As you may have already heard or seen, these days, a matter that was always subjected to numerous controversies was once again brought to public attention. The matter in question refers to the development of life education programs in schools.  For that matter, at the beginning of April a new law stipulating the obligation to organize in schools, at least once every semester, programs on specific subjects was promulgated (Legea 45 din 3 aprilie 2020, pentru modificarea și completarea Legii nr. 272/2004 privind protecția și promovarea drepturilor copilului).

Obviously, this subject with a slightly ”sensitive” approach, divided society again and rose, beyond acceptance and support, reactions of opposition, resistance or partial disproof. Even though there are enough voices expressing their disapproval and their abstention concerning the promulgation of this law (if you are interested to find out more about the subject a simple internet search will do), we will only remind here BOR’s (Romanian Orthodox Church) opinion, which seems to be the most mentioned of them all.

The Institution expressed its concern on the negative impact that these life education programs could have on children’s development and proposes to rethink their compulsory character (For more details, click here: https://basilica.ro/patriarhia-romana-a-militat-pentru-caracterul-optional-in-scoli-al-orelor-de-educatie-pentru-viata/).  

Without taking sides and expressing a vehement point of view, we are anyway waiting for that moment when open discussions and acceptance could lead to finding a compromise concerning this subject. And this, beyond institutions and high-level polemics, but also at an individual and social level.

There are anyway a couple of aspects concerning life education that we consider important and that should thus be mentioned. One of them is the fact that life education is not limited to sexual education, but contains much more elementary concepts and information related to family and society life (respect towards the other, mutual help, rules to respect while dining), to rules one has to follow in order to prevent accidents (using the security belt in the car, using sharp objects), to personal hygiene (hand washing, teeth brushing), to changes happening to one’s body with age. It also helps us to be able to understand and accept these changes as being normal and gives us suggestions and solutions on how to deal with them by ourselves, calmly and efficiently.

Another important and pretty disquieting aspect is that many studies made by different organizations and statistics institutes, among which Eurostat, show that Romania is first in the European Union when it comes to adolescent mothers. We leave here a link towards an article on the site of Eurostat, but you can find on the internet many information and studies on this subject, some of them even more recent than the one mentioned here:

https://ec.europa.eu/romania/news/20170808_romania_cel_mai_mare_procent_de_mame_adolescente_din_ue_ro.

We don’t contest the fact that life education doesn’t also consist of aspects that maybe many children haven’t encountered yet and we don’t deny the ”delicate” character of some of them either. But we consider that, if all the implications and all the concrete information existing on life education and its connected subjects would be attentively analyzed, some efficient and impartial methods could be found, so as to treat certain subjects naturally, informatively and in a ”non-compromising” manner, in order to allow children to be able to extract the information they need and to also help adults learn how they could and how they should approach these ”sensitive” subjects in their discussions with the children.

This being said, a question remains: given that life education consists of a series of very important social and individual aspects, will a solution ever be found so as to reconcile everyone and help things move further in order to start seeing some concrete interventions?

We’re not here to contest anyone’s opinions, but only to expose them and to put things in balance, to reflect and to make you reflect on a subject that we believe should preoccupy all of us. Because, in the end, every one of us is free to form and sustain his point of view concerning this subject. Or any other subject for that matter!

A.M.  @WAM