Difference between revisions of "Censorship at home"
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Sex education is given far earlier now and in a much more matter-of-fact way, so that parents will, I suppose, only become worried when it comes to the perverse or the so-called pornographic, but of course the same principle holds good—children are not shocked by the things that have already been rationally and sensibly explained to them, and they are bored by sexual descriptions they cannot understand. They know about the mechanics of sex by the time they start primary school but literary exploitation must inevitably leave them cold because they do not understand lust. And if healthy adults are bored by pornography, how can it fail to bore children ? | Sex education is given far earlier now and in a much more matter-of-fact way, so that parents will, I suppose, only become worried when it comes to the perverse or the so-called pornographic, but of course the same principle holds good—children are not shocked by the things that have already been rationally and sensibly explained to them, and they are bored by sexual descriptions they cannot understand. They know about the mechanics of sex by the time they start primary school but literary exploitation must inevitably leave them cold because they do not understand lust. And if healthy adults are bored by pornography, how can it fail to bore children ? | ||
| − | Most parents at some stage feel obliged to warn their children against taking lifts from strangers, and if they are to do this without scaring them out of their wits a certain amount of explanation about psychological deviations is inevitable—it is surely just as easy to explain homosexuality, | + | Most parents at some stage feel obliged to warn their children against taking lifts from strangers, and if they are to do this without scaring them out of their wits a certain amount of explanation about psychological deviations is inevitable—it is surely just as easy to explain homosexuality, for instance, if the child comes across it in literature or on television. I suspect that the parent who imposes a whole or partial censorship on the subject of sex is a person with unresolved sexual problems or inhibitions, i.e. someone who is unable to explain satisfactorily. Probably himself a victim of censorship, |
I find it much more painful to allow my children to see—as they must—evidence of man's inhumanity to man. The other day my children saw an old film on television : it opened with a man being sentenced to the electric chair:, and then became a pretty straightforward murder thriller. But my 10-year-old daughter could not get over the fact of the electric chair. Yes, I said, it was true, this is how they killed convicted murderers in the States. "It's barbaric," she screamed, " it's horrible, it's got to be stopped. Don't let's ever go to the States." I felt proud of her. And I think that by allowing her to be shocked and horrified, in the way that I was shocked by the Belsen film, will help to shape her whole adult life. Perhaps she will help to stop it, or something equally brutal. Of course, it depends on what kind of people you want your children to become. | I find it much more painful to allow my children to see—as they must—evidence of man's inhumanity to man. The other day my children saw an old film on television : it opened with a man being sentenced to the electric chair:, and then became a pretty straightforward murder thriller. But my 10-year-old daughter could not get over the fact of the electric chair. Yes, I said, it was true, this is how they killed convicted murderers in the States. "It's barbaric," she screamed, " it's horrible, it's got to be stopped. Don't let's ever go to the States." I felt proud of her. And I think that by allowing her to be shocked and horrified, in the way that I was shocked by the Belsen film, will help to shape her whole adult life. Perhaps she will help to stop it, or something equally brutal. Of course, it depends on what kind of people you want your children to become. | ||
