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Sex Education and children

The truth is that very few people need to be educated about sex, especially not children. People in general need to be educated about themselves and others as human beings. The best way to do this is to give people an inner life and a disciplined mind that contains stores to be drawn upon in idle moments. Good flows from good.

That way, the impulse for empty gratification won't be a driving demon, just a part of being human, and people might grow into individuals who would not only feel ashamed if they used another, but who might also see how silly a thing sex was. It makes fools of all of us, and yet many in this identity-driven consumerist society insist on defining themselves and others by it.

So, no sex education for kids--but teach them all about the Lays of Ancient Rome. In Latin. It's much more rational and it will be of practical benefit when all the buses and trains break down and the planes are grounded. I daresay that a capacity to establish the vocative case is a fairly good contraceptive too, once you start telling people about it (though that didn't work for Abelard and Heloise).

More serious cases should learn Greek. These things are life skills. I got stuck on the train this morning and I got through six verses of Lepanto before I got off and walked, whistling. Other people were channelling shergar through their snorted breathing, which I assumed signified frustration.

I'm not so sure the media and the retail industry would approve, but my basic point is that teachers and governments have no business perpetrating the failed cult of sex education upon children when they could be using their formative years to mould better people.

The picture at the top of this blog is Abelard and Heloise Surprised by the Abbot Fulbert, by Vignaud

Comments

berenike said…
well said, that man.
7:28 am
Martin Meenagh said…
Thank you.
8:42 am
David Lindsay said…
We need the German 'Gymnasium' model for the likes of the Lays, and Lepanto, and Abelard and Heloise, among so many, many other things.

We need proper apprenticeships passing on the the skill trades, not fake honours degrees which cannot do so both because of the structure of the honours degree and because of the structure of the trades.

And we need the schools that used to give most people both exactly as much academic knowledge and exactly as much technical knowledge as most people really need. They were a lot better than that which has very often replaced them. And they were called Secondary Moderns.
5:28 pm
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