When the well is dirty, clean it

THE EDITOR: In the present clamouring to offer youths lessons in sexuality, I would like those in authority to note the following problems.

1) The material is being offered without the benefit of morality to guide the students in their choices. 2) The material being offered will therefore corrupt those who are innocent and well brought up. 3) The school curriculum already has more than the teaching staff can realistically cope with. 4)The material goes against the teachings of several established religious faiths. 5) Employees will not need contraceptive knowledge, other than in a pharmacy or brothel. 6) The material is capable of being misused by a lecherous educator for abuses of their students. 7) The student that teachers struggle to teach regular subjects is now expected; without any real change in method, to learn a subject, where one misapplication can destroy his life. 8) The students are being treated as beings without the ability to master their instincts.

Our nation’s current lack of standards in decency of what we currently accept as commonplace in our words and deeds, our culture, advertising and entertainment are the very fountain the youth of our nation drinks from. If the well is dirty don’t teach the children to live with it. Clean the water, boil it, and filter it!!! The fact that United Kingdom has the highest teen pregnancy rate despite their school sex education programme should be reason enough to reconsider this irresponsible attempt at problem solving. The failure to examine in detail the outcome of adopting these well-intentioned programmes in the countries that have them can only be seen as reckless. These young people are our future and any government that hastily attempts this type of programme as an answer would be submitting our young people to another botched educational experiment of the developed world.

They would do well to remember that in order to develop the nation you should maintain good morals. If young people are going to save our nation, this sick version of education will not he the way. It is time our political pied pipers played a different tune. The books we read, the shows we watch, the advertising we use, and words we say will either feed young people with what is good or it will ensure that they will face an even more frightening future. They will be just when they can see the real justice of doctors killing babies in abortions, going to jail for murder. They will be pure when they can see real purity take place on the stages during Carnival. They will be peaceful when they can see their parents’ real peace with employers who pay good wages instead of the bare minimum. To be fair there are still entertainers, doctors, politicians, employers, and young people who lead exemplary lives, but since they are not newsworthy enough, we need more of them, just so the journalists will have nothing scandalous, corrupting or unjust to write about. Trinis avoid the dirty well; the rest of the world seems so fond of, for the sake of our young peoples’ futures. We can still save the next generation from the ravages of violence, injustice, vice and corruption. Let us courageously brighten our young peoples’ future with healthy doses of purity and morality.

C MARK DOPWELL
Youth 2000 Team Member
St Peters Parish Carenage