Oh yah, you're sooo impartial Graham, I love you.

If I have an opinion that I won't listen to crackpots, I will voice it. This does not mean that I think that crackpots should not be allowed to say what they have to say.

I am reminded of a preacher guy at uni who used to turn up in the major greenspace and loudly yell out the bible at the students at lunch time.
Noone asked him to leave, but noone listened either. After the lunch hour was over he packed up his bag and left, possibly happy in the knowledge that he had done his spreading of the Good Word for the day, who knows?

This site is the equivalent of that lunchtime greenspace. After lunch, everyone goes back to work.

One last thing though, I think I might scream the next time someone uses the term 'useful idiot' again non-ironically. It's just another throwaway phrase used to denigrate those who don't agree with the user of it. There are plenty of other descriptors you can use for the same purpose that won't make you look like a sheep regurgitating talking-point crap.

So, what's normal ? How do you distinguish between 'legal' and 'normal' ? How do you distinguish between 'legal' and 'approved for general exhibition etc.' ?

I'm a bit of a drinker, red wine usually (hey, I've got one here at my elbow) and although of course it's legal to drink, even to drink heavily, could you say it was normal ? To be approved of as an example to the kiddies ? No, I don't think so, I wouldn't drink in front of my grandkids, for example, or at least not get blotto. Which is legal, by the way, if not 'normal' or 'approved'.

Homosexuality is legal, but I don't have to like it. If anybody has some pissy issues about whether they are really a man in a woman's body, etc., etc., or have fallen in love with their best mate or a tree or their dog and want to marry it, that's their business, leave me out of it. Nobody else has to approve of me staggering down the street half-shot, why should anybody have to pretend they fully approve of some other legal but not-fully-approved-in-their-view behaviour ? It might be legal but nobody has to like it. Or rush to the barricades to defend it.

Speaking from my own limited experience, kids don't understand much about the human body, their own or those of the other gender, until much later than 10 or 11, perhaps 14 or so when they undertake an intensive self-study course, seeking to gain from as much extramural activity as possible. Some kids are a bit fragile, so they might have all sorts of doubts about their sexuality, and these proposed courses might be just the thing to really fnnk them up.

And if it happens frequently enough across all schools, and into the future, the Gramscians can look back with pride that they have disrupted bourgeois society in yet one more creative way. Well done, Ros.

Joe

In regards to your drinking metaphor, Joe:

All the education that many people want would be to say to kids: "drinking is a sin, don't do it".

Would you consider that approach to be beneficial or even work in practical sense?

Any education on topics that 'they' don't like is likely to fnnk kids up isn't it? Nobody needs to know anything about anything, nothing to see here, move on.

Let's go back to the good ol' days when guys I knew used to bash the poofters in the public toilets.

Just leave me out of it.

Hi Bugsy,

Sin ? I'm all for all sorts of sin, of many pleasurable kinds, but I suppose to answer your question, I probably advised my kids to drink in moderation, if they ever felt like drinking at all, which thankfully they don't seem to have done.

But if what you are getting at is that 10- or 11-year-old children should have some sort of early experiences run by schools (perhaps Friday afternoons?) in how to drink, that perhaps each week, they should try white wine, red wine, port, beers (full-strength and light), and all sorts of spirits, as part of their social-awareness curriculum, I would caution against it. Perhaps not even for 15- or 16-year-olds. Perhaps not in schools at all: good god, have I become a prude ?

But maybe you're right: let kids drink; let them explore each others' bodies and orifices from 10 or 11. Let them ponder and experience the intricacies of inter-, trans-, bi-, mono-, auto-, homo-sexual combinations and permutations, perhaps while also experiencing the joys of drink. Should make for pretty riotous Friday afternoons. Six or seven years of that should teach the kids a thing or two.

As for your other point, I can't recall ever bashing a poofter in a public toilet, or anywhere. If they left me alone, I was happy to leave them alone. Chacun a son gout.

Joe

You may not have indulged in 'poofter bashing' Joe, but I knew a few people that did. Nice baptist boys too, raised by teetotalling parents. Funny that.

I think you have taken your own metaphor a bit far there. Quite absurdist really, if 'drinking' equates to 'having homosexual sex' in this metaphor, you are of course being patently ridiculous.

However, would adolescents be better informed if 'drinking' was what they wanted to do if they had a bit more knowledge of the subject? Perhaps more knowledge of the health implications, what it means for society, what social problems heavy drinkers have, what's considered 'normal' etc? There's a whole wealth of information about 'drinking' that children can benefit from before actually partaking. Some will be interested, many probably won't, but if whatever was introduced reduced the number kids growing up bashing drunk people, then I would consider it on its merits.
You don't have to open a pub in the school grounds to learn about it. That's just being obtuse.

I doubt these lectures would be any more fun for the students than being hectored by the actual Marxists and Maoists we had to put up with in the 1980's. I'll never forget our social studies teacher in about 84 and his epic anti-Reagan polemics, the only upside was that he refused to fail anyone LOL.