SEXUALITY AMONG ADOLESCENTS AND ITS IMPACT ON LEARNING AND TEACHING IN OUR SECONDARY SCHOOL

MAURITIUS INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION REDUIT By Hulkory Purush Utam

ABSTRACT. In considering sexuality as it relates to adolescent, the biological and intellectual factors are evident. These are briefly viewed. This paper seeks to review the sexuality among adolescents and its impact on learning and teaching in our secondary school. INTRODUCTION Adolescence is a period of great physical, mental and emotional turmoil, and the teenagers, in search of their identity, very often start experimenting with new things. The teenager is trying achieve identity in occupation, gender roles, politics, and religion. This stage involves a crisis which prevents a certain continuous stability in morality. Human sexuality is how people experience the erotic and express themselves as sexual beings; the awareness of themselves as males or females; the capacity they have for erotic experiences and responses. The majority of adolescents surely with an increasing sexual appetite expresses shortage of morality via their actions which unfortunately has a negative effect on their studies ,their social life and the relationship between student and teacher. I will discuss first sexuality among adolescents and second part will be its impact on learning and teaching in our secondary school . Promiscuity among adolescents is very common .For example in America the percentage of high school students who have had sexual intercourse increases by grade in 2003, 62 percent of 12th graders had sexual intercourse, compared with 33 percent of 9th graders. Morality and spirituality would suggest no sexual relationship before marriage, it condemns any sexual practice. Hence given adolescent are keen for new happy experiences and usually prone to satisfy their curiosity and sensual pleasure through excessive sexual behaviours either through sexual intercourse or simply through pornography. Sexual intercourse can be the initiation of other immoral actions such as drug addiction. The tendency is also there for adolescents to do nothing else but masturbate whenever they have some free time, this is common among male adolescent to consume pornography. Masturbation causes the brain and body to endogenously produce and release chemical drugs into its own system. These chemicals include: epinephrine (an adrenal gland hormone that "locks-in" memories of experiences occurring at times of high arousal), adrenaline, adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), noradrenaline, norepinephrine and testosterone, among others. This drug is dragging millions of troubled victims along in its destructive wake. A porn addict will suffer withdrawal symptoms when they try-or are compelled-to relinquish their vice for any length of time, excessive masturbation radically alters

the structure of the human brain, changes so dramatic they can only be described as brain damage. The withdrawal symptoms may drive an addict to find porn and often causes him to act out his needs in inappropriate ways. Male adolescent, most of them are of porn-addicts ,are usually insensitive to morality. Over masturbation causes a person cause a person to lose all his intellectual capabilities , given the time taken for complete restauration of mental state in between sexual intercourse and masturbation is usually not respected. All these factors considered above affects a students learning and also teachers who are in direct relationship with students. Pornography certainly leads to degradation of morality . Cognitve views of learning ,it describes the information processing system consisting of a sensory memory, working memory and long term memory. The three are related through executive control processes such as perception, retrieve and learn. Epinephrine is an adrenal gland hormone that "locks-in" memories of experiences (Askew and Smith-Stoner,2001) secreted during masturbation. Other side-effects of masturbation upon the male body also include

fatigue, feeling tired all the time ,lower back pain ,thinning hair, eye floaters or fuzzy vision. These indeed affects a learners capacity of perception ,his ability to grasp knowledge and to concentrate. From the brain based theory the frontal lobe when damaged due to over

