HOËRSKOOL Die Fakkel High School won the debate against Forest High School on Thursday, February 22.
The proposed motion was, “The active distribution of condoms in schools can be actively promoted as a solution to unwanted pregnancies”.
Hoërskool Die Fakkel High School negated the argument by stating that the promotion of condoms in schools interferes with the ultimate purpose of learners being at school, namely, to receive an education.
The team further posited the notion that according to the Schools Act, a school should promote a conducive environment for learning and teaching. With this in mind, one cannot deny that the provision of condoms in the school bathrooms will actively promote promiscuous sexual activities on the school premises.
The learners argued that the provision of condoms in school, or rather, to school learners, is in some sense an indirect violation of their parents’ human rights to raise their children with good values, morals and responsibility.
Providing condoms will contradict parents’ attempts to teach their children to abstain from premarital sexual activities, as would also be supported from most religious perspectives.
In addition to that, the provision of condoms in schools promotes peer pressure and puts unnecessary pressure on learners who are not yet sexually active. High school life is about status quo and popularity. If condoms become a popular thing to carry around, the many learners who want to be accepted will go to extensive lengths to become popular, thus resulting in the dramatic increase of unwanted pregnancies, the spread of STDs and the prevalence of the HIV epidemic among young people in society.
Conclusively, the team stood firmly by the notion that the condoms provided by the Department of Health, although recently improved, are produced en mass and are most likely to have quality defects, thus not a sure solution to unwanted pregnancies, the spread of STDs and the proliferation of HIV infection among school learners.
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