Why is it interesting? Because the film centers around a fundamental question involving raising kids, one that is just as relevant today as it was 60 years ago: is it the school's responsibility to educate your children about sex, or should it be left up to parents? In the 50's and early 60's the question revolved around sex before marriage. Now it revolves around gender identity. One EXTREMELY interesting and stark difference between now and then, in terms of how the question is treated comes down to parental rights. In the film, the official stance of the school is "you're the parents, and you pay taxes; therefore you have a right to expect the type of education you so desire for your children. Compare that to now, where the school system has diagnosed a largely made up problem, gender identity, which statistically is something that less than 1% of people are dealing with; it's catapulted to be a top of mind issue, and a question shoved in the face of every single child today, a question if met by a positive recipient, has had parents jailed, literally for "misgendering" their own children. That's the difference between how we view parental rights now, vs. How the question is viewed in the film. Back in the 60's was when the idea was planted that as a parent you DON'T actually want to get involved with your children's upbringing on tough issues, so let us handle it for you.
Now the question, why do I call it an idealized shoehorned premise? Well, to start off, both now and then, a huge aspect of the propaganda around these progressive attitudes is that the children themselves are YEARNING for a discussion about these issues, BEGGING for one practically, which is something I personally can't relate to at all. In the film it's the students who are pushing so hard for sex education in schools, because marriage, having kids, being sexually active, is such a top of mind issue for them that they would risk failing school just to get it solved, so while the film starts off in a promising fairly ambiguous way, ultimately it goes WAY too far at portraying this narrative of a yearning for change. The way the protest is handled for example, that would NEVER play out that way. Again, I graduated high school post 2000, and sex was not even close to a top of mind issue to me or to most people at my school. You want to tell me that there's going to be an unbridled block of solidarity among every single student over this DEEP felt desire to talk about sex in class, and defy the authority of their teachers, principals, and parents, including all the kids who aren't in any relationships, realistically the vast majority of kids, and including all the nerdy poindexters obsessing day by day over their 4.0 grade averages? I'm sorry but it's not happening. That's not real now, and it wasn't real then.
Realistically teaching sex in schools, if anything, is an institutional reaction to social change, not the other way around as the film portrays it, and yes, the same way gender and sex issues are portrayed today by the powers that be. The architects of society had a vision for it, and still have a vision for it, which they have imposed in the past, and are continuing to impose, very very blindly. For example, we seemed to have this very naive idea that premarital sex was bad because it resulted in teenage pregnancy, which in turn perpetuated poverty, and thus a lower standard of living. Ok great... So they solved that issue, and by solving that issue, we then had a whole bunch of empty job positions for all the crappy jobs that no one wanted to do, because all the people who would have started poor families didn't, so as a result, we had to start importing poor people to fill those jobs, tons and tons of them from developing countries. Ideal societies don't exist. Every society needs poor people; every society needs sexual ambiguity. There are no one size fits all cookie cutter solutions, and no single education system has the antidote OR the final word. The idea that kids badly yearned for an education system to solve all the tough moral/social questions for them that their parents couldn't, is a fallacy.
Long story short, you can almost roll your eyes over how stupid and blindsided our society has been around sexual issues for as long as you can remember, but no, its NOT the kids who want this, who yearn for this type of institutional change, it NEVER is. This was a propaganda film, and most people don't recognize that. "Give us control over your kids, because they really really both want and need someone to tell them about the world, and you're not the one to do it." We hand our kids the world that we want for them. That's the reality. 60 years ago, we gave up the moral conscience of our kids to the public school system. 40 years ago, we taught our kids that they're special, and that their feelings matter more than anything else in the world. 20 years ago we taught our kids that it's ok to be gay, 10 years ago we taught them that they should feel safe at all times, and that its's more important for people to respect their feelings, than it is for them to manage their feelings, and now we're teaching them that anyone who disagrees with them should be silenced and blackballed, as long as they hold a "consensus" opinion.
