Sex in the Classroom Part IV: Arguments Summarized

To review the argument before you then: Sex is a delightful, involuntary physical reaction wired into the nervous system. It provides climactic emotional explosions in the pleasure centers of the brain. Humans have a natural urge for sex.

Reading is not a natural urge. No teacher of reading is going to overcome biological needs and appetites developing in the bodies and brains of adolescents by attempting to make reading look sexy. Reading is not sexy.

Reading is a disciplined intellectual skill requiring mental focus. It either becomes a permanent habit of mind, or a weakness. The majority of people, even so-called "educated," "literate" people, permanently remain weak readers, all because sex intruded at a critical moment in life. Some of them hold highly responsible positions in fields such as law, business, government, and yes, even education. They commonly admit weaknesses in both reading and writing, mistaking them as "talents" they were deprived of at birth, rather than skills they failed to practice while they were preoccupied by sex.

Poor, poor bewildered people!

That period in life vitally important for development of the physical body is also a crucial moment for development of the intellect, and children fortunate enough to be raised in a free country tend to become obsessed with their natural urges, and thus, tend also to learn very poorly how to read. Generally speaking, the more freedom kids have, the less effectively they will read, all because of sex.

Yes, it's that simple!

What is to be done? How do you pry the adolescent loose from sex long enough to teach him or her how to read? Reading can't stimulate the adolescent brain as sex stimulates the brain, body, mind, and soul. It doesn't always "open up a person's life to new and wonderful possibilities." Stop telling kids that stuff!

Instead, answer a simple dilemma with a simple solution: Resort to force.

Yes, I'm a conservative in most essential ways. I believe in force. But I don't believe in brute force. I don't believe in putting a book in front of a kid and whipping him until he cries. I have serious problems with those who do. So although I admonish educators to avoid taking a liberal view of "force," I also plead with them not to behave as iron-willed conservatives. Don't punish your kids into using their minds, because if you get too harsh about it, they'll shut down.

A firmly grounded conservative then, but just barely conservative, and by no means pessimistic, I am mistaken by many of my conservative friends as a liberal. It's understandable because, in fact, I cozy up to liberals pretty often. I even admire them at times, and particularly at those times, I yearn to be like them, but I'm not. I don't have enough faith in the goodness of humanity to embrace idealism and true optimism.

It may sound strange for you to hear me say it, but I know exactly where I stand. I'm a gut-level conservative stuck near the borderland of uncertainty, but not in it. I'm very certain about the uncertainties I carry with me, if that makes any sense. Searching through history and literature, I find others who were similarly comforted by this perspective on life. Shakespeare, I believe, was one baffled by life, but he was very content being so. Another was Benjamin Franklin.

Further elucidation upon my philosophical tenets can be set aside for the moment. If you desire to find out more, you can look through my other writings. For now, however, my purpose is to point out the advantages of embracing uncertainty long enough to comprehend reality, at least this one time.

As Franklin put it when he admonished the colonial representatives to "doubt a little of [their] own infallibility" and maybe even admire the moderates on the other side of a very vague dividing line, the time comes when we must embrace an idea that seems antithetical to our life principles in order to advance as a society. He was appealing for unanimous confirmation of the newly written Constitution of the United States, a document they all found wanting in some way or another. But they compromised, allowing themselves to see for a brief moment as Franklin did. They all signed, and the greatest nation in the world was born.

So, grounded on facts, and yet sheltered in comfortable uncertainty, let us doubt a little of our own infallibility now and admit the reality that students must be forced to read.

I'm not asking for a signature; I'm only asking you to recognize that we have very few ways of delivering this skill: We can compel them to practice by observing and applying frequent embarrassing or even emotionally painful reminders to keep them on task; we can give kids drugs to kill off those other urges inside them (with the physical urges reduced, reading and other intellectual pursuits might seem more of a pleasure), or we can use a sharply focused educational tool, as described in Part III, to pry our way past kids' sexual obsessions and provide a path to the brain. We need to stab it in there like a tire iron and pry it loose - but ever so gently!