深度专访|在中国农村，学校面临一个新课题：性教育
Sex has long been taboo in the Chinese countryside, but an alliance of forward-thinking teachers and volunteers is trying to change that.
Secondary school English teacher Bao Tiantian recalls feeling baffled when her principal asked her to attend a sex education training course.“I’d never heard that sex required education,” the 37-year-old tells Sixth Tone.
Bao is from Kang County — a rural region in China’s northwestern Gansu province, where talk about sex remains firmly taboo.
包甜甜来自康县——位于中国西北部的甘肃省农村地区，在那里谈论“性”仍然是一个禁忌。
When Bao attended school, sex ed consisted of a single biology class in which the instructor was supposed to explain menstruation and some basic anatomy.
当包甜甜还在上学的时候，性教育通常就是一节生物课，老师应该会讲解月经和基本的生殖系统知识。
Even then, her teacher opted not to speak at all during the lesson, she says.“When the day finally came, the teacher just let us read the texts by ourselves,” says Bao.
But the English teacher’s outlook has transformed since she took the sex ed course — organized by the Chinese nonprofit You & Me — in 2018.
The formerly straight-laced Bao has become a tireless promoter of modern sex education, one of a growing number of rural educators working to teach children about the birds and the bees.
Sex education has long been neglected by schools across China, but the problem is far worse in rural areas. Lower local living standards, traditional social attitudes, demographic dislocation, and a lack of educational resources have made it difficult for teachers to introduce a more comprehensive curriculum.
In Gansu — the province where Bao lives — more than 70% of junior high school students haven’t received any form of sex education, according to a 2018 study.
根据一项2018年的研究数据显示：在包甜甜所在的甘肃省，超过70%的初中生没有接受过任何形式的性教育。
Most of those who have are only given a handful of classes, and even the students who have received the most sex education show little understanding of issues such as gender violence, homosexuality, AIDS, contraception, and abortion, the researchers found.
But the situation is slowly starting to change as forward-thinking teachers work with charities to promote new sex education programs at their schools.
但随着越多越多有远见的教师和公益组织“你我伙伴”合作，在他们的学校里推动性教育项目，这种情况正在慢慢开始改善。
You & Me has trained 67 educators in Gansu so far, who have given sex ed classes to more than 26,000 students in rural areas. It’s currently working to add another 20 schools to its network.
Convincing schools to introduce You & Me’s curriculum, however, can be a challenge. The course — with its modules on contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual violence — can appear jarring to many from more conservative communities.
然而，学校接受你我伙伴的性教育课程是一个挑战，这套课程包含避孕、性传播疾病和性暴力等内容，对许多观念保守的人们来说似乎尺度有些大了。
After finishing her training, it took Bao a few weeks to summon the courage to start teaching the lessons. When she did, her colleagues began referring to her teasingly as the school’s “sex teacher.”
在完成性教育教师培训后，包甜甜花了几个星期才鼓起勇气上这门课。当她做这件事情的时候，她的同事戏称她为“性老师”。
Eventually, the school agreed to incorporate the sex ed content into Bao’s weekly psychological health classes, to avoid raising too many eyebrows.
The sex ed course has continued, however, and today over 800 students take Bao’s classes. The success appears to be largely down to the persistence of the school’s principal — Wang Haizhi — who has been an enthusiastic champion of the initiative from the start.
性教育的课程仍在继续，到目前，有超过800名学生上过包老师的性教育课。这一成功很大程度上要归功于学校校长王海智的坚持，他从一开始就是性教育课的热心拥护者。
When Bao first began teaching the course, Wang made sure every member of the faculty understood that the school considered the “sexual health” classes essential and compulsory.
“I think sex is a science that students will have to deal with for the rest of their lives,” says Wang. “They should have a good command of it.”Before the classes started, Wang sent a note to all the students’ parents informing them about the school’s plans.
王校长说：“我认为性是一门学生一生中必须要面对的科学内容，他们应该掌握的很好。”上性教育课之前，王校长给所有的学生家长发了一则通知，告诉他们学校的计划。
He stressed that sex education can help minors protect themselves from sexual harassment and assault.“Parents understand that it’s good for their children’s safety, so no one said no to it,” says Wang.
Safety is an issue that appears to resonate in rural China. Studies suggest that teenagers from the countryside are more sexually active than their peers in the cities. They’re also more likely to experience multiple unwanted pregnancies, as the phenomenon is more common among adolescents from lower-income regions — which tend to be rural.
Though more sexual assaults on minors are reported in urban areas, experts argue the data fails to capture the scale of abuse in the countryside, where incidents often go undetected.
Liu Yu, a biology teacher at a junior high school in Kang County, is acutely aware of how a lack of sexual knowledge can leave rural kids vulnerable.
刘玉是康县一所初中的生物老师，他敏锐的意识到：缺乏性知识会让农村孩子变得更脆弱。
The 42-year-old started working with You & Me in 2017, after witnessing firsthand the psychological scars a childhood sexual assault had left on one of his students.
