Why should our kids be given that information? It could be misleading,” he said.
The Web site has several databases containing research on a wide range of subjects related to sexuality, as well as sex education material designed for teenagers.
Parents also called for removing a sentence in Han Lin Publishing’s health and physical education textbook for eighth-grade students that says sexual needs should be satisfied on condition of mutual respect, mutual consent and without hurting others.
“The sentence is inappropriate because the legal age for sexual intercourse is 16,” Wang said.
NCU honorary professor and convener of the Center for the Study of Sexualities Josephine Ho (何春蕤), who founded the Web site, said the parents’ associations appeared to have merely scanned through the Web site without truly understanding the content and its context.
“What kind of examples are parents setting for their kids when they are uninterested in knowledge and choose to ignore social realities?” she asked, adding that high-school students are almost adults, and maintaining a closed and obscurantist approach to any knowledge about sex could be a huge problem.
“Are parents not worried that kids might try to force or hurt others to satisfy their own sexual needs if they never learned the importance of mutual consent and respect in sex when they were in school?” she asked.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
COVID-19 infections have climbed for three consecutive weeks and are likely to reach another peak between next month and June, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. Weekly hospital visits for the disease increased by 19 percent from the previous week, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said. From Tuesday last week to yesterday, 21 cases of severe COVID-19 and seven deaths were confirmed, and from Sept. 1 last year to yesterday, there were 600 cases and 129 deaths, he said. From Oct. 1 last year to yesterday, 95.9 percent of the severe cases and 96.7 percent of the deaths
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
RSS