They wouldn't get away with that today

I know what you mean, I was just taking it down another route. And I agree with your earlier points.

ah Grampian television, form Aberdeen

anyway that got to be PC at its worse!

half the stuff is PC like nearly all of the old BBC comedy.

I wonder what would still be allowed if we got rid of PC!

Under Channel 4's stewardship, Living And Growing has gone beyond liberal and borders on debauched. The latest series teaches FIVE YEAR OLDS about pleasuring oneself:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=438621&in_page_id=1770

Meanwhile, another C4 schools programme had Davina McCall (of all people) arguing the case for Dutch-style more liberal sex education to be introduced here, this deluded woman under impression this would help cut underage pregnancies:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=440676&in_page_id=1773

How this woman can be considered a suitable presenter for such a programme, when she is best known for a sleazefest which actively encourages people to fornicate on camera, is amazing.

maybe when we start teaching kids about sexual matters when they want to know and in the same non prejudiced way as teaching them about everything else we will reduce the underaged prenancies. It's our underhanded attutudes to sexuality which creates the sex offenders of tomorrow

my year 2 class gets taught basic sex education in their PHSE lessons and look at what makes them different, including the physical difference between boys and girls. Funny how since they came away from showing real bare humans and real genitals on these programmes that underaged pregnancies have risen

anyway I'm off topic

While I agree that Davina McCall is not the right presenter, I would say that Channel 4 is heading in the right direction by actually explaining things at a younger age to children.

Remember that old sex education films used real footage of real naked people, with real sex organs. The fact that since this has disappeared teenage pregancies have risen indicates to me that the media is pumping out programmes encouraging people to fornicate on camera (like Big Brother ) without any proper education on what these things are like. In this event, people are being thrown into a world where sexually-charged messages from the media are the norm without knowing what it's like, leaving teenagers more curious and therefore more likely to be promiscuous.

And the irony is the first couple to have sex on Big Brother did so in the teenage version - and regretted it soon afterwards.

When I was at junior school we followed the Schools programme "Good Health" every week and when the sex ed programme came round, it included a scene with boys taking a shower. Predictably, those in the year below us who were watching got a fit of the giggles. Our teacher's response was robust: "We'll have to make sure you are covered from top to toe - hat to cover your ears, gloves to cover your hands - after all we can't have any bare skin showing can we, because that's all it is - skin!"

Do you honestly think the Daily Mail is the bastion for all that is pure in the world? Most would only cite them to be critical of their idiotic stance. Anyway, teaching sex education at a younger age will help people become much more adult and maybe even more responsible in later age. Hiding it away as if nobody is a sexual creature just perpetuates those **** at Daily Mail's strange puritanical belief that sex is wrong and should only be performed through a sheet or some such crap.

The sooner we get away from the idea that sex and knowledge of it is wrong, the better. It helps nobody to keep it hidden and to be taught rather than keep such things hidden away under the notion it's somehow "sinful" is arming them rather than leaving them crippled when they'll want and need to know. Heck, I'd go as far as to say teaching kids as young as 5 about these things progressively so they wouldn't be fits of giggles over something we all have.

Oh yeah, when did this thread cast itself off to be something much deeper than it initially was? Better than bantering about race all the friggin' time.

Before we launch into another rant against Associated Newspapers (a favourite pastime of many here I know) can I at least try to convince you they weren't the only people to pick up the Living And Growing storyline - ISTR it made news in other publications and on Teletext (hang on - they're owned by AN too!) The Davina programme I saw for myself and did not hear about via the press.


In which case I'd have thought you'd be impressed by my teacher's handling of the situation as described above. And you might want to tell that to the puritans at Disney who are almost certainly about to hang the young star of High School Musical out to dry because a nude pic of her got leaked online...


When it touched on archive sex education programmes, and how they'd be frowned upon if they dared to show naked human bodies in this day and age (in keeping with this thread's theme of what TV couldn't get away with today).

Sorry Simon, but I don't agree with you - you're just being a typical English prude who's embarassed to discuss sex and hopes it will go away. This country has the worst rate of teenage pregancy in Europe - and it's got to be because of our atrocious prudish sex education taught by teachers who find it awkward to talk about, bimble through it and get the unspeakable subject brushed under the carpet as quickly as possible.

German sex education starts (in a way) from the age of 3 when they start discussing physical differences between males and females - and their TV is not prudish enough to try and pretend that sex doesn't exist until a certain time of day.

UK sex education is a joke - when I was at school it was a subject worthy of a telling off at primary school, was discussed from a purely scientific standpoint in the first year of secondary school, from a social standpoint in later years, and only finally from a physical standpoint in SIXTH FORM when we were all 16 or 17 and for many it came too late. And the quality of education you received from all of these standpoints was directly related to the awkwardness or not the teacher you had teaching it to you in discussing sex.

From working in a primary school several years, things have got little better.

Our system of trying to pretend that sex doesn't exist for as long as possible, and only then addressing it in the most non-commital kid-gloves way imagineable clearly isn't working, it's more than time that it was taught properly - and also that chidren aren't 'protected' from natural education about it through watching TV (awaits some prat to claim that my last comment means that I sanction Television X being broadcast in the downtime of Cbeebies)..

There's a big difference from teaching three year-olds about the difference between males and females, and what Living And Growing was supposedly teaching children just two years older. At the very least, Davina McCall was not the right presenter for that programme due to the conflict of interest with her Big Brother role.

And there was absolutely no awkwardness on the part of the teacher I mentioned previously, hence why he was so quick to take the gigglers to task. The only thing was, because this episode of Good Health was part of a series the class watched every week, its use probably broke the usual strict protocol for sex ed - that being that parents had to be informed in writing well in advance to allow them the choice of an "opt-out" for their son or daughter. A policy I believe still operates in many schools.

No sex ed until sixth form? Jesus, that's the other extreme. By contrast, sex ed in my school from Year 7 onwards clearly did not have the desired effect - there were a number of Year 11 pregnancies (1990), something the year head did his damndest not to publicise.

when you get weirods on youtube trying to prove sexual and satanic references in every childrens tv programme under the sun and finding a sexual reference in every reply that counter claims theirs you have to wonder at the sick sick world we have created due to our over paranoia of both sexuality and human nudity.

In that case you may wish to avoid the new version of Jackanory, where Lenny Henry was telling a story about a hippo called - Humpy Rumpy...