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School for Scandal....

Following the recent controversy over the Churchill School’s plans to show a sex education video to children as young as six years old Mrs Mouth took herself off to the school hall on Monday evening to view the “offending” material.

Two hours later she returned home, somewhat flushed, to report that the film had started innocently enough with a hunt for a missing cat, which eventually turned up in the linen basket under the stairs having recently given birth to kittens. Much hilarity ensued as the youngsters in the video realised that “Mogsy” wasn’t a “he” after all but a “she” because only females have babies.

Awful lot of beating around the bush

This was followed by a lot of stuff about “differences” and then, after what seemed like an awful lot of beating around the bush (if you’ll pardon the expression), we finally got down to the nub of the matter.

The youngsters were replaced by cartoon images of a naked boy and a girl whose more intimate differences were explained using what Mrs Mouth would only describe as “anatomically correct” terms. It was also explained that touching these parts “felt nice”.

At the end of this section there was a somewhat spirited debate on whether children as young as six really needed to know this information and in particular whether they needed to know these particular words. Was it not perhaps too much too soon queried some parents?

Au contraire, said many of the teachers and assembled “experts”; according to research the more information children have about these matters the less likely they are to get pregnant and, as we all know, Britain has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe. “Fair enough”, said a parent, “my five-year-old knows most of this stuff already, although those aren’t the terms we use at home to describe the various bits and pieces and I don’t know that they’re appropriate for such young children.”
 

“normalised”

“Why not” countered another parent, “when that’s their proper name? Better they know the correct terms for things than any other silly words that they pick up elsewhere.” This was echoed by some of the teachers who said that discussing these matters in such terms “normalised” it for children and would encourage them to discuss the subject openly.

Perhaps sensing that things were starting to get ugly the gentleman who’d been brought in to explain the video intervened at this point with a timely, but ultimately misguided, anecdote about what passed for sex education when HE was a lad, presumably intending to illustrate how much better things are these days now that six-year-olds are to be given the words to describe their “sex parts” in all their medically correct detail.

Apparently, at about the age of 13 or thereabouts the aforementioned gentleman attended a “special” science lesson. He knew it was special because the blinds were drawn and they had a different teacher. The lesson consisted of a series of slides featuring frogs, butterflies and birds, and for homework the children were told to find out where babies came from.

“But did you get anyone pregnant when you were a teenager?”

He asked his mum, who said to ask his dad. Dad went pink and suddenly remembered something very important he had to do so he asked an elderly friend he called “granddad” (although he wasn’t really) and “granddad” just chuckled and chucked him under the chin. None the wiser he took a walk down the High Street and, peering in the window of Boots the chemist, he saw a lady weighing her baby in the scales on the counter. “That’s it!” he told himself, “You buy babies at Boots!”

“I got a detention for my homework project” he cheerfully informed the parents. “But did you get anyone pregnant when you were a teenager?” shouted some wag in the front row and, realising his error too late the gentleman had to admit, rather shamefacedly that, no, he hadn’t.

And the moral of the story is? Well, fairly self explanatory I’d say, but at the end of the day it’s all down to personal choice what you tell your children about these matters, and when and in how much detail, or at least that’s what me and Mrs Mouth always thought.

And if you’re wondering exactly what “those words” are and why I’ve been so uncharacteristically coy about using them I can only apologise and say that, however “accurate” and “normal” they may be they are nevertheless not the sort of words you would expect to find in any kind family orientated publication. But if you really, really want to know I suggest you ask a passing six-year-old, as I’m sure they’d be more than happy to enlighten you.

I doubt however if the words would be published in the school's weekly newsletter, but then I am not totally convinced that we are yet, all "normalised" enough.

As always I'm ready to be proved wrong!

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