Put primary one sex classes to bed

WE'VE come a long way since virginal brides approached their marital bed with uninformed terror.

Now it seems, according to recommendations by Scottish doctors in the British Medical Association, sexual knowledge should come with Play-Doh and Sticklebricks.

The BMA is calling for sex education for five-year-olds, as soon as they start school.

Had the idea come from some loony, left-of-field, extreme, sexual pressure group, I wouldn't have been surprised. Instead I am as slack-jawed as Gordon Brown when he's in the spotlight, and almost as bewildered.

Sure, it offends my sense of morals and flies in the face of the belief that children should be allowed to enjoy childhood without all the adult angst that will come soon enough. Although I dare say some would think I am out of touch and old-fashioned.

But more than that, I am not entirely sure what sex education before the age of say, ten, is supposed to achieve.

Is the assumption that if we teach children about sex, they won't do it? If that's the case, it contradicts everything else they are taught in school. Would we teach them times tables, or spelling or reading with the proviso that this information should be squirrelled away and definitely not acted upon? When children learn skills, they begin to use them . . . that's the whole point of school.

Even if there were some merit in the idea, which I doubt, why then isn't it being applied to other forms of damaging behaviour that will surely come long before even premature sexual activity?

If it works with sex, shouldn't we be teaching five-year-olds about drugs, alcohol and fags, divorce, crime and abuse? Before you know it, Primary One will be so over-burdened with lessons on the temptations and aberrations of adult life that there won't be time to shoe-horn in a game of rounders, let alone reading, writing and arithmetic.

Most five-year-olds have just got to the point of asking where babies come from. Accepted wisdom handed down over generations has been that parents should answer the child's question . . . but only the question. Babies come from mummy's tummy.

Then, a few months hence, comes part two . . . but how do they get into mummy's tummy? Daddy plants a seed.

More months pass. How does the baby eat in mummy's tummy . . . etc, etc.

Every child is different. Some will know the whole birds and bees theory – albeit at the simplest level – by the age of seven or so. Others will display less, or more, curiosity.

Some will get it straight away, not least because they have a mummy and a daddy as reference points. Others in single- parent households may need a differently-tailored approach.

Sex education is not a one-size-fits-all proposition and never has been and it seems to me that sex education too early could be just as damaging as sex education too late.

When five-year-olds are still being visited annually by Santa Claus, rewarded by the Tooth Fairy and expecting presents from the Easter Bunny, are their little heads really in the right place for lessons on sex?

Professional and academic fingers point to elsewhere in northern Europe where early sex education, they claim, results in later sexual activity. Actually, there are many more important factors to consider than what happens in the classroom.

In those countries family and community ties and structures are much stronger than in the UK. Their societies also have very different attitudes to sex to begin with.

In Norway, while only hidden, state-run off-licences can sell wine, and bingo halls must have painted-out windows and discreet signage, suburban high street sex shops proudly display sex toys and apparatus.

What works in the rest of northern Europe may not work here. There is a huge risk in getting this wrong.

The BMA, as one might expect, is homing in on the medical aspects of sex – STDs, unwanted pregnancies, terminations.

But there's more to it than that . . . psychological well-being, emotional happiness, relationship stability. And on these, the BMA isn't necessarily the best authority. Their recommendations are interesting, not compelling.

Marks, but no sparks
Three cheers for the middle-aged, female shareholders at the M&S AGM recently, who told Sir Stuart Rose exactly where the retail giant was going wrong . . . and had been going wrong for years.

Its see-saw performance of soaring highs and plunging lows is, according to the ladies, because it has set its stall among the fickle vagaries of the young fashion market where there is too much competition, and deserted the core customers who used to help it ride out economic storms.

M&S, especially in this grey age of an exploding over-50 population, can choose between being cutting-edge, sexy and stylish, or reliable, elegant and profitable.

While young women would rather die than admit they were dressed by M&S, the middle-aged will proudly align themselves with Markies . . . but for how much longer?