Why are schools so intent on teaching young children about sex? I appreciate that the Government want to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies, but is scaring the hell out of small children the answer?
When I was nine I had no interest in how babies were made and several days after seeing a sex education video, I forgot everything I'd seen. I spent another few years in blissful ignorance, convinced that I'd popped out of my mother's navel.
Then adolescence arrived.
Within days I seemed to go from not thinking about sex at all to being obsessed by it. I wanted to know what this big, grown-up secret was all about and used to sneak downstairs to watch Jean-Luc Goddard films on BBC2 (you can always rely on the French for superfluous nudity). I thought I was being discreet but my parents must have noticed because one day, my father handed me a book saying 'This helped me when I was your age.'
The book was called 'Rovering to Success' and it was written by the founder of the Cub-Scout Movement, Lord Baden-Powell. The book was over 50 years old. I hated old things, but out of respect I started to flick through the chapters. This is what I saw:
It came as no surprise to discover, some years later, that Baden-Powell's marriage was not a conventional one.
I think her on the right looks like a lot more fun. I'm now feeling very 'low and unmanly'....
ReplyDeleteAt the least the 'man' is respectably dressed. The 'white man' is gallivanting around in his undercrackers. Shocking state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteSex ed is starting in Year 2 now- with the 'naming of the body parts'. Suspect the cuccumbers and condoms come out by age 9.
ReplyDeleteHideous! Still as a girl have to confess earlier interest in what it was all about. Particularly as we had an early Jordan type in our class when we were 9. And hers were all natural.
I hope you forwarded it to Jean-Luc Goddard afterwards - he sounded a damaged man!
ReplyDeleteI've been wondering why the government seems to be pressing women into having more children lately (by playing on their emotions about their bodyclock rather than offering any support of the actual family of course) & apparently there is going to be a huge shortage of 18 year olds in a couple of years time. Universities will close and be forced to tighten their belts big-time, though this is also because more youngsters are becoming NEETS or are choosing to start work at the most junior level and then doing day release HNDs etc in the relevant career as time goes on to avoid massive debt.
It is simply magnificent phrase
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