I recently read this article in the Telegraph and it really made me think about the sexualisation of our culture. We all know that we live in a culture where we are exposed to a lot of sexual imagery and ideas on a daily basis. We have it in music videos, on TV, in ads, on the radio, in movies and even in our daily conversations. Although we live in an almost sex-saturated culture, we do still have a large movement again the sexualisation of our youth.
Yes there are those who are chipping away at this and trying to teach our youth about sex at a younger and younger age, but there is a debate around this. Those of us here in Ontario will remember the recent attempt to of Dalton McGuinty to change the sex-ed program in our public schools to teach more explicit material at an earlier age and the resulting outcry that ended up in the program being scrapped for the time being. There is an ongoing debate about when we should teach our kids about sex and about how much we should teach them, and I'm glad this debate is happening and people are thinking about these things.
However, I agree with Robin in the article mentioned before; we are really asking the wrong questions. The timing and the quantity of sexual material that our children are exposed to does matter but there is a much more important issue that we should be dealing with. What are we teaching our children (and ourselves) about sex? I think we are in danger of letting the debates about time and quantity hide the importance of what it is they are taught.
It is true that there are things a child does not need to know, partially because they won't understand it, and partially because the don't need to understand it. I wouldn't try to teach calculus to a 6 year old because he would be neither ready or able to understand it, and so there is no need to teach the principles of sexual intercourse to someone too young to understand. I think that much should be obvious to most. Where we get into an area of much more difficulty is what we are teaching them. To get back to the math analogy, are we teaching them that 2+2 =4? or 5? or 2345612? It is not so bad to try to teach your 6 year old calculus, they'll just end up staring at you blankly and then go back to playing lego. What is much worse is teaching your 6 year old that 2+2=5. When they get to calculus they're going to have some real problems with it because their foundation is wrong. What we teach is a far more important issue than when we teach it.
We need to think about the things we are teaching to our children and I don't mean just in school. What do we as a culture present about sex? What do we in our homes teach about sex? What do our pulpits teach about sex? What do our actions and words teach about sex? We should look carefully at the messages our children are getting and make sure that we are not just teaching them the right things, but that we are also teaching them how to reject wrong teachings. If we want to change our cultural views of sexuality we need to start with our children. We need to show them why Lady Gaga is totally unsexy and why Charlie Sheen has a few screws loose and why the sexual misbehavior of our politicians is so bad and how advertisers and promoters are trying to manipulate us to use our hormones to their advantage. We need to help our kids see the wrong views of sexuality they are presented with and show them the problems that will come from it, as well as point them to a proper sexual identity.
Our children will learn sexuality, the question is; will they learn the right things about it or the wrong?
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