Indonesia: 11-Year-Old Children Asked to Measure Genitals for School Questionnaire

Parents in Aceh complain after children asked to fill out sex questions on health survey

Aceh school — School children in a city in Aceh were asked to circle images of genitals that most closely matched their own (Reuters)

Indonesian schoolchildren as young as 11 have been asked to fill out survey questions about the size of their genitals.

Parents of children in Aceh complained after finding out their children had been asked to complete a health survey that included "vivid images" of genitals, which the children were asked to circle to indicate what their body was most like, the Jakarta Globe reports.

Children were asked if they had experienced any sexual dreams, if female students had started menstruating and if male students had had any wet dreams. Girls were also asked to assess the size of their breasts.

Nurlina, a parent of a 12-year-old boy asked to answer questions about his genitals, told the newspaper: "There was no problem with the questionnaire, but I was very shocked when I opened page five and saw images of women's breasts and female and male genitalia."

The survey was handed out to children up to the age of 15 at six junior high schools in Sabang, Misman, the head of the Sabang Education Agency confirmed.

Sabang has a population of about 30,000 and is the western most city in Aceh, the only province in the country that enforces Islamic sharia law.

Vulgar

He said the genital questions had been included on the recommendation of local health officials but parents were less convinced: "Those questions were meant for children who have just graduated from elementary school - that's improper," Nurlina said.

"The teachers should have checked the questionnaires before they were distributed to see if the pages came with indecent images."

Misman said a similar survey was handed out last year but there were no complaints because there were no accompanying pictures, but agreed the images were not appropriate.

"[The surveys] have been distributed and some of them have been returned because children did not want to answer that particular page," he said.

"After I saw the questionnaires I can see not only that they asked about their genital sizes, but that there were some very vivid images of genitals - this is too vulgar."

Ibnu Hamad, a spokesman for the education ministry in Jakarta, said the government was sorry children had been asked the questions, telling AFP: "It is totally unnecessary because there is no need to measure the size of students genitals for any purpose."