Tuesday 28 April 2009

An education

EDUCATION is simultaneously a great and terrifying word. It has been used across many decades and centuries to explore all kinds of theory and forms of enlightenment. Being an educator, as I know many fellow bloggers are, is a great gift and a great responsibility. Every day I try to be the best educator I can and every day I am not quite sure I've pulled it off. This week the kind education being talked about in the papers here in Britain is sex education. The morning after pill is now being advertised on British TV in a cartoon format and I am thankful to say this has been met with some debate (that is something at least). When I read the comments page on the tube home last night however, I found there wasn't much room for 'debate'. All the comments bar one were radically in favour of the ad. Whichever way you look at it this it is not exactly uplifting - I doubt its proportional representation on the other hand if it is not then it is a media attempt to manipulate us into believing it is proportional representation and that is not much better.

Comments read 'Give our children the best possible education'
'It is important for them to know how to protect themselves'

I have no doubt that these people were sincere in what they had to say and that brings me back to my original statement. EDUCATION - a simple and innocent enough looking word but one that can alter who we are and what we become.

In the last ten years I have seen a tidal change in the sexual 'education' of children. At the beginning of this decade I was a teenager myself, still at school . I saw the markers of this change approaching in my own education. In my last year at school a woman with a mousy voice and cropped hair appeared with small clean little cards and handed them out to us following an innocuous talk that skirted round her point. The cards read 'Off The Record' followed by 'confidential advisory service and drop in centre'. Our parents had been given no notification of this woman coming into the school. Ten years on and those 'advisory' services are now often within the school grounds . They have taken 'options' out of parents hands completely so that an abortion can be arranged for a 14 year old girl without the knowledge of her parents. It has happened slowly - so slowly we barely felt it but now it is here it is difficult to get back to where we started from. Why?

EDUCATION?
No.
MISEDUCATION

Girls who become pregnant are told that the selfish, irresponsible thing to do would be to carry their pregnancy to term.

They are told that they were not wrong to engage in a mature relationship too fast but that they were wrong not to use any contraceptive they could lay there hands on before they did so.

It has become expected that children will engage in sexual relationships and their education has been that this is acceptable and even necessary.

What is irresponsible is to have a baby.

Miseducation. Parents themselves are educated to believe that throwing contraceptives at teenage kids is protecting them - you can't expect anything better of them.

When that fails you throw abortion at them as the RESPONSIBLE thing to do - you can't expect anything better.

I have stood outside abortion clinics and watched parents troop in and troop out with their teenage children -their heads held high - believing they are doing the RESPONSIBLE thing.

In an era where we take pride in how well we protect and nurture our children we belittle them and take their sense of personal RESPONSIBILITY away from them. We believe them to be incapable of behaving with forethought, strength and decency. And an EDUCATION based on this belief must be fundamentally flawed.

An EDUCATION which ignores RESPONSIBILITY, life, potential, possibility and the unexpected gifts which make life what it is- this is fundamentally flawed

Life, language - these have become the greatest irony and for those with their eyes open this is an EDUCATION in itself.

With all our EDUCATION we find ourselves with the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe. Yet no one will speak because they are too afraid that the spell might be broken. Someone might see through the semantic field of pleasant language that is a cover for horror and indoctrination.

For those of us who can see through this language our RESPONSIBILITY is greater than it has ever been. We must teach that our duty in this world is not to avoid consequences and RESPONSIBILITY but to embrace these things- for nothing EDUCATES better than the outcome of our actions. We all screw up - but what if something beautiful can come from that? What if we ignore that beauty?
What if we seek to destroy it?
What if we EDUCATE a generation to believe that destruction is not only valid but right?
What if that generation has to live with a silent guilt and shame?
What if they never achieve the potential they had because we didn't believe them capable?

As a young man called Karol Wojtyla once said 'my principle task would be to preserve, to protect, to defend, to augment, to deepen this desire for the good, the true, and the beautiful.'

13 comments:

Lisa said...

Amen. Awesome post, Squelly!

SQUELLY said...

Thanks Lisa! I am so happy you think so :-)

Sarah - Kala said...

Wow! YOu ought to submit this for publishing! It so timely and spot on! Fantastic!

SQUELLY said...

Thanks Sarah - that is so kind of you - great feedback!

Laura said...

I just spoke with my sister who has a teen boy and I asked her that in addition to talking to him about abstinence, also talk to him about knowing he can come to her if he has questions or finds himself in trouble related to sex and/or pregnancy.
We can't shut the door on the topic. It's there whether we like it or not.
Which were be more horrifying..having a son or daughter involved in an unplanned pregnancy or an abortion?
Terrific topic and focus.
Thank you.

SQUELLY said...

Absolutely! We can't chuck any of our 'solutions' at these kids - they deserve better. If they do happen to make an error then it only stands to become a tragedy if they walk into an abortion clinic because it is the 'easy' thing to do.

I think the problem we have here in England is denying abstinence is even a viable option which is so sad.

Thanks so much for your comment, as always!

Ann Murray said...

Very powerful post that deserves a wider readership.

SQUELLY said...

Thank you so very much! I really wasn't sure whether it worked or if it was 'too much' so I value these comments so much.

Anonymous said...

A fabulous, fabulous post!

One of the popular terms of our media age is "personhood". Yet, the irony is that the modern world has removed the "person" from individuals. In the "sex market" that passes for romance these days, men and women are seen as nothing more than objects. Almost every T.V. programme promotes sexual relationships as subjective: think "Sex in the City". Once the world re-engages in traditional values, imorality on all fronts will be exposed for what it is and there'll be fewer heads held high coming out of the abortion mills. God willing, there'll be fewer abortions and fewer unplanned pregnancies.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Incredible post. So well written.
I really feel for teenagers these days. There is so much pressure for them to gorw up to fast, yet there is no sense of the responsibilty that comes with making adult choices.
It is so sad that an abortion has become the "responsible" choice and all too often the enevitable one. I pray for these poor girls.

SQUELLY said...

Thanks Phil and Suzy!

Suzy-I am praying too - what a terrible burden they have to bear because of our 'freedom' and 'personhood' ideas which bear no resemblance to the actual meaning of these words.

Phil- I totally agree everything they see thrusts acting the way you like and sexuality at them. I am hopeful about that optimistic day when we finally realise the mistakes we have made.

Tracy said...

Awesome, Excellent, Thank You!!

SQUELLY said...

Thanks Tracy! :-)

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