Roger.Hicks@spaceship-earth.de
The understanding of sexuality to be taught in schools does not tally with the commercial exploitation of sex in society
SIR - Reading through the list of "what children must learn" in respect to sex and marriage in today's Telegraph, I was not sure whether to laugh or cry at the naivety of those who composed it [Pupils will be told to delay sex, 16 March 2000].
Those with such little understanding of sex and society themselves should think twice before telling teachers how to teach these subjects to their pupils. But does anybody really understand sex and society, given the sorry sexual state that society is in?
Sex sells. It sells books, films, TV programmes, and just about anything you care to associate with it - as advertising agencies make it their business to do. We are saturated with it, from cradle to grave, or rather with a very narrow, shallow kind of sexuality.
To a much larger extent than we are prepared to admit, it is from here that we get our sexual morals and attitudes.
Teaching children something else at school is a complete and utter waste of time. It is like teaching them not to smoke when at the same time the tobacco industry is spending hundreds of millions of pounds promoting the image of cigarettes.
If, as adults, we understood human sexuality we would find ways of preventing its commercial exploitation.But it is obvious that we do not. So how can we presume to teach our children about it?
