A new low

Is Britain determined to destroy itself?

Perhaps not, but the currently ensconced Labour government seems to be hell-bent on doing so.

From Yahoo! news:

'Give young children sex education'

Primary school children should get basic sex education, a Government review is expected to find.

The study is likely to recommend a shake-up of lessons to combat concerns that current teaching of the subject in England is too patchy.

Schools minister Jim Knight is due to present the findings later, as well as the Government's responses.

The review is expected to say that sex education should be compulsory in all schools.

This could include teaching young children basic classes on the human body and relationships, with more detailed information being given as a child moves up through school.

Last week Mr Knight told MPs he had received "strong recommendations" for making sex education compulsory in all schools but said it had to be done without "sexualising young people too early".

International evidence suggests that teaching certain aspects of sex and relationship education before puberty has a "positive effect" on issues like teenage pregnancy, Mr Knight said.

Britain has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe and figures suggest rising numbers of young people are catching sexually transmitted diseases.

Current rules say pupils must be taught the biological facts of reproduction, usually in science classes, and every school must have a sex education policy.

But there is no statutory requirement for teaching about relationships and the social and emotional side of sexual behaviour.

Although Melancholicus is a teacher, at least part-time, his charges are not children but young adults (with a sprinkling of mature students older than himself). Since he is not yet married, he has no children of his own. Consequently he has no experience of dealing with primary school age children other than his memories of having been one himself about thirty years ago.

He would like to know more about the state of innocence (or lack thereof) that Catholic primary school teachers find in their charges, and the degree to which they may have been corrupted by the moral and cultural degradation of our society, a degradation more advanced today than when Melancholicus was in primary school circa 1980.

One thing at least is certain: it is unnecessary to disturb young children with lessons detailing sexual acts which will only confuse and frighten them. Melancholicus’ own innocence was preserved until puberty, as was right; and, having had the mechanics of sexual intercourse explained to him experienced a certain sense of significant discovery, almost a rite of passage, and felt privileged to be growing up. But his brother and sister (both younger) discovered the facts of life about the age of nine or ten, before they were ready, one through the accident of watching daytime TV (!), the other through the ministrations of some ‘expert’ invited for that purpose to visit her (Catholic) school.

Both, incidentally, were shocked and disgusted by their discoveries, as one can only expect from children of that age.

The story quoted above finishes with an observation which, though particularly telling regarding the thoughtlessness of this Labour government, nonetheless fails to mention that there is also a moral dimension to the exercise of human sexuality in addition to “the social and emotional side”.

There is only one potentially positive aspect to this story. It is impossible to live in western society and not be aware of the omnipresence of sexuality and eroticism in books, in magazines, in advertising, on the radio, on the television, on the internet, everywhere in fact, not excluding shop windows on the high street. Ostensibly family programmes on both radio and television broadcast well before the watershed may contain some quite advanced sexual content (BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live has trespassed more than once in this area—and it is aired on Saturday mornings between 9 and 10am). Consequently, it is not a source for wonderment that children growing up today are by and large much more knowledgeable about sexual matters than Melancholicus’ generation was in the 1970s. An increasing proportion of today’s children have been sexualised early anyway, and may often be more knowledgeable about adult matters than their years would warrant. If there is to be early discussion of sex in schools at all, it ought best to focus not on explicit depictions of popular sexual acts (many of which are little more than perversions anyway) but on attempting to inculcate a sound moral sense in these young souls, and a reverential respect for persons of the opposite sex and for what is one of God’s greatest gifts to fallen man.

But of course Melancholicus is dreaming. This Labour government will certainly not attempt to impart a responsible and moral approach towards human sexuality in those children already sexualised early by exposure to inappropriate media, much less ever mention God or recommend abstinence until marriage. No, it will prefer instead to go to great lengths (and expense) to instruct young innocents of both sexes how best to utilise this or that contraceptive device, or to perform this or that sexual act, even to the extent of the “homosexual technique” mentioned in this famous episode of Yes, Prime Minister:

The evil fruits of Dignitatis Humanae

Will someone please tell Melancholicus, is this man a bishop or a politician? His enthusiasm for pluralism and multiculturalism in the schools of his diocese befits more a member of the Labour Party than it does a Catholic prelate.

From RTÉ:

Dublin schools to end Catholic-first policy

The Archdiocese of Dublin has approved a new school enrolment policy, which will see schools for the first time setting aside a quota of places for non-Catholic pupils.

