In Indonesia, sexual education is still a taboo to introduce to children. This leads parents to be a bit conservative when explaining information related to sexuality to their children. As a consequence, children grow in confusion that makes them look it up on their own, namely on social media and the internet which most of the information related to sexuality leads to pornography. As parents have power, their attitudes on this issue sometimes inhibit the implementation of sexual education in schools. It requires the same perceptions between schools and parents regarding this issue. Thus, the media of sexual education is introduced to use by both teachers and parents.
Concerning the issue, Naning Pratiwi, a student of Elementary School Teacher Education (ESTE) Faculty of Education (FE), Yogyakarta State University (YSU) developed a learning media to introduce sexual education that is interesting and in accordance with children development entitled MERESE, standing for Media Reproduksi Sehat (Sexual Health Education Media). She believes this media can be a helpful way for teachers to introduce sexual education in elementary schools. “Besides, this is designed to attract students’ attention to learn about sexual health” she told. This media is expected to be used by both teachers and parents to give sexual education so that sexual education is no longer a taboo. In addition, this media attempts to reduce the increasing number of sexual problems such as cervix cancer, prostate cancer, unintended pregnancy, abortion, etc.
MERESE is an interactive learning media of sexual education for 6th graders based on the Science subject curriculum. This is computer based media using Adobe Flash. It combines tutorials and games to create an interactive learning. The materials cover human growth phase, human physical development, human reproductive system, and reproductive illnesses and its prevention. The making of MERESE included determining function as well as making scenario and storyboard.
This research about MERESE allowed Naning Pratiwi to be awarded the 2016 Most Outstanding Student of FE. She concerned children development nowadays that is faster than it should be. “That’s why I made this research to protect children from sexual abuse” she told.
Naning Pratiwi is now a Bidikmisi scholarship awardee. She was graduated from SMA N 1 Belitang, Ogan Komering Ulu, South Sumatera. She also attended study sit-in at Aichi University of Education in Japan from JASSO Scholarship for a year. As an activist of Research Student Creativity Unit, she said, “What we have achieved now is not only from our hard work, but also from the support of our teachers and friends”. She also told us not to discourage ourselves because we can turn our shortcomings to challenges. (Dedy)
