Review teaching of sex education in schools I REFER to Ms Goh Bee Lian's letter, "Plug family life so fewer babies will be dumped" (ST, Jan 20). It should be noted that Mr Lim Boon Hee did not promote abortion in his letter, "Give pregnant teens more help" (ST, Jan 13). While I have no comments on the role of abortion in this issue, Ms Goh's views on the role of contraceptives deserve further discussion. I feel that there are, at present, two apparently conflicting roles of sex education in Singapore. Some people prefer sex education to serve a utility-reducing role, where young adults whould be taught that pre-marital sex is wrong and that it brings harm to themselves as well as others in society. This seems to be the role advocated by Ms Goh. On the other hand, others like Mr Lim prefer sex education to serve a risk-reducing role, in which advice is given to young adults on how to reduce the risk of sex -- including Aids and getting pregnant -- through the use of contraceptives. The question as to which role sex education should serve has no straightforward answer; it would depend on the general consensus of Singaporeans. But it is Ms Goh's arguments that I would like to discuss. Firstly, she argues that promoting the use of contraceptives will result in increasing sexual promiscuity and the risk of Aids. The first assertion, while appealing, is highly debatable. The empirical evidence on the link between risk-reducing sex education and earlier sexual activity among American teenagers has been mixed. Until someone does a similar survey in Singapore, such a link is, at best, questionable. The other assertion she makes, that contraceptives are not without health risks, is puzzling, since the use of condoms has the advantage of reducing sharply the probability of sexually-transmitted diseases. Secondly, she claims that "contraception and abortion have been promoted in our society, for the past 35 years or so," and that "in this time, we have also seen a rise in the number of abortions, as well as the disintegration of families, as seen in the increasing number of divorces in recent times". This is a "correlation implies causation" fallacy. In any case, I do not recall contraceptives being promoted in Singapore for such a long time as 35 years. The various campaigns on Aids awareness and prevention have only changed recently from slogans like "Just say no!" to "Be Negative! Use a condom". But the way sex education is conducted in Singapore leaves much to be desired. The New Paper reported last September that Singaporeans have the record of being the world's most sexually reckless. So, it is no wonder that we are seeing so many incidents of abandoned babies. I urge a study to be conducted on the current teaching of sex education in Singapore schools, to address these issues. Let us not use the excuse that we are an Asian society to avoid confronting this problem. KELVIN TAN TUAN WEI