The education ministry, under the direction of a Cabinet committee, has once again failed in its duty to educate young people by pursuing its own misguided propaganda. Supplementary material, some 1.3 million copies of which were distributed to high school students in a health class this summer, contained a falsified and misleading chart about the relation between age and ability to have children.

The material was aimed at encouraging female high school students to "lead a healthy life." However, what the material actually stated was that after the age of 22, a woman's ability to have children declines precipitously. The chart offered as evidence was taken from foreign researchers. However, the original chart was changed to make it appear that the age of 22 is the peak age for bearing children. To do that, the educational material added a dotted, vertical line not in the original graph and reworked the curve of the graph to give an incorrect representation of the studies' results.

The research from varied sources in many countries actually shows that there is no specific peak age for childbearing. Rather, there are peak years through the 20s to the early 30s when women tend to be more fecund. Even that research is tentative, because childbearing is highly dependent on social and cultural factors. The average age of marriage, personal decisions on conception delay and accurate reporting on the use of contraception, amongst many other factors, make it extremely difficult to determine a peak age for bearing children.