SEX education.
I was 12 years old when I attended my first lesson on this at school.
Late, perhaps, when compared to today, but I lived in naïve bliss, enjoying my childhood and unburdened by a topic I could not fully comprehend.
Not so now.
Children of all ages have access to pornography on their mobile phones, some of it extreme and violent.
Add to this concerns that sex education has been politicised in many schools and we have a problem.
In a recent speech, former teacher and colleague Miriam Cates said how mandatory RHSE classes (relationships, sex and health education) often use resources from unregulated, third-party providers with “highly politicised agendas,” introducing “materials that go far beyond fact.”
They are also, she added, “actively campaigning to undermine parents,” by using copyright laws to stop them seeing what is being taught.
She went on: “Graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely, and 72 genders. This is what passes for relationships and sex education in British schools.”
She, like me, brands this a "safeguarding scandal" and a “catastrophe for childhood”.
Mrs Cates is a co-founder of the New Social Covenant Unit, which has just produced a substantial report on ‘What Is Being Taught in Relationship and Sex Education in our Schools’.
She presented the Prime Minister with the report, along with a letter signed by 50 fellow Conservative MPs.
Rightly, Mr Sunak has called for an independent review to prevent state schools from teaching “inappropriate or contested content,” while insisting they make curriculum content and materials available to parents.
I hear some of you say: “Times have changed, Richard.”
Indeed, they have, but a duty to protect a child’s innocence has not.