A few months previously, Liu had given a lecture on anatomy that greatly upset one of his 15-year-old students.
几个月以前，刘玉给学生讲授了一堂以“生殖系统”为主题的性教育课，这让他班上的一名15岁的学生非常不安。
It was only later he found out why: The girl had been abused by her uncle in the fourth grade, but hadn’t understood what he’d done to her until that moment.
后来他才发现了原因：这个女孩曾经在小学四年级时被她的叔叔性侵过，但直到上这堂课她才明白她的叔叔对她做了什么。
“She’d had no clue what had happened,” Liu tells Sixth Tone. “But after learning about the sexual organs in biology, it hit her.”
Soon after, the student dropped out of school, worried her classmates would discover her secret and judge her.
不久之后，这个学生辍学了，她担心她的同学会发现她的秘密和评判她。
Even now, Liu sighs when he recalls the incident, saying things could have turned out so differently.
即使是现在，当刘玉回忆起这件事的时候，他还是会叹气，他没想到事情会发生这么大的变化。
“If back then she’d received proper sex education and some psychological guidance, it would have had some positive impact on her,” he says. “Maybe she could have at least stayed in school and continued studying.”
Liu hopes introducing You & Me’s sex education program to his school can help students in similar situations in the future.
刘玉老师希望引入你我伙伴的性教育课程到他所在的学校，能够对学生有所帮助，使他们能够在将来避免遇到类似的情况。
Luckily, the school and the students’ parents have been supportive, he says.
According to Bao, parents aren’t usually the main obstacle to introducing sex ed in rural Gansu.
据包甜甜说，在甘肃农村，父母通常不是开展性教育的主要障碍。
A huge number of parents work in the cities to earn a better wage, leaving their children behind in their hometowns, which often leaves the families quite disconnected.
很多孩子的父母都在城市工作以赚取更高的工资，他们把孩子留在家长，这往往使他们的家庭关系十分的疏远。
“Most kids don’t communicate with their parents about what they study at school,” says Bao. “The chances are even slimmer that they’d share it with their grandparents, who they live with.”
Large number of left-behind children in rural areas, meanwhile, makes sex education even more vital, according to Liu.
刘玉说，农村地区大量的留守儿童让性教育更加重要。
Though families in Gansu tend to be fiercely opposed to children dating — considering it as dangerous as “fierce floods and savage beasts” — the parents aren’t there to keep an eye on them.“
尽管很多家庭倾向于强烈反对孩子们约会，家长把早恋看作“洪水猛兽”，但家长们并不能时刻关注到他们的情况。
Sex is a human instinct and it’s almost impossible for adults to control teenagers’ sexual urges,” he says. “We can only educate them on how to respect others and avoid early pregnancies.”
But spreading sex ed to more rural schools remains a challenge, especially given the lack of financial and policy support from the government.
但是，在更多的农村学校普及性教育课程仍然是一个挑战，尤其是考虑到政府缺乏财政资金投入和政策支持。
For Bao, the key is convincing more school principals to support the initiative. After completing the course at You & Me, she heard that several teachers had been unable to introduce the classes at their schools due to opposition from their bosses.
对于包甜甜来说，推广的关键是需要说服更多的学校校长支持这项工作。在完成你我伙伴的性教育培训课程之后，她听说有几位同行因为学校领导的反对而无法在学校开展这些课程。
“The principals didn’t participate themselves and didn’t know what the course was really about,” says Bao.
Zhang Yaohua, program manager at You & Me, meanwhile, is working to overcome the lack of teachers in rural areas.
与此同时，你我伙伴的项目主管正在努力克服农村地区教师短缺给性教育的推广带来的问题。
Since 2016, the organization has been recruiting college students as volunteer instructors, and then sending them to underserved communities across China.
自2016年以来，你我伙伴一直在招募大学生作为志愿者老师，然后支持他们到全国各地需要性教育的地区去。
Last year, over 900 trained You & Me volunteers gave sex education courses to nearly 24,000 students in 16 Chinese provinces.
Jiang Yulin, a biology major at a college in the southwestern Sichuan province, signed up as a You & Me volunteer in the summer of 2018, traveling the countryside to give sex ed classes to schoolchildren in the third to fifth grades.“We should learn from an early age that these things shouldn’t be taboo, nor unspeakable,” says Jiang.
He says.“They simply feel it’s a good thing that their children can learn things in class, even if they don’t understand what a sex education course is,” says Jiang.
The program, however, proved to be a flash in the pan. When Jiang’s classes ended, the principal of the school he’d been serving told him “the sex education course is a good course.” Yet after the college students left, the school didn’t continue teaching sex ed on their own.
Wang, the principal, says he wishes the local government would offer more recognition to sex education. One day, he hopes the education bureau will make sex ed a compulsory subject, like math and English.“Without that (government support), it’s hard to continue such education in rural areas,” he says.
“I’ve noticed that both boys and girls are more comfortable about menstruation,” says Bao. “When I was in junior high school, I felt it was so shameful. I didn’t even dare to go to the toilet at school.”