Let's not talk about sex

24 October 2008.

Sex education for five year olds? What a bloody great idea. Let’s try and explain to children about Action Man putting his pee-pee into Barbie’s wibble-wobble. Do our retched policy makers still not realise instructing inept teachers to advise on the birds and the bees only make things worse?

This idea seems to be backed by as much common sense as the Leeds City Council traffic marking subcontractors who decided to paint double yellow lines around a parked car into the middle of the road instead of waiting for the car to move before completing the job (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7687600.stm).

The system is diabolical enough as it is. Don’t go around giving out condoms and illustrating how to put them on; that’s equivalent to arriving at a year 9’s first slumber party, handing out hypodermic needles and demonstrating how to inject oneself. This has the opposite effect to that desired so when we find out teenage pregnancy and STD rates are soaring it’s about as surprising as hearing investment in your area has been cut because council budgets have been run dry paying benefits to sixteen year old girls pregnant with their umpteenth child.

There is no reason why sex education currently given to teenagers shouldn’t suffice. We just need to spice it up a bit that’s all. Tell the boys that if they ever even try and put their finger on a girl’s arm they’ll catch HIV and never be able to walk again. Explain to the girls that if they try and kiss a guy their tongue will fall off and they’ll be resigned to a life of non-stop menstruation.

Ok maybe some teenagers in the less deprived areas of the UK might not believe this but if we’re going to introduce sex education for children fresh out of nurseries then surely this approach needs to be taken for them. Why can’t we just lie to the little nippers like we do elsewhere?

We tell children Santa Claus is real instead of explaining the man sat in the shopping centre dressed in a red suit each Christmas is actually a local paedophile who comes off benefits for one month a year so he can rub his boner up against them for his own sexual gratification when they sit on his “knee”.

He’ll unload his sack for them and have a package for them alright, and they certainly won’t forget it, but if we actually told our kids the best present they can get off him is to avoid being the one he waits for at the school gates one day, we wouldn’t need to break the bank each year just to fund the overpriced purchase of a worthless toy from the manufacturer with the largest marketing budget.

Go tell them actually this year there’s going to be no chimney action not just because there’s no little Saint Nick to come down it but because you can’t afford to heat your home because you injudiciously took out eighteen credit cards when the banks weren’t being scrutinised and busted their limit because you’re too dim to realise that some day you’ll actually have to pay them off. See where that gets you.

Think about all the children that have been sadistically convinced to avidly brush their teeth solely by instilling fear of the dentist’s wrath for non-compliance into the child’s impressionable minds. We need to tell our primary school pupils that even touching a person of the other sex will result in a lifetime of incessant bedwetting or that pregnancy should be avoided at all costs unless they never want to consume sweets again.

Failing that, a bit of discipline has to be the answer. While I’m by no means promoting extreme violence, the drug dealer appearing in court today for shooting a man in the leg and cutting part of a woman’s ear off because of non-payment of £380 and £10 debts respectively (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7687555.stm) has the semblances of a sensible approach.

The fact that this same woman was a few years ago the first to be imprisoned for her daughter’s truancy exemplifies the fact that words and light punishments don’t have the desired effect. Recurrent clouting of people with a frying pan in their formative years every time they show any interest in a member of the opposing sex will undoubtedly serve to delay their sexual curiosity, however.

For teachers, meanwhile, this simply means bring back the cane. Or, to show a more contemporary approach, insert some form of tranquilising device by the bicycle sheds which, when two pupils become affectionately involved there and are spotted on school CCTV, is activated at the press of the CCTV operative’s button.

It’s simple really.