Whose responsibility is it

to teach very young children about sex, gender, identity and diversity?

The question came up in an article in the state newspaper yesterday. I was bailed up outside the library and asked for my thoughts on the article and the issues. 

It came up because a day-care/preschool centre was running a "rainbow" day and had not consulted the parents about their wishes in this matter.  The "statement" made was in the sort of language which is now common wherever there are people who are passionately in favour of these issues. Was this right or not I was asked? Who should be teaching children and what should they be teaching them?

I thought back to my own childhood. I spent the first four years of my life in a very small country town - a "village" in English terms. It was larger than a hamlet but it was still small. Right around the town there was "mixed" farming, mostly sheep and wheat. There were some cows and hens too.

We children, in the way inquisitive and intelligent children do, knew a lot about all this. We knew how young lambs and calves appeared and watched them being born. The precise nature of the process before that was a bit hazy but we knew that a "mummy sheep" and a "daddy" had to get together in order for this to happen. I have a rather vague memory of watching a ram and a ewe together and a local farmer telling me and the other fascinated youngsters what was happening. The whole process was completely open to us.

Several years later our cat had kittens in a spot where she could actually be seen.  Again Mum encouraged us to watch the process. Grandma, a farm girl, came out and sat with us while Mum went off to feed our infant sister. We talked about it, about how the kittens had come to be and how our mother had given birth to us.

How many children had such an open education I have no idea. I think it is highly likely that almost every child in the small country town and surrounding areas was well informed. It would not have been the same in the city because the same opportunities were not there. 

We were of course taught there were boys and there were girls. We knew whether we were boys or girls. It did not stop us playing with each toys belonging to both our brothers and our sisters. It did not stop me turning the doll house into a railway station. It did not prevent me from wanting and being given that clockwork train.  By the time I was eight I knew about homosexuality. It was illegal then of course but the two men who "shared" a house next door to us in the city were undoubtedly a couple. Mum tried to keep us away from them but they were a gentle, harmless couple with no interest in us except in a friendly and neighbourly way.  The Senior Cat was much more open about this and explained quite calmly to me that "some men prefer to be with other men but it is not polite to talk about that". It all sounded quite reasonable to me.

But would I have been ready for this at age two? I would have known there were "boys" and "girls" because my brother had arrived and I knew there were "mummy" and "daddy" sheep and that the "mummy" sheep was the one which fed the lambs.  I do not think I was confused by that. It was my good fortune to have spent the first four years of my life in a place where these things were simply considered normal. This all happened with parental consent too.

Now it seems that this can no longer be taught.  I would  be taught a bewildering range of ideas that do not allow for a distinction between male and female or their roles. It might also be done without parental consent. 

My response to the person who bailed me up was eventually, "Perhaps I was better educated." I do not know if that is right or not.