From Martin Meenagh:
The truth is that very few people need to be educated about sex, especially not children. People in general need to be educated about themselves and others as human beings. The best way to do this is to give people an inner life and a disciplined mind that contains stores to be drawn upon in idle moments. Good flows from good.
That way, the impulse for empty gratification won't be a driving demon, just a part of being human, and people might grow into individuals who would not only feel ashamed if they used another, but who might also see how silly a thing sex was. It makes fools of all of us, and yet many in this identity-driven consumerist society insist on defining themselves and others by it.
So, no sex education for kids--but teach them all about the Lays of Ancient Rome. In Latin. It's much more rational and it will be of practical benefit when all the buses and trains break down and the planes are grounded. I daresay that a capacity to establish the vocative case is a fairly good contraceptive too, once you start telling people about it (though that didn't work for Abelard and Heloise).
More serious cases should learn Greek. These things are life skills. I got stuck on the train this morning and I got through six verses of Lepanto before I got off and walked, whistling. Other people were channelling shergar through their snorted breathing, which I assumed signified frustration.
I'm not so sure the media and the retail industry would approve, but my basic point is that teachers and governments have no business perpetrating the failed cult of sex education upon children when they could be using their formative years to mould better people.
He's another one who should apply to be a People's Peer.
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Er, I rather fear you've missed the point... I don't think he's being entirely serious in this article...
ReplyDeleteYou've clearly not read much by him.
ReplyDeletePerhaps not entirely, but basically. And basically, he's right.
Or are you just intimidated by the Classical and Mediaeval references? Don't worry, his original post has links to things like Abelard and Heloise. And a picture of that pair, in fact.
Go on, educate yourself. Improve yourself. Seriously.
After all, THAT is also what schools are supposed to be for.
David, it's amazing, really amazing, how rude you are to people in these comments boxes. The first commenter wasn't even being hostile - and you effectively accused him/her of being uneducated, and made patronising comments about being "intimidated by the Classical and Mediaeval references".
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it's about, and I'll refrain from psychoanalysing - but this kind of response doesn't do you any favours.
Is there a reason why your default reaction to people who post on your threads is hostility or condecension? I don't quite see what I did to deserve that reply. And incidentally, you have no idea as to my educational status.
ReplyDeleteI, on the other hand, now have a good idea of yours. Or at least of your manners.
You really are a nasty man David. That reply is extremely uncalled for
ReplyDeleteI was being nice!
ReplyDeleteUnless you think that strictly acdemic education - the likes of the Lays, and Lepanto, and Abelard and Heloise - is some sort of force for evil?
I'm no expert on them, but I wish I were. And I certainly don't regard it as insulting to suggest that one should, or at least could, become one!
There is a David Lindsay tone of voice and obviously you don't get it. People who know him personally get it. People who read here every day or so get it even if they have never met him. But obviously you don't get it.
ReplyDeleteNo one who reads Martin Meenagh regularly would imagine that this was supposed to be a joke. And there is an important point. Where does the teaching time for all this condoms on cumumbers business come from? That is not what schools are for.
The time would be better spent teaching Classics or the Middle Ages. It would also be better spent teaching the skill trades.
So your response to being described as rude by commenters is to refuse to post their comments. Isn't that a little... rude?
ReplyDeleteNot as rude as demanding the run of someone else's blog.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 16:54, spot on. Schools are simply not the place for this, if anywhere is. We need the German 'Gymnasium' model for the likes of the Lays, and Lepanto, and Abelard and Heloise, among so many, many other things.
We need proper apprenticeships passing on the the skill trades, not fake honours degrees which cannot do so both because of the structure of the honours degree and because of the structure of the trades.
And we need the schools that used to give most people both exactly as much academic knowledge and exactly as much technical knowledge as most people really need. They were a lot better than that which has very often replaced them. And they were called Secondary Moderns.
It was Anonymous 16:07 who was trying to be supercillious beacuse he thought that he was clever. Good on you for giving him a good kicking.
ReplyDeleteAs I said before, I was being nice.
ReplyDeleteBut you are probably onto something. Some people are so used to their every utterance being greeted with "Oh, you are so clever" that they can't cope with anything else, least of all the suggestion that they read something that they haven't already read, i.e., that there might be something they don't know.
And I fear that we have found one or more of them on this thread.
"Some people are so used to their every utterance being greeted with "Oh, you are so clever" that they can't cope with anything else, least of all the suggestion that they read something that they haven't already read, i.e., that there might be something they don't know."
ReplyDeleteCertainly never went to a grammar school.
Or a Secondary Modern.
ReplyDeleteDoes this make you feel good, David? Does it?
ReplyDeleteA very good reason to bring back both of them.
ReplyDeleteOh look, the David echo choir have arrived. They speak like him, they sound like him, they even post very quickly in succession after him. And they only arrive after commenters have tackled him on something.
ReplyDeleteBut are they him? oh no. Oh no. Perish the thought.
Jon, I don't wish to be unkind, but see previous comments. Welcome back, though.
ReplyDeleteDean, did you intend to post a picture or something? I'm not sure that that can be done. And I won't be allowing up anything naughty, anyway. as Jon might put it, perish the thought.
No.
ReplyDeleteThere's a mercy.
ReplyDelete