masturbation , can result in behavioral disinhibition, flooding of the sensory association areas with irrelevant information, hyperreactively, , memory loss, impulsiveness, and/or apathy, reduced motor-expressive activities and sensory neglect (Como et al. 1979).All these affects a student behaviour towards his parents and teachers. For example one brief survey I carried out among Form 3 students while explaining as most of them were not attentive ,I asked them whether they masturbate or not and the frequency of doing it ,and almost all the boys admitted they do. Monitoring all students and I have remarked those who confessed about regular masturbation were less productive in terms of results .Others who confessed as being porn addicts often showed a higher level of agressivity and were less cooperative in class, it was also observed that those who produced good results and who are porn addicts are not consistent in having good results ,there are lots of ups and downs in terms of results. Teaching inevitably becomes difficult as students with such a temporal paralysis, it becomes difficult to make them understand a concept in one or two lectures. Cognitive learning theorists focus on the human minds active attempts to make sense of the world, on the ways students thinks about situations. Thus in a sense over masturbation block the capability for students to do this. Reprimands
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(behavioral view of learning) are not positively taken by students and often results verbal or sometimes physical confrontation between teacher and student. Teachers also may allow students to continue some action until they stop by themselves, if the behavior is not interfering with the rest of the class. A teacher usually has to ignore the behaviour of such students. Coping with undesirable behavior becomes difficult. Among girls teenage pregnancy is becoming common. Teenagers have a tendency to do what adults do ,some girls that I questioned told that its way to express their feminine liberty ,they want to grow and be independent quickly, many of them engage in unprotected sexual intercourse and usually gets pregnant or gets sexually transmitted disease. Resulting in being school drop outs or tends to seek abortion to solve the problem. Psychological reactions to abortion fall into many categories, some women experience all or some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Other effects mignt be hyperarousal :a characteristic of inappropriately and chronically aroused fight or flight defense mechanisms. The person is seemingly on permanent alert for threats of danger. Symptoms of hyperarousal include: exaggerated startle responses, anxiety attacks, irritability, outbursts of anger or rage, aggressive behavior, difficulty concentrating, hypervigilence, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, or physiological reactions upon exposure to situations that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic experience this is becoming very common among teen who developed very early and usually tend to be rebellious and disobedient. Self-regulation and cognitive behavior modification, regarding these cognitive psychologists suggested the importance of self-regulation in learning. Students are advised to apply behavior analysis on their own to manage their own behavior. Teachers can encourage the development of selfmanagement skills but in the case of sexually active students it becomes difficult to make students participate in setting goals, keeping track of progress, evaluating accomplishments, and selecting and giving their own reinforcements. The use of cognitive behavior modification becomes difficult. Masturbation has a restorative cycle, and usually over masturbation increases the time taken for an individual to restore to complete health. Thus there is a continuous sexual practice and the individual becomes trapped in sensual pleasure. Given adolescent are more concerned about this, it prevents them from developing in the proper way, all along the 13 to 19 years of age . It has a long term effect: assimilation, incorporation of knowledge into an already existing framework over time is not easy. According to Von Glasersfeld (1989) sustaining motivation to learn is strongly dependent on the learners confidence in his or her potential for
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learning. These feelings of competence and belief in potential to solve new problems, are derived from first-hand experience of mastery of problems in the past and are much more powerful than any external acknowledgment and motivation. The very fact that teenagers temporary reduced intellectual capabilities may hinder the development of such confidence and competence. In conclusion sexuality is destroying teenagers student a life.They becomes less productive.Learning is a painstaking task and to recognize independently that knowledge is an important tool for success is not manifested in many teenagers. Given that in the society spirituality is in a decline, it can be said that morality also is and the moral state of students at school reflects it, moral education and spiritual education and sex education are advised to combat these negative impact on teaching and learning.

Reference. 1. Lectures by Charlie Lutes ,http://www.maharishiphotos.com/lecture78.html 2. From Morality to Spirituality By Chaitanya Charana Dasa http://btg.krishna.com/morality-spirituality 3. Boys, education and spirituality: a forgotten factor ANDREW SMITH LECTURER BETHLEHEM INSTITUTE TAURANGA New Zealand 4. http://pornaddictioninfo.com/ 5. Downs, Martin F.; Louise Chang, MD (reviewer) (August 30, 2005). "Is Pornography Addictive? Psychologists debate whether people can have an addiction to pornography.". WebMD. http://men.webmd.com/guide/is-pornography-addictive. Retrieved 2007-03-22. 6. Who, What, Why? (2008-04-30). "UK | Magazine | Does sex addiction exist?". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7371171.stm. Retrieved 2009-08-09. 7. Mark Kastleman : How Internet Pornography Makes Men Stupid http://www.netnanny.com/learn_center/article/126 8. Gail Askew and Marilyn Smith-Stoner. (2001). The Pharmacy Assistant (Clinical Allied Heathcare Series). Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning. pp. 46. ISBN 089262-438-8. 9. The Effects of Masturbation, January/February 2006

http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Masturbation/00000018.htm 10. ^ Ellen Ross, Rayna Rapp Sex and Society: A Research Note from Social History and Anthropology Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 5172 11. Educational psychology texbook by Woolfolk Chapter 6 Behavioral Views of Learning pg 204,231,216 12. Educational psychology texbook by Woolfolk Chapter 7 Cognitive Views of Learning pg 249-260,pg 270-277