What schools should be teaching

The state of Florida recently passed a piece of legislation making it illegal for teachers to hold discussions with pupils under the age of eight about gender orientation. It seemed a very reasonable idea to me and I would guess that a largeish proportion of parents in this country, perhaps even a majority, would concur. I would not wish to indulge in an unrealistically idyllic view of childhood, but my own life was certainly less complicated in the years before I suddenly realised, much in the manner of Henry Miller’s famous epiphany, that (to bowdlerise a little) girls were all in possession of cervixes and might thus be receptive to overtures of a sexual nature – or that there might be boys who for complex reasons would remain unmoved by such a revelation.

That epiphany came at about 11. But the Florida legislation has been reported by the British media as if it were both prehistoric and fascistic, the assumption being that every-one else in the country would, upon learning of it, be rightly aghast.