In favour of 'Um, er, well, if I explain it like this...'

Here's a great attention-grabbing article!

Reading it certainly suggests the state is following an imperative to teach the language of sexual practice to younger and younger kids. I don't know why.

I read some theorists who tell me that early sex education is as sinister as you can imagine it to be. That there is a clandestine network of pedophiles linking the judiciary, administration, education, all society, who need access to children. They need children to be as aware as possible about sexual pleasure and totally without modesty or inhibition when it comes to exchanging it.

The theorists say, of course the people who need access to kids must shift the availability of children to their favour; they must do away with social prohibitions, redefine social morality, and simply provide kids with a clinical language for sexual trade. Schools are places of social control. What else should we expect?

I read others who say it isn't pedophilia driving the course. It's money. Any child, any age, is a consumer. If society can be organised in ways that increase consumption of items we can make on a renewable basis, then every child must be made willing to take part. Making children self-conscious about their bodies, defined for them at the convenience of the markets, is merely one step along the way. Centralised markets and global brands will benefit. Kids from Japan to Ireland, via their consuming parents, can be sold must-have jewellery, branded padded bras, and three pairs of shoes for every occasion, better from babyhood.

Of course anyone can put these theories in the same nest as David Icke and his lizards. It's up to you.

Me, I feel a little resentful that the state assumes sex education is theirs by right at all. I think it's my duty. For a start, I want my children to grow up finding out about intimacy at their own individual pace, thanks very much. Not because it was already agreed at the summit on education and employability to order it on the tick-box curriculum for their year group.

Then I resent how the state behaves as if only their mechanisms are trustworthy enough to give the language of sex to my child. Actually, minister, I think I trust myself to talk about intimacy, love, sex, modesty, shyness, pregnancy, abortion, emotions, commitments. (Uh? I'm a grown up!)

But there's the point. I guess the only way a teacher can effectively 'deliver' the sex curriculum in a classroom is with the same plodding monotone used for any other anatomical circumstance, like sound vibrations banging the ear canal.

I'm bolshy. I wouldn't accept that. I want my children to hear my language wrap sex around with value, ambiguity, hesitancy, delicacy. A few ums and ers. I want my children to hear me find a way of talking, and with words that convey emotion, modesty, shyness, chivalry. I'm not going to describe sexuality devoid of those values.

I'm far from advocating ignorance. I want my children to be aware how people can talk of sexuality, from poetry to anatomy. I, as a parent, and the woman who gave birth to them, want to take my responsible place in that spectrum.

Likewise, I want each of my children to take control over their own unique places and identities within that range. I want them to take their time to find their own voices, discover their own ways of talking, and seek a language that is truly theirs. I want them to develop a language that they can feel empowered by, and be responsible towards.

Wrestling with these fundamental issues, thinking through a who-you-are, I believe is part of what makes a unique human being know themselves.

Well, you can bet this subject of sex education in school makes me feel glad that my kids don't go there. To some extent, we're going to bypass this particular problem, and do things our way, finding out as we go, what best to do, making it up. Um, as usual.