A new Year Five textbook stirs up debate about whether children that age should learn about the process of getting pregnant.

DARI mana datangnya adik? (Where did little sister come from)?” has been in 11-year-old Sharif’s head after the birth of his sib¬¬ling.

That question is on page two of the Pendidikan Kesihatan Tahun 5 (Year Five Physical Education) textbook.

A drawing shows Sharif asking his mother and father: “Bagaimanakah kehamilan berlaku?” (How does pregnancy happen?) “Mari Sharif, ayah terangkan. Cuba lihat dalam buku ini. Sistem dan fungsi organ reprodutif lelaki dan perempuan adalah berbeza.” (Let daddy explain, Sharif. Look at this book. The reproductive system and function of a male and a female is different, says the dad.)

I wonder if the above scenario is realistic. I’m not sure about Sharif’s rather liberal family but I don’t think many parents (or even teachers) are comfortable talking about sex with their kid.

If Apsara, my six-year-old daughter, asked me where Sylverius Junior, her 16-month-old brother, came from, I would probably change the subject and talk about why Yemen’s embattled president quit or tell her to ask her mother.

I got to know about the Year Five Physical Education textbook containing sex education when a tea¬cher from Sarawak WhatsApp-ed me: “Pendidikan Kesihatan Tahun 5 is a new textbook. Please take a look at it. The sex education content is still taboo.”

“Should proses hamil (the process of getting pregnant) be taught in Year Five? Parents have been complaining about the textbook. Tea¬chers have expressed fear and are not confident in teaching the content in primary school,” she continued.

My colleague, L. Suganya, made a few phone calls to find out the reaction to the new textbook. She found out that the Education Ministry, Women, Family and Community Development Ministry and Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (PAGE) supported it. PAGE supported the move as it felt it was better for pupils to learn such matters at school.

Martin Vengadesan, my colleague in The Star and a columnist, also supports sex education taught in primary school. “The explanation given for teaching it in Year Five is the commencement of menstruation often happens by that age,” said Venga¬desan, whose column is called “Watching the World”.

“Given the tragic social phenomenon of abandoned newborns, I think it is best if they introduce the topic early. Better to address the issue with candour than the usual mix of hypocrisy and denial.”

The discussion on sex education in primary school brought me down memory lane. “When did I learn about sex?” I asked myself.

I don’t think it was in primary school. When I was in Primary Five and Six (now known as Year Five and Six), I didn’t know sex existed.

In 1978, I had a crush on a classmate, who was the prettiest girl in Primary Five in Stella Maris Primary School, Tanjung Aru, Kota Kinabalu. My fantasy then was to sleep next to her on the same bed. Just as what I thought mummy and daddy were doing in the master bedroom. I didn’t know that mummy and daddy went further than sleeping next to each other.

If I recall correctly, the first time I learnt that there was such a thing as sex was in Form One in La Salle Secondary School in Tanjung Aru. The slightly older boys were talking about things that you can do that were pleasurable.

Not all of their information was correct.

If I’m not mistaken, we were taught sex education in Form Two or Three. It was the job of the biology teacher to teach us about the birds and the bees. And I give her an “F” for her effort.

By then the boys in her class already knew about sex. Most pro¬bably they learned it from watching a “documentary” on sex in a friend’s house. The documentary (actually it was a “blue film”, which is slang for porn) was Swedish Erotica.

We cycled to a friend’s friend’s house in Luyang, a suburb in Kota Kinabalu, and watched the blue film via a video recorder player. Swedish Erotica was educational and mind-blowing.

(On hindsight, I wonder whether the blue film misled us in our expectation of sex.)

Compared to Swedish Erotica, the blushing biology teacher’s vague explanation using a diagram showing male and female reproductive organs didn’t explain how the sperm met the ovum.

Even in this new textbook, the explanation is rather vague. “Lelaki mempunyai testis yang menghasilkan sperma. Sperma akan memasuki faraj melalui zakar.” (A man has testicles that produce sperm. The sperm will enter the vagina through the penis, Sharif’s dad tells his curious son.)

I don’t think an 11-year-old kid would know what Sharif’s father is talking about. Probably they see the two diagrams of the male and female reproductive system and wonder what’s the connection between the two.

It would be tough for the teacher to explain it. And if there are further questions on the subject, I wonder whether the teacher is trained to handle them. Back in the 1980s, my biology teacher skipped a few pages of the biology textbook to avoid talking about sex.

Some teachers interviewed by my colleague Suganya expressed doubts over teaching the subject.

“Teachers were having difficulty explaining and answering pupils’ questions as sexual health was not a subject one could comfortably discuss with children,” a teacher told her. “You know children at that age. They have a lot of questions and some you can’t talk to them about it. Teachers are finding it hard to find the right balance of what can and cannot be discussed.”

Page four of the textbook states, “Kejadian manusia ialah satu proses yang menakjubkan”. (Procreation is a fabulous process). Indeed, teachers have a fab time explaining from where little sister came from.