Sex Education For Children: Daily Mail And Christian Institute Fear Mayle’s Year In Romance
IN this Brave New World, the children can learn erotic play from books like How Did I Begin? by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom. The book features “a cartoon image of a couple in bed in an intimate embrace”.
The Mail highlights a passage:
“As they cuddled, your dad’s penis moved gently inside your mum’s vagina and the sperms flowed out.”
So says the Mail, which has seen a report by the Christian Institute:
It is accompanied by an explanation – using frank and adult terminology – of the act of intercourse.
How Did I Begin is listed on Amazon thus:
A young child’s introduction to human reproduction, first published in hardback in 1997, which follows the first nine months of a child’s life within its mothers womb. Ideal for National Curriculum Key Stage 1-2. Illustrated in full colour by Brita Granstrom.
Key stage 1-2 is for children aged 5 to 11. The book was first published in 1997, becoming a paper back in 1994 – meaning any children who read it will now be grown up. Did it work for them, or help them? The report does not say. But it does begin:
At a time when there is growing alarm at the sexualisation of childhood, using sexually explicit resources in schools can surely only make things much worse. If sex education is made compulsory for primary schools, the publications highlighted in this report are the kind of materials that will be used with children as young as five.
A national curriculum for sex education would see control taken out of the hands of schools and centralised in the hands of those who advocate the use of material which most parents would find unacceptable.
Another book highlighted in the report is called Where Did I Come From?.
It was written by Peter Mayle. He wrote A Year In Provence, the book pretty much written for Daily Mail readers. His sex book was first published in 1976. Did it corrupt anyone? An Amazon readers writes:
I bought this book almost twenty years ago for my daughter. It does tend to suggest that sex is done purely for the sake of having children and focuses on mum and dad but, if you overlook that, it was a wonderful book, very funny. Not only did my daughter learn from it, half the kids in the neighbourhood did too when they read it while visiting her. It presents sex in such easy to handle and fun way that my daughter used to get me to read it as her bedtime story quite regularly. It’s the ideal book to ensure that your child doesn’t grow up in ignorance with the inevitable myths that circulate when you are young, often causing wrong decisions and awkward moments.
The Mail makes no mention of the value of these books. But it does say:
And there another book called Let’s Talk About Sex, by Robie H Harris, which includes a chapter on heterosexuality called ‘Straight and Gay’.
The wonderfully named Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, is displeased:
“The current approach to sex education demands ever more explicit sex education at ever younger ages. Parents don’t want their children to be exposed to material which sexualises them and most would be deeply upset if these materials were used with their primary-aged child. If public bodies believe these resources are suitable for young children, there is clearly a problem with their judgment and more control needs to be given to parents.”
Mayle’s book is over 30 years old. It’s been around for long enough to test is effects.
The Institute states:
“If sex education is made compulsory for primary schools, the publications highlighted in this report are the kind of materials that will be used with children as young as five.”
So these texts are not used for five years old, then.
The Department for Education says:
“By law, schools must make sure that sex and relationship education (SRE) classes are appropriate to pupils’ ages and maturity. It’s down to teachers themselves to use their professional judgment in deciding this. Parents retain the right to pull their children out of any SRE class, outside statutory science, if they are unhappy with teaching.”
Still, get a load of those naughty pictures…
Posted: 9th, March 2011 | In: Key Posts Comments (4) | TrackBack | Permalink
