Rosemary McLeod: More morals needed in sex ed

We are spooked by our own shadows when it comes to kids and sex, desperate to delegate sex education to teachers, Photo / Gettys

I well remember my mother's insistence on telling me the facts of life, which we call sex. It was an eye-rolling experience verging on gross when she insisted on showing me her alarming rubber diaphragm, an ancient form of contraception and also, surely, libido suppressant.

I thought she was an idiot, and by the time she'd finished I knew it for a fact. You know a lot in your early teens, pretty much everything, and I was never burdened with doubt on that score. Today I instinctively feel sorry for parents because I am one.

We're currently in one of our regular states of moral panic, centred on some third form boys who wrote distasteful, misogynist stuff, revealing hostile and demeaning attitudes to women. Yes they were revolting, and yes they must be held accountable, but this was nothing compared to what young kids have access to on the internet. Fashionable comedy today is unflaggingly gross, and it's possible that they thought they were being hilarious. No. They weren't. But just saying.

We seem to forget that third form boys are the lowest in the college pecking order, desperate to prove they're mature beyond their years, their voices sometimes squeaky, pimply, not yet shaving, mostly still growing, in some cases diminutive, of no sexual interest to anyone much other than themselves.

To prove the maturity they don't have they snigger over any information about female anatomy, a likely source of terror, and at dirty jokes, especially if they make females look stupid or gross. In between times, they try smoking cigarettes and dope, splutter over alcohol, and carve their names into desks alongside crude images of phalluses. In short, they are best left alone for the time being, though of course they should be reprimanded for misogynous smart-alecking before it gets ingrained, and they're even less likely to attract girls. Okay, or other boys.

We are spooked by our own shadows when it comes to kids and sex, desperate to delegate sex education to teachers, mortified to have to deal with it ourselves. The conversation is awkward, no matter how much of a model parent you are, and most likely your kids know about it already, especially with the internet so accessible. Defend porn if you must as freedom of expression, but the women featured in it are being degraded, not liberating themselves in some sophisticated exercise in French philosophy.

I remember my mother's hilarity on learning about gay sex and oral sex in the 60s. That generation wasn't burdened with the internet, and my father refused to tell her exactly what he saw in the Pompeii museum during the war. The Romans scrawled phalluses everywhere, as the delightful Mary Beard reveals in her TV programmes, yet they ruled the known world for centuries. There are worse things.

Sex is complicated, for all its animal simplicity, the most complicated part of it being consent, a subtle, shifting landscape even among people who are no longer in short pants and flooded with hormones. I doubt that you fully understand what is meant by consent until you're an adult, when hopefully experience has taught you enough to learn from your mistakes.

Sex education is probably helpful, but if it's taught without a moral framework it's of little use. By morality I mean basic consideration for other people. Call it good manners or social responsibility, but it's also about right and wrong. Wrong is whatever is hurtful to yourself or others. Right is whatever doesn't cause tears the morning after. It's not hard to understand, but if you're never taught it, at home or at school, your life will be difficult and other people will find you a pain in the neck.

I'm more worried this week by a report of groups of feral kids breaking the law without restraint in a small town north of Auckland. Alan Price, chairman of Kaikohe's National Party, described what happened there last Friday night when large groups of them were caught on CTV robbing a liquor store and vandalising a petrol station. They sounded too young for the adult justice system, and apparently run riot regularly.

This was not about the police, Price said, and he was right. It's about families, and probably "a bigger drug problem in this country than we know".

Parents too stoned and feral to care for children are not going to be gently discussing the nature of consent, respect for women, or anything else. If Price believes in corporal punishment, and he said he does, they're where he could usefully start. Anything to wake them up.