I've known it all along, but Peter Hitchens puts it succinctly.
Sex education has failed. So the Establishment decrees that we must have more of it, and in fact that there shall be no escape from it.
What I don’t grasp is why the people of this country put up with so many separate insults to their intelligence in any given week.
And why this particular blatantly obvious sequence comes round year by year and nobody even laughs, let alone draws the correct conclusion.
Despite the casual massacre of unborn babies in the abortion mills, and the free handouts of morning-after pills (originally developed for pedigree dogs which had been consorting improperly with mongrels), and the ready issue of condoms to anyone who asks, and the prescription of contraceptive devices to young girls behind the backs of their parents by smiling advice workers, and the invasion of school classrooms by supposedly educational smut, the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy has failed, is failing and will continue to fail.
In the week that figures clearly showed that the Government’s supposed target for cutting teen pregnancy by half is never going to be reached, compulsory smut education – a key part of this ‘strategy’ – was forced on all English schools by law for the first time.
There will be no opt-outs. The new liberal gospel of ‘do what thou wilt – but wear a condom while thou doest it’ will be taught by order of the State.
Some years ago, I wrote a short history of sex education in this country. I didn’t then know about its first invention, during the Hungarian Soviet revolution of 1919, when Education Commissar George Lukacs ordered teachers to instruct children about sex in a deliberate effort to debauch Christian morality.
But what I found was this. That the people who want it are always militant Leftists who loathe conventional family life; that the pretext for it has always been the same – a supposed effort to reduce teen pregnancy and sexual disease; and that it has always been followed by the exact opposite.
It was introduced into schools against much parental resistance during the early Fifties. And, yes, the more of it there was, the more under-age and extramarital sex there seemed to be.
By 1963, in Norwich, parents were told that their young were to be instructed in sexual matters because the illegitimacy rate in that fine city had reached an alarming 7.7 per cent (compared with a national rate of 5.9 per cent). The national rate is now 46 per cent and climbing, so that was obviously a success, wasn’t it?
Well, yes it was, because the people who force these peculiar classes on our young are lying about their aims. You can see why.
Most of us, in any other circumstance, would be highly suspicious of adults who wanted to talk about sex to other people’s children. But by this sleight of hand – that they are somehow being protected from disease and unwanted pregnancy – we are tricked into permitting it.
And our civilised society goes swirling down the plughole of moral chaos.
Well said, Sir! Mr. Hitchens is writing about England, but my experience in the USA bears out what he says. The more sex education you provide to inquiring teenage minds, the more they're going to want to experiment with what you've taught them, and the more teenage pregnancies - and abortions, and unwanted births - will result. Q.E.D.
Peter
Causation does not equal correlation, especially when one of the variables is time. Saying "since the start of sex ed the pregnancy rate has gone up" ignores a ton of other factors. I'd be more inclined to blame welfare, lack of stigma towards bearing unwed children, lack of stigma to being a mere sperm donor rather than an actual father, and much more sex in media.
ReplyDeleteLiberals point to failure of abstinence-only sex ed, claiming that abstinence-only students have a higher pregnancy rate than those with more complete sex ed. In this case their methods are a lot less suspect, because they compare groups in the same time period. (It is entirely possible that they have other distortions, I haven't examined their claims closely)
I have a hard time believing that too much education is the main problem, or even a significant contributor. If anything, it should work to mitigate the damage.
I disagree with the assertion that sex-ed causes more pregnancies.
ReplyDeleteLet's face it, if teens want to have sex, they'll have sex. Doesn't matter how much "education" they have.
This same reason is also why I don't support "abstinence-only" sex education - they're going to do it anyway, so might as well teach them how to protect themselves.
I agree with the first two commenters, and want to see the following comments. :]
ReplyDeleteI lament the ability of stupid and/or ignorant people to breed successfully on a daily basis. Our race was steadily increasing its numbers well before the implementation of an educational system.
ReplyDeleteOur schools should be teaching young people how things work, (as many things as possible).
Teaching WHEN to use things should be learned in the home from parents.
Being an English study, I would point out that their welfare benefits increase noticeably if they have kids.
ReplyDeleteObviously this is still a small piece of a big picture.
Jim
There's also the question of what is taught, how it is taught, and the culture it's being taught to. It doesn't quite square to make broad generalizations about the nature of teenagers and sex when other European countries that have the same or even more sex education than the UK (or America) also have vastly lower rates of teen pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt that there are some seriously scary leftists that want things taught in schools that violate all kinds of boundaries. If I care to spend the time at it I can dig up just such programs and materials.
However it doesn't follow that sex education, in and of itself, is therefore bad. Advocacy of ignorance always strikes me as strange, especially when we're talking about an age cohort we're trying to turn into adults, and sex is part of adulthood.
The more firearms education you provide to inquiring teenage minds, the more they're going to want to experiment with what you've taught them, and the more teenage shootings - and woundings, and deaths - will result. Q.E.D.
ReplyDeleteSo if we make them take more math classes we will get more Engineers?
ReplyDelete