The new admissions system is being introduced on a pilot basis in two primary schools in west Dublin.

Until now all schools belonging to the Archdiocese were obliged to enrol Catholic applicants first.

This significant development is a break with a policy that last year proved highly controversial.

The two schools with the new policy, St Patrick's and St Mochta's, are located in an area that has seen massive population growth.

Last year, an emergency school had to be set up to take in the non-Catholic children they could not accommodate and most of these were the children of immigrants.

This new policy is an attempt to ensure such divisions do not happen again.

It keeps two thirds of junior infant places for Catholics, but makes the rest available to non-Catholics.

The schools say they want a mix and that they want to reflect the communities they serve.

Their patron, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, agrees and he has asked parents to support the schools' initiative.

The Irish Primary Principals network welcomed the decision, saying it was a positive response to the enrolment challenges that schools are encountering.

As much as Melancholicus would prefer to see foreigners integrating themselves into the rest of the Irish population rather than forming separate, closed-off ghetto-style communities (as the Mohammedans do in Britain), he cannot approve of this initiative by his local ordinary, which could see Catholic children denied a place at their local school in order that non-Catholics—or even non-Christians—might claim those places instead. It is at the very least distasteful to witness the shepherd of the flock in this diocese, to whose care the souls of all the faithful are entrusted, depriving his own lambs of their food and giving it instead to outsiders. Furthermore, Melancholicus can hardly imagine either St. Patrick or his disciple St. Mochta (in whose honour these schools are dedicated) approving of this policy; picture the absurdity of places in an Irish monastic school in the age of conversion being reserved—with no necessity of baptism—for the sons of pagans, and the reader will understand how foolish—and how pandering to the spirit of this age—is the new policy of the Dublin archdiocese.

Nor, of course, will admitting non-Christian children to Catholic schools involve any question of proselytism, so we won’t even have the compensatory benefit of recruiting any new catechumens; Dignitatis Humanae has long since seen to that. That nefarious document disowned the very idea of a Catholic state; now precisely the same principles are put to work towards ending Catholic education.

The presence of non-Catholic children in a Catholic school will immediately result in a watering-down of the school’s Catholic ethos, since in these politically-correct times it will be seen as chauvinistic to parade one’s culture in front of ‘minorities’, even if this is done in complete innocence and without any ‘triumphalistic’ intent. Political correctness has conditioned many otherwise well intentioned and intelligent people to fear exposing minorities to any expression of ‘majoritarian’ culture, as though there were something inherently ‘racist’ in, say, displaying a crucifix on the wall of a Catholic classroom in which there happens to be a half dozen Sikhs or Muslims. Once the minorities are admitted, the crucifixes will quietly vanish; classroom prayers will be quietly discontinued—or else replaced by some generic fluff completely devoid of any specifically Catholic content and which could be said in good conscience by the adherents of any other religion; statues, icons, etc. will be removed and replaced with non-religious images so as not to ‘offend’ the sensibilities of any non-Christian child that might happen to be enrolled there.

This erosion of the culture of the majority is of course a one-way street, for there will be no such curbs on the culture of the minorities. Pupils belonging to other faiths will be encouraged to celebrate their own traditions and to share their culture and beliefs with their Catholic classmates. Catholic schoolchildren will hear much in their Catholic school about Allah and Krishna and Mohammed and Guru Nanak and who knows what else; but they will be told nothing of Jesus Christ, or His blessed mother, or the Trinity, or the Holy Bible, or anything specifically and recognisably Christian.

But what is Melancholicus thinking? So-called Catholic schools in this post-conciliar age are hardly havens of the Catholic religion even now, are they? Religious education in Ireland, long since hobbled by the execrable and even heretical Alive-O series, has long since been reduced to vacuous, airy-fairy, anthropocentric pap devoid of recognisably Catholic content. It is the conciliar religion, rather than Catholicism, that currently holds sway in Irish Catholic schools. So on balance, once this policy is implemented, Catholic schoolchildren will not really be losing out on anything they didn’t have before, will they?

But now, before we finish, imagine a Catholic child enrolled in an Islamic school. Do you think, gentle reader, that allowances would be made to accommodate this child and her religious sensibilities? On the contrary, she would be required to pray the Muslim prayers with her Muslim classmates; she would be compelled to wear the hijab in school despite the fact that she is not a Muslim; she would be told, forcefully and repeatedly, that Allah has no son, that the Trinity is unclean, that Christians and Jews are deserving of hellfire, that there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet, and that the Qur’an and not the Bible is the word of God.

