Oh to be young again and know what I know now has been a constant saying over the years, but I’m beginning to think the today’s young probably know more than I do.
Last week it was reported that explicit sex education at a West Coast primary school has sparked a flurry of complaints from shocked parents with at least one family withdrawing their children in protest.
The concerns at Blaketown School centred on the actions of a woman teacher who taught the class of year seven and eight with children apparently aged as young as 11 about some graphic sex topics, going far beyond what the parents had given consent for.
On the first day of the three-day programme she taught pupils about body parts pointing out the pleasure points on women and men. The following day she answered questions the students had put in a “question box” including information about anal and oral sex, “hand jobs,” sexually transmitted diseases and flavoured condoms.
Crikey, in my day we thought oral sex was just talking about it.
Of course in those dim dark ages there was no sex education in schools – or at home for that matter – and by the time we were fully conversant with this aspect of life we were old enough to cope with it.
In another news item we learnt that a parent from a primary school in the leafy Auckland suburb of St Heliers complained to The Human Rights Commission about Bible studies in the classroom.
“Christian-based lessons discriminated against non-Christian families and should not be part of the secular school programme,” said Maheen Mudannayake, a Buddhist, and despite the vast majority of the St. Helier’s parents wanting the religious studies programme to be maintained the school board capitulated, much to Mr Mudannayake’s delight.
“When in Rome do as the Romans do,” might have been my heartless response to the complainant, but then I never have been much of a follower of the politically correct format.
And so religious studies are out and explicit sex education is in. You can’t help but be envious of the today’s younger generation and their liberal school curriculum.
The problem is the outcomes don’t match the good intentions. Teenage pregnancies and abortions increase, a conscience-less group called the Roastbusters emerge, crime is rampant while the churches face declining congregations and we build more prisons.
Masterton has had three police stations in my lifetime. The population has barely risen over time but the police headquarters have got bigger and bigger. The original station was on the corner of Lincoln Road and Chapel Street and was only a fraction of the size of the corrugated-iron-encrusted ANZ bank which now stands on the site. As a kid I was regular visitor there because the head of the CIB at the time was Detective-sergeant Frank Gordon who was a neighbour of ours in Opaki Road and I was good friends with his son Malcolm.
Mr Gordon would often take us out in his Vauxhall as he investigated the major crimes in the area. These could include jay-walking, double-parking or having an overdue library book.
Back then we didn’t lock our vehicles or our houses, we walked to and from school without fear of being run over by a car or molested by a stranger and we came home when it got dark after playing with our friends and our parents had no concerns for our safety or our wellbeing.
The pubs closed at six o’clock and there was full employment because as a rule mums tended not to work and kept the home fires burning.
And it was healthy little town too. I remember when the Borough Council built the new graveyard complex in River Road nobody died. In the end they had to shoot a bloke to get the cemetery started!
The only person who died that year was the undertaker and he died of starvation.
Alright, I admit I’m starting to exaggerate now, but with the benefit of a hindsight that only remembers what it wants to remember, they were good times.
Masterton’s third police station, built to cater for a static population, is three stories high and dwarfs the ANZ bank that stands on the site where the first one stood. The cells have thick plate glass doors dispensing with the need for bars which finally trivialises Richard Lovelace’s poetic intonation: “Stone walls do not a prison make; nor iron bars a cage.”
For my money I’d have left the Bible in the schools, let kids find out for themselves how to procreate, continued closing the pubs at six and left the police station where it was.
I’ve got to go now; I’m going to enrol at the Blaketown primary school and get up to speed.
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