Sex education

Here floats the dratted ad on your television screen again when you so wanted to shield your innocent child, who is now a teenager though from such profanity. Why doesn’t the censor board ban the broadcasting of this sort of vulgarism such as disseminating sex education by the harnessing the medium of media. But is it meet that men, women and children should be kept in artificial ignorance of facts relating to sexual affairs? The reason for putting this question first is that ignorance on this matter is extra-ordinarily harmful for an individual and therefore no system for perpetuation demands such ignorance can be desirable. Sexual morality, should be such as to commend itself to well informed persons and do not depend upon ignorance for its appeal. This is a part of a wider doctrine, which though it has never been held by the government or policemen, appears indubitable in the light of reason. That doctrine is that right conduct can never, except by some rare and weird accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

Reticence about sexual facts, had part of its origin in with women being incarcerated. It was first only females who were to be kept ignorant, and their ignorance was desired as a help towards masculine domination. Gradually, however, women acquiesced in the view that ignorance is essential to virtue, and partly through their influence it came to be thought and accepted as a general norm of the contemporary society that children and young people whether male or female, should be as ignorant as possible on sexual knowledge and subjects that concern the flesh. At this stage the motive ceased to be one of domination and passed into the region of irrational taboo. The question whether ignorance is desirable is never examined, it is even illegal to bring evidence to show that ignorance does harm. This has led many philosophers and social workers to accept the attitude of “where ignorance is bliss, it is foolish to be wise” and thus our society has labored for years under this delusion that talk on sexual matters is an issue of immeasurable shame and disgrace.