Parents are the stewards of knowledge for their children

Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill was, despite the propagandistic label, actually a piece of legislation designed to protect childhood innocence. Many of us may recall lamenting the departure of our ignorance of all things sexual when the time came to have the talk about “the birds and the bees.” The law is now in effect in the Sunshine State.

The value of this innocence was captured well by Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch author who memorably documented her childhood and her family’s role in hiding Jews from Nazi persecution. In one section of the book, she wrote about how she used times of rail travel with her father to discuss things that troubled her as a girl. At age 10, she’d read about a young man “whose face was not shadowed” by sexual sin. She wanted to know what that meant and asked her father about it. He replied by taking his suitcase down from a luggage rack and asking her if she would carry it off the train. It was far too heavy. She was forced to concede she could not do it. He explained that he knew it was too heavy for her and that a good father would not expect a child to carry it. “It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge,” he said. “Some knowledge is too heavy for children.” He concluded by encouraging her to allow him to carry that knowledge for her. Her reaction was the opposite of disappointment. Rather, she was satisfied and at peace. To her, it seemed a wonderful thing to leave some of the hard questions in her father’s care.

For reasons that are hard to understand, there is a vanguard in our culture that thinks it is of prime importance to unveil the many mysteries having to do with sex (and sexual identity) for the supposed benefit of small children. Thus, we have plenty of examples exposed by social media of woke teachers sharing their adventures in “enlightening” young children. From their perspective, leaving little kids out of the conversation about sex is a missed opportunity for moral, cultural, intellectual, and sexual development. Corrie ten Boom’s reaction as a child (at age 10, practically a senior citizen for today’s woke educational purposes) reveals something different. She was content, indeed relieved, to let adult matters wait for greater maturity. One strongly suspects today’s children have not changed so much in that regard.

Another aspect of this controversy has to do with the reaction from those who protest strongly against attempts to awaken the minds of young children about sex. The more flagrant and eyebrow-raising efforts of this type have to do with charges of “grooming.” In other words, some critics of early childhood sex education believe that advocates of such programs are actively trying to sexualize children to make them easier targets for sexual predation or to recruit them into exotic sexual behaviors. On one hand, these attacks seem incredibly charged and uncharitable. On the other, I can’t help but notice that among people I know who are the most earnest in making such allegations are also those who recall being sexually abused as children. Concerns about “grooming” could be a form of hysteria but could also be the consequence of an immediate and personally damaging experience.

The original battles over sex education had to do with high school students. During the past few decades, we have seen attempts to push such education into the earliest years of a child’s time in school. The most important question about the seemingly ill-advised adventure is why? Some suggest that the goal is to sexualize children at an early age for the most nefarious of reasons, but I think the answer can be found in C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Once the leading elements of a society manage to cut the moral will (the chest) out of a person, they will then set about the work of “conditioning.” The opponents of Christian revelation and natural law feel they have triumphed and that even the earliest years of a child’s life are an appropriate time to commence with a shaping more to their liking. They have little concern with whether children are ready to carry the baggage and burden they will assign to them.