And then after the exhibition when the kids go home they can play 'housy' with their siblings or friends and be 'mom and dad having sex'. Or mom and mom having sex, that's easier to play for a kid.

And oh yeah, for the teens, why don't you try being 'really naughty' and having sex without a condom. It gives you the extra kick of taking a risk.

Clearly, unhealthy sex education.

So what is healthy sex education?
As far as I can remember I have always know where babies came from. This was because I liked to look at the pictures in my mother's pregnancy books, and she would explain then to me. I knew that the seeds coming from dad's penis would race each other to the cell which was already in mom's body, and that the first one would become one with the cell and the baby started to grow. I had seen all the pictures of the seeds moving through the vagina, and of the conception and I knew exactly what happened with the baby before it was born. I remember knowing that the seeds came from dads penis and the cell was already inside mum and that the conception happened at night. I think that was the info my mom gave me and it was enough for me to make my own theory which I was perfectly satisfied with. At night when mom and dad's where both asleep the seeds would come from dads penis and hop across the bed and go into mom's vagina. And this happened because mom and dad where married. When I was a little bit older I wondered how the seeds could find their way across the bed all by themselves (because they didn't have eyes) so I asked my mom and she told me they didn't have to do that by themselves but daddy would help them by bringing his penis inside mom. I remember being a bit surprised because this was something I hadn't thought about, and I remember being a bit dissapointed because it was really not half as sensational as my theory. Ah well, that's life. So you see, I knew all about sex before I was six years old and after my mother's dissapointing answer I didn't bother thinking about it again untill I got the whole dose over me at high school.
By the way, I grew up in one of those 'very conservative' families where 'talking about sex is a taboo'. Now I am a 22 year old who realizes the beautiful value of sex to show love and pass on the life that God created. And yes, I have decided to save it as a wedding present for my husband!

For some reason the article reminded me of what I wrote a long time ago, in a booklet with the title "On Liberty":

"A general state education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation. In proportion as it is efficient, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

At the time I wrote that, I had no idea of the influence career-bureaucrats, embedded advocacy groups, and assorted zealots would gain in making and implementing policy, especially, it seems, education policy. And I had no idea that a gullible, copy-hungry press would come to accept every hare-brained scheme produced by these "experts" as "progress". I should have known better. Perhaps next to the teachers themselves, newspaper hacks are the easiest victims of educational despotism: too smart to remain beneath the politically correct line of the moment, yet too dumb to rise above it.

The article also reminded me of what my compatriot Aldous Huxley wrote in the preface to the 1946 edition of his "Brave New World":

"The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists will call ‘the problem of happiness’ — in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude."

He also noted “as political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase.” Maybe it's old age, but now that we have taboos on everything except sex and religion, I find myself cherishing the memory of a time when the only taboos were on sex and religion.

Perhaps, though, sexual freedom is not so much compensation for the loss of political and economic freedom as it is the main part of the solution to the problem of making people love their servitude. As every animal trainer knows, even ferocious beasts can be made to sit, stand, jump, and roll over once one knows how to play on their desires. Convince man that gratification of the animal passions that he discovers in puberty and begins to explore in adolescence is the acme of his freedom and he'll accept slavery as his natural right. (Heck, what am I saying! I once was a champion of the utilitarian creed myself, wasn't I?)

Down our local infants school they play a game (based on Pin the Tail on the Donkey) called Pin the Symptom on the AIDS Patient. The children have a lifesized picture of a naked body noticeably racked with disease, and they get to choose which ailments they reckon the patient is suffering from. The choice is great.

The very little ones (aged 5 to 7) can choose from the more straightforward ones like lack of energy, weight loss, frequent fevers and sweats, thrush, sore throat, severe or recurring vaginal yeast infections, chronic pelvic inflammatory disease, herpes zoster, extreme fatigue, rapid weight loss, bruising, long-lasting bouts of diarrhoea, welling or hardening of glands located in the throat, armpit, or groin, periods of continued, deep, dry coughing, shortness of breath, unexplained bleeding from growths on the skin or from mucous membranes, recurring or unusual skin rashes, severe numbness or pain in the hands or feet, the loss of muscle control and reflex, paralysis or loss of muscular strength, and - a real winner this one - an altered state of consciousness, personality change, or mental deterioration.

The 8 and 9 year olds, especially the fluent readers, can also choose from mycobacterium avium complex, tuberculosis, salmonellosis, bacillary angiomatosis, cytomegalovirus, viral hepatitis, herpes, human papillomavirus, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, candidiasis, cryptococcal meningitis, pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, toxoplasmosis, cryptosporidiosis, Kaposi's sarcoma and lymphoma.

Of course at the moment they aren't allowed to play the game as they are too busy rehearsing the Nativity Play for the upcoming Winterval celebrations.

Bob Doney