At the very least, schools should ban smartphones during the school day. I think Holland has already done so. I wish the UK, where I live, would follow suit. And then schools should explain to parents why: not just to facilitate verbal interaction within the school community and to enhance learning - but also to stop pupils looking at and exchanging degrading images.
This might give parents greater confidence in their own moral standards, or alert them to their negligence.
This not just a religious question of sin; it is a social and psychological question of harmful youthful development, which involves parents and teachers in a secular environment.
In Catholic schools, proper education in sexuality should include explanation as to why pornography and masturbation are degrading to human dignity. And what sex is designed by God to be about. This also educates parents.
Educators, priests and parents cannot stay silent on so urgent a matter.
For those of us who are not, or no longer, in the front line on this question, we have an urgent duty to pray for all concerned