That’s a rather different picture, isn’t it?

Studenti saepe in horto vacant

I am sitting in my cell in the university, alone. One hour more, and I will be able to retire to the country for the weekend. From the quadrangle below, the noise of recreating students of both sexes rises to my open window. I call it a quadrangle because of its shape, but it isn’t really, at least not in the sense of those one finds at Oxbridge colleges—merely a four-sided open space around which the Newman building rises. This space is overlooked by teaching rooms and staff offices, and is hardly a private place. Due to the fact that the Arts Café opens onto this area, with tables and chairs provided for the convenience of those who wish to take their coffee or their lunch in the open (weather permitting), it is often a hive of activity, with groups of students gathering to socialize and chat with one another. The walls of the building on each side channel the sound of chatter upwards, whence it enters through the windows of those whose offices overlook the courtyard. The sound being naturally amplified by these surroundings, what are ostensibly private conversations inevitably become public, whether the speakers desire it or not.

I am not disturbed at my work by the chatter itself, but by its content. Every day I have to listen to some disagreeable account of the beer-soaked debaucheries of someone’s night before. These tales, typically told to an audience of at least three sitting at the same table, and doubtless exaggerated for narrative effect—or at least I hope so; God forbid that much of the nonsense I hear should actually be true—are recounted at an invariably loud volume, interspersed with guffaws and liberal uses of the f-word, not to mention blasphemies against the Most Holy Name. And the worst offenders seem always to be women, inasmuch as their tales are more explicit in that domain regulated by the sixth and ninth commandments. Women they may be, ladies they are not.

The din and the hooting and the obnoxious braggadocio about matters which are more appropriate to the confessional than to a social gathering in the public forum reminds me of one of those Irishman’s Diary columns by Kevin Meyers in The Irish Times. This piece was published some years ago, and the point that Mr. Meyers was making therein escapes my memory, but one particular sentence struck me when I first read it, and it has stayed with me ever since. It was about students—my bread and butter, since I make a living teaching them—and how they have changed with the passage of the years. As is the case with society generally, the standard of ettiquette and public behaviour among members of the student body seems to have coarsened to the point of the children of tomorrow not having the faintest notion how to comport themselves in front of other people, or at least in front of others not as amused by their antics as are their peers. Nor does it seem to have occurred to our dear juniors that they ARE in public, that they ARE being observed, and that the way they behave in front of others speaks volumes about the kind of people they are—as well as the kind of people their parents are; a decided lack of respect for people generally is evinced by the carry-on of those who remain unaware that they ought to behave differently in public to how they behave in the company of their closest friends.

Such persons seem—if their public bragging is anything to go by—to spend their free time constantly searching for their next fix, be that fix alcohol, drugs, or the pleasures of the bedroom, and it appears to be a matter of competition to see who can come up with the most crude and ribald account of the previous evening’s debauchery.

Mr. Meyers, having noted this tendency among the students of whom he wrote in the 1990s, asked this pointed question: What does the average 19-year-old student of today, easy and libidinous, equally familiar with sex and drugs, equally unfamiliar with religious convictions or political ardour of any kind, have in common with his counterpart of seventy, fifty, or even thirty years ago?

Good question. Only thirty years ago, dear Kevin, the world was a different place. I am still a young man—well, youngish—and I have seen the change in my own lifetime.

Now I will be accused of generalizing, and in fairness I must agree that there are many admirable and upstanding young men and women at the university who do not deserve to be bracketed with the yobs. But the yob element is so pervasive, both within and without the university, as to be ubiqitous; and of course they make more noise than quiet, well-mannered and properly brought-up studious types, and so attract more notice.

The weather this November has been mild and generally pleasant, with the result that the students sit out in the courtyard every day; the noise of their recreations typically starts around 10am, and continues without a break until the Arts Café finally closes in the evening. I find myself longing for colder weather, and the return of the rain, both of which will help to keep them indoors. I have grown tired of hearing about their menstrual cycles, and their emergency contraception, and the casual encounters they enjoyed the previous weekend, and the blinding fits of vomiting that so-and-so suffered having had a few too many. Is there not anything better, more worthwhile, more intellectual to talk about than this, for goodness’ sake? After all, they are supposed to be studying at a third level institution.

And that is the end of my peevishness for today. It is now time to depart to the country...