We stopped teaching kids HOW to think, because now we teach them WHAT to think. Watching this film is like hitting the rewind button on society and stopping right squarely at the point where everything started to unravel, when the public school system started bastardizing its job, in my opinion. In the end, you choose the society you want for your kids. They don't want: YOU want. That's why they don't have a legal right to consent, because they don't have the capacity to know for sure. They don't know ANYTHING, and they're certainly not the ones begging you to tell them all about their bodies, as you may well like to fantasize if you're a sex education teacher. This film was pure propaganda of its day, but once again, it's an extremely interesting look back to compare where we're at with the idea of our education system now vs. Then. Just the title itself "The Explosive Generation," As if human beings in the 60's were fundamentally different sexually speaking as compared to their parents. This film makes an ass out of human sexuality: it really does.
Now the question, why do I call it an idealized shoehorned premise? Well, to start off, both now and then, a huge aspect of the propaganda around these progressive attitudes is that the children themselves are YEARNING for a discussion about these issues, BEGGING for one practically, which is something I personally can't relate to at all. In the film it's the students who are pushing so hard for sex education in schools, because marriage, having kids, being sexually active, is such a top of mind issue for them that they would risk failing school just to get it solved, so while the film starts off in a promising fairly ambiguous way, ultimately it goes WAY too far at portraying this narrative of a yearning for change. The way the protest is handled for example, that would NEVER play out that way. Again, I graduated high school post 2000, and sex was not even close to a top of mind issue to me or to most people at my school. You want to tell me that there's going to be an unbridled block of solidarity among every single student over this DEEP felt desire to talk about sex in class, and defy the authority of their teachers, principals, and parents, including all the kids who aren't in any relationships, realistically the vast majority of kids, and including all the nerdy poindexters obsessing day by day over their 4.0 grade averages? I'm sorry but it's not happening. That's not real now, and it wasn't real then.
Realistically teaching sex in schools, if anything, is an institutional reaction to social change, not the other way around as the film portrays it, and yes, the same way gender and sex issues are portrayed today by the powers that be. The architects of society had a vision for it, and still have a vision for it, which they have imposed in the past, and are continuing to impose, very very blindly. For example, we seemed to have this very naive idea that premarital sex was bad because it resulted in teenage pregnancy, which in turn perpetuated poverty, and thus a lower standard of living. Ok great... So they solved that issue, and by solving that issue, we then had a whole bunch of empty job positions for all the crappy jobs that no one wanted to do, because all the people who would have started poor families didn't, so as a result, we had to start importing poor people to fill those jobs, tons and tons of them from developing countries. Ideal societies don't exist. Every society needs poor people; every society needs sexual ambiguity. There are no one size fits all cookie cutter solutions, and no single education system has the antidote OR the final word. The idea that kids badly yearned for an education system to solve all the tough moral/social questions for them that their parents couldn't, is a fallacy.
Long story short, you can almost roll your eyes over how stupid and blindsided our society has been around sexual issues for as long as you can remember, but no, its NOT the kids who want this, who yearn for this type of institutional change, it NEVER is. This was a propaganda film, and most people don't recognize that. "Give us control over your kids, because they really really both want and need someone to tell them about the world, and you're not the one to do it." We hand our kids the world that we want for them. That's the reality. 60 years ago, we gave up the moral conscience of our kids to the public school system. 40 years ago, we taught our kids that they're special, and that their feelings matter more than anything else in the world. 20 years ago we taught our kids that it's ok to be gay, 10 years ago we taught them that they should feel safe at all times, and that its's more important for people to respect their feelings, than it is for them to manage their feelings, and now we're teaching them that anyone who disagrees with them should be silenced and blackballed, as long as they hold a "consensus" opinion.
We stopped teaching kids HOW to think, because now we teach them WHAT to think. Watching this film is like hitting the rewind button on society and stopping right squarely at the point where everything started to unravel, when the public school system started bastardizing its job, in my opinion. In the end, you choose the society you want for your kids. They don't want: YOU want. That's why they don't have a legal right to consent, because they don't have the capacity to know for sure. They don't know ANYTHING, and they're certainly not the ones begging you to tell them all about their bodies, as you may well like to fantasize if you're a sex education teacher. This film was pure propaganda of its day, but once again, it's an extremely interesting look back to compare where we're at with the idea of our education system now vs. Then. Just the title itself "The Explosive Generation," As if human beings in the 60's were fundamentally different sexually speaking as compared to their parents. This film makes an ass out of human sexuality: it really does.