Society at large is becoming a quite unsafe place for children. Indeed, one could argue that Western societies have basically declared war on our children. Instead of protecting them, nurturing them, and carefully guiding them, we have effectively tossed them to the wolves.
Instead of safeguarding their innocence and allowing them to enjoy childhood, we have thrown them headlong into an adults-only world, expecting them to cope in an atmosphere in which even adults struggle to deal with. The porn plague is a big part of this war on our children, and they are suffering greatly as a result.
Yet tragically even our schools are siding with the sleaze merchants against our children. Instead of shielding them from the destructive effects of porn, many schools are sadly allowing young children exposure to it. Incredibly some are even bringing porn into schools as an “education” tool.
Consider this harrowing story which has just come out of the UK. It begins, “Schools are free to give lessons in pornography, an education minister has admitted despite concerns about the impact of hardcore images on children. Campaigners have warned that growing numbers of youngsters are hooked on graphic films found online.
“David Cameron is preparing to make it easier for parents to block online porn from new computers. But [minister] Liz Truss insisted lessons in porn can form part of ‘age appropriate’ studies. Some teaching unions have called for students to be taught about porn from the age of 10.
“But an alarming study last month revealed children as young as 11 are becoming addicted to internet pornography giving them ‘unrealistic expectations’ of sex. Counsellors at Childline also report a surge in calls from youngsters traumatised after seeing adult images online.
“However, Ms Truss backed teachers to discuss porn in the classroom. She said: ‘The Government wants all young people to have high quality, age appropriate sex and relationships education. The current non-statutory programmes of study for Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, which include sex and relationship education, can provide opportunities for schools to teach about pornography’.”
The article continues, “In June this year a 14-year-old boy who raped a nine-year-old girl after watching hard-core pornography online was spared jail. His lawyer said the boy, who was just 12 at the time of the attack, wanted to feel grown up.
“Sean Templeton, defending the boy, said: ‘There is a real risk that young people are growing up with a skewed view of what sex is and sexual activity.’ Ms Truss was responding to a parliamentary question from Tory MP Andrew Rosindell, who said how children find out about pornography was a matter for parents not teachers.‘This is a matter for parents to make a judgement on,’ Mr Rosindell said. ‘I don’t think it is a matter for school teachers.
“Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said it should be a matter for parents not teachers. ‘There is a general concern across the country that these things are becoming far too accessible for young people and the moral side of this needs to be upheld. Guidance on young people is something that is something we need to ensure is there, rather than let this sort of thing become too prevalent.’ Last month the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) called for porn to be taught in lessons from the age of 10.”
And we wonder why sexual crimes and things like rape are getting so out of hand in the West. With even our schools aiding and abetting the porn culture, we can only expect to see more sexual assaults, and from those at ever younger ages.
The truth is, offering any sort of education on these sorts of issues in some value-free setting is simply a recipe for disaster. Whether it be drug education, or sex education, or even death education, pretending these things can be taught to impressionable young people without a suitable moral framework is a recipe for disaster.
As Christina Hoff Summers put it some years ago in an important article, “Teaching the Virtues”: “To my mind, leaving children alone to discover their own values is a little like putting them in a chemistry lab and saying, ‘Discover your own compound kids.’ If they blow themselves up, at least they have engaged in an authentic search for the self.”
Or as William Bennett once wrote: “Sex education has to do with how boys and girls, how men and women, treat each other and themselves — or, rather, should treat each other and themselves. Sex education is therefore about character and the formation of character. A sex education course in which issues of right and wrong do not occupy center stage is evasive and irresponsible.”
The idea that we can just pump our kids’ heads full of lots of information, and hope they can process it all without a corresponding moral framework is simply going to result in big trouble. Alan Keyes once put it this way: “If we encourage our kids to believe they can’t control their sexual desires, what of their greed, their anger, their prejudice, and their hate? What condoms will we distribute to protect them from the consequences of those? Perhaps it’s time we remembered that for a free people the first challenge of education is not to fill our children’s heads with knowledge, but to instill in their hearts the confidence they need to quell the storms and tempests of unruly passion.”
We live in a very scary world today. The war against children continues to accelerate. Parents need all the help they can get in protecting their kids – but sadly that help is often not forthcoming from our society, our culture, and even our schools.
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