Why does sex education fail so often?

[agent46]

Another reason for failure of sex education is the media's constant and flagrant lasciviousness. See, for a further example, today's BBC News website item (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4703166.stm?lss) headed "Sexercise yourself into shape". It's hardly surprising that children become obsessed by it when adults exhibit no self-restraint either?

I quite agree.

It feels like there are fewer and fewer boundaries, and anyone who shows any concern is dismissed as a judgemental, prudish, reactionary old fuddy duddy.

And I know I sound uncomfortably like Richard Littlejohn when I express such opinions, but there it is - we're all going to Hell in a handbasket, you couldn't make it up, it's political correctness gone mad etc etc.

[jeffrey]

Another reason for failure of sex education is the media's constant and flagrant lasciviousness. See, for a further example, today's BBC News website item (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4703166.stm?lss) headed "Sexercise yourself into shape". It's hardly surprising that children become obsessed by it when adults exhibit no self-restraint either?

[Izzycam]

Sorrel your not dull...you know the connotations of the word "slag" especially when emphasised the way you did (slaaaaaaag).
It's just not a nice way to speak....full stop.

[mind the gap]

Different question: why 'slag'? It used to mean a heap of colliery waste; so is it a transferred epithet or unconnected?

A good question.

Slag did indeed (and still does, in Anglophone countries where they still have collieries) mean 'coal dust' or 'colliery waste', i.e., the small pieces left after coal is screened, etymologically related to sleck [c1440] and M.Du. slacke and MLG slagge [1552]; (splinter flying off metal when struck). Slagge itself comes from OHG slahan (to strike/slay) but the modern slag off (meaning to denigrate) dates back only to 1970s.

The word 'heap' is generally added to create a compound noun signifying a big pile of the stuff. (The various names for types or qualities of coal dust are in themsleves fascinating : my favourite is nutty slack).

I cannot find any other source for the current abusive inference of the word, so we have to assume it is related to the 1970s sense of 'worthless person'.

What I find interesting is that the word is almost always used of women, that it has connotations of worthlessness, dirt and danger - and when combined with 'heap', of hugeness/shapelessness.

Now...that brings me to the word 'slut'...!

[jeffrey]

Different question: why 'slag'? It used to mean a heap of colliery waste; so is it a transferred epithet or unconnected?

[Sorrel]

Doesn't make what OK? If you mean promiscuous sexual behaviour, then no, ignorance that it is morally objectionable and biologically undesirable - for all the reasons thrashed out in this thread - doesn't make it 'OK'...but nor does it make it OK for you to label the girl a 'slaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag'.

I think we have established that she 'doesn't know any better' so by your own logic, it's inappropriate to condemn her - or at least her alone - for it.

QED (or in your language, QE2)

All right then everyone's a slag, happy now?

[agent46]

2. Parents therefore need to teach 'right/wrong' distinction to their children. This is not HMG's job, by legislation or via the education system.

Agreed.

However, it seems to me that a feedback loop has developed/is developing where the more HMG legislates, lectures or micromanages behaviour that should be a matter of common sense, judgement, manners, decent behaviour or morals, the less the population feels the need to think for themselves and the less they feel the need to think for themselves on those issues (or putting it the opposite way, the more they feel the need for rules or codes of practice etc to guide them), the more HMG needs to legislate/lecture/micromanage behaviours - and so the wheel turns.

In summary, it seems to me that people are turning into robots who await instructions rather than moral agents who are capable of exercising judgement.

For an extreme example of this automaton-like mentality in action, look at the case where British soldiers mistreated and in once case, killed, Iraquis at Camp Breadbasket in Basra, and similarly, the abuses that took place at Abu Grahib. The excuse the soldiers often gave for their repellent behaviour was that they had not been trained or instructed in how to treat prisoners. In other words, the participants apparently didn't think for themselves, "is the way I am treating this man morally correct?" and make a behavioural decision on that basis, they simply reverted to a sub-human state of nature and acted like savages because they hadn't been explicitly told, under threat of sanction, to act like decent human beings.

[mind the gap]

In fairness an animal doesn't know any better, a human (higher species, although you have to wonder sometimes) should. Just because someone is ignorant of the rights and wrongs doesn't make it ok.

Doesn't make what OK? If you mean promiscuous sexual behaviour, then no, ignorance that it is morally objectionable and biologically undesirable - for all the reasons thrashed out in this thread - doesn't make it 'OK'...but nor does it make it OK for you to label the girl a 'slaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag'.

I think we have established that she 'doesn't know any better' so by your own logic, it's inappropriate to condemn her - or at least her alone - for it.

QED (or in your language, QE2)

[Sorrel]

I have to disagree with you here.

It is not an apt decription since it implies that having sex with lots of different boys/men is a lifestyle sthis young girl has actively and freely chosen. Her age would suggest that it is not a free 'choice' in that she can not have made it in an informed way. It may in part have been a repsonse to the 'raging hormones' to which jta referred earlier, so animal instinct, perhaps. However, we do not tend to call animals 'slags' when they obey their hormones and whatever else it may be which drives them to mate, do we?

I would describe her as a child desperate for approval and attention, who has lost her way, or whose parents never showed her the way in the first place.

Odd how promiscuous boys/men are not generally labelled 'slags', isn't it?

Not a terribly helpful label, in my view.

Ah I look forward to your little rants...

In fairness an animal doesn't know any better, a human (higher species, although you have to wonder sometimes) should. Just because someone is ignorant of the rights and wrongs doesn't make it ok.

Men are usually referred to as Man-Whores...

[mind the gap]

1. Everyone (whether male or female) is responsible for his/her own actions. That's the basis of every Court action.

2. Parents therefore need to teach 'right/wrong' distinction to their children. This is not HMG's job, neither by legislation nor the education system.

3. Human beings have freedom of choice. Choose to do good/right, not bad/wrong.

1. Agreed, although the law in E & W sets the ages of sexual and criminal consent differently, doesn't it? And how easy is it, in practice, to identify the age at which a child becomes responsible for his/her own actions? Anyone who works with children or has their own, will tell you they mature at very different rates. There is provision within the law for adults with learning disabilities which compromise their understanding of right and wrong. Does this - should it - extend to children who have not yet been taught right from wrong?

2. Agreed. Legislation can only mop up, or possibly deter (although I suspect it does not do the latter, to any great extent); the education sysyem generally, can only re-inforce what moral messages parents teach in the first place and continue to teach, day in day out.

3. Who could disagree? Yet how may an amoral 12 or 15 year old choose to 'do right', when they have no clear idea of what 'doing right' means? And this cuts across the whole class system; it's not just the underclass I'm talking about. For example, how many adults would return an overpayment of change in a shop, or inform a utility company or the Tax Office if they had been undercharged? How many adults inflate insurance claims, simply because 'everyone else does'? How often do parents discuss the 'right thing to do' when such a situtation arises? And, in an increasingly selfish and secular society, what incentive/motivation do children have to act in a morally correct way? The concept of 'the greater good' is difficult for them. The concept of 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you', slightly less so, but nonetheless subservient to 'indulge yourself, put yourself first and hang the consequences', the message which seesm to surrounds them wherever they look - and especially when some of them look at their parents, sadly.

Here endeth the sermon! Sorry.

[jeffrey]

1. Everyone (whether male or female) is responsible for his/her own actions. That's the basis of every Court action.

2. Parents therefore need to teach 'right/wrong' distinction to their children. This is not HMG's job, by legislation or via the education system.

3. Human beings have freedom of choice. Choose to do good/right, not bad/wrong.

[mind the gap]

How else would you describe her? Seems like an apt description to me.

I have to disagree with you here.

It is not an apt description, since it implies that having sex with lots of different boys/men is a lifestyle this young girl has actively and freely chosen. Her age would suggest that it is not a free 'choice' in that she can not have made it in an informed way. It may in part have been a response to the 'raging hormones' to which jta referred earlier, so animal instinct, perhaps. However, we do not tend to call animals 'slags' when they obey their hormones and whatever else it may be which drives them to mate, do we?

I would describe her as a child desperate for approval and attention, who has lost her way, or whose parents never showed her the way in the first place.

Odd how promiscuous boys/men are not generally labelled 'slags', isn't it?

Not a terribly helpful label, in my view.

[Sorrel]

That's not a very nice word to say!

How else would you describe her? Seems like an apt description to me.

On a lighter note, well for me anyway, you can bet on the outcome of the DNA test. Although sadly the odds aren't in favour either way. See here;

http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action...Daddy&crea=top

[jeffrey]

apparently they had the dna test and the results are "Chavs"

So society is split into the chavs and the chav-nots.

[PI Guy]

apparently they had the dna test and the results are "Chavs"