A new sex-ed curriculum unveiled in over 240 schools in the UK in 2019 that is institutionalized child sex abuse. As the Daily Mail reports, the All About Me program …give(s) very young children “rules” for “touching yourself.” The Mail offers details about these rules: “Under a section called Touching Myself, teachers are advised to tell children that ‘lots of people like to tickle or stroke themselves as it might feel nice.’ They are also instructed to inform youngsters that this may include touching their ‘private parts’ and, that while some people may say this behaviour is ‘dirty,’ it is in fact ‘very normal.’” It gets worse: “…pupils are told that when a girl called Autumn ‘has a bath and is alone she likes to touch herself between her legs. It feels nice.’” The hands on program will encourage 6 and 7 year olds to experiment with themselves.
An overview of the All About Me program seems to indicate that this lesson plan will be very hands-on, in a literal sense:
Children will be given the opportunity to explore a variety of different touch and feel sensations and allowed to decide which they like and dislike.
By the end of the lesson, children will understand that just because they like how something feels does not mean that everyone feels the same.
By year four of the program, things get more specific:
Children will consider the rules of when it is appropriate to be naked or semi-naked and when it is appropriate to touch themselves, including self-stimulation.
And in year five, the kids will have graduated to discussions about erections and wet dreams:
Children will be informed of their own personal anatomy and the development of their genitals, including wet dreams, erections, self-stimulation, and menstruation.
A similar program was recently rolled out in South African schools, instructing kids on the wonders of masturbation, anal sex, and oral sex.
And lest you think we are safe from this madness here in the States, our own compulsory sex-ed curricula are not far removed from what’s described above. A recent “framework” for sex education in California features, among other things, graphic descriptions of sodomy and bondage.
What we’re witnessing here is not a “slippery slope” to the normalization of pedophilia. This is pedophilia. There’s no more slope. We’ve reached the bottom, which isn’t to say that we can’t pull out a shovel and continue our descent. My point is simply that these “programs” are a form of widespread, institutionalized child sexual abuse. The administrators who approve this material are predators, and the teachers who teach it are complicit. The “I’m just following orders” excuse rarely gets you off the moral hook, and it certainly doesn’t in this case.
But we should not be surprised by this. It is the inevitable consequence of allowing public schools to teach “sex-ed” in the first place. There is, it turns out, no non-creepy way for schools to handle the topic. There is no approach that isn’t at least inappropriate, and at worst abuse. That’s because schools have no business delivering lectures on sexuality, no matter what is being said about it. By broaching the subject, they are already treading on ground where they don’t belong. It’s no wonder that they marched all the way to this point.
As far as schools are concerned, sex should be a purely scientific subject. Teach the kids about anatomy. Teach them where babies come from. Teach them the facts of human reproduction. That’s it. The children don’t need to hear, and should not hear, the teacher’s personal views on what kind of touching is appropriate, and what sort of sex positions are enjoyable, and “when it is appropriate to be naked or semi-naked,” whether our cultural attitudes towards sexuality are repressive, and so on. None of that constitutes objective scientific information. It is, at best, the subjective view point of the person who came up with the lesson plan. And subjective view points about sexuality have no place — at all — in a school.
This is not a pitch for “abstinence education.” Abstinence programs are certainly less creepy and less morally fraught than some of this other stuff, but I don’t want my child’s teacher to give him tips on how to avoid having sex any more than I want her giving tips on how to have it. It’s simply none of her business, either way. She is an unwelcome intruder. Just because I send my kids to school to learn the ABCs and 123s doesn’t mean I also want them to be indoctrinated into Mrs. Wilson’s personal philosophy on human sexuality. Actually I don’t send my kids to school at all — we homeschool — but the point stands.
If it would be considered a gross infringement for a teacher to stand up and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the middle of algebra class, why is it any less of a gross infringement for a teacher to proclaim the Gospel of Sexual Enlightenment — the Gospel of Freud, basically — in the middle of health class? You might argue that schools “have to teach it” because parents refuse to do it themselves. But where does that end? There are many ethical, moral, and spiritual lessons that parents often fail to impart to their children. Should schools then become churches, daycare centers, therapists, spiritual gurus, and sex coaches all rolled into one, just to compensate for lackadaisical parenting? Schools don’t automatically inherit the right to teach whatever a parent doesn’t teach.
Besides, parents might “refuse” to teach their children how to masturbate because they, as parents, feel (rightly) that such a lesson would be extremely bizarre and inappropriate, and probably warranting a visit from CPS. It might be a teacher’s opinion that parents should teach those things, but her opinion is irrelevant. It’s also, in this case, insane. That’s why schools should stick to the academic basics. Reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. It is not their job, or their right, to go beyond that.
