Incorporating sex education in the national syllabus must not be looked at in a moralising way but rather in a way that empowers children and teenagers, Teo Lee Ken said.

The Muda vice-president said teachers too must be taught how to convey these lessons to students.

“Sex education is not only the act of having sex; it’s also tied to larger social sciences and humanities issues like violence, power relations, dignity, and respect,” Teo told The Malaysian Insight.

“The conversations that we have today are very narrow-minded and moralistic, or coloured by race and religion.

Teo said fewer conversations take place on the topics of violence and gender equality, adding that those are all important themes within sex education.

Given that sex education is already taught at universities, Teo said there was no reason why it could not be tweaked to fit into the primary and secondary school syllabus.

“It could be adopted in schools and simplified for primary school level.

“What is sexual relations? What is violence? What is harassment? What is sexual assault? What is patriarchy? When does coercion happen?

These are big questions that need to be answered,” he said.

Increasing legal age for marriage

Sex education increases awareness and helps the country move towards increasing the legal age for marriage, Teo said.

“One of the things we will definitely push through is advocating for this to be increased.

“It has to be tied to other reforms – legal reform, socio-economic welfare, safety nets, creating jobs, providing healthcare for families, and education,” Teo said.

He said the most important thing that needed to happen is having the political will to do it, something which is lacking in the current government.

“There is not enough grassroots support to mobilise politically to ensure that it gets through. The lack of political will comes from the need of the party (Umno) to appease its grassroots.

“To have political will, we need political power and that comes from winning the electoral mandate.

“In that sense, a lot of work still has to be done at the grassroots level to get more people to understand the issue.

“It has to come from campaigns, and building a movement that understands and helps us gather the electoral mandate.”

The proposal to push the legal age of marriage to 18 will be included in Muda’s election manifesto, Teo added.

Muslims in Malaysia, who are subject to sharia law under the country’s dual legal system, only need to be 16 to get married. Non-Muslims must be at least 18 to wed.

As issues involving Muslim marriages fall under state jurisdiction, Selangor is currently the only state that has raised the legal marriage age to 18.

In contrast, the remaining 13 states still retain the minimum marriage age of 16. – July 17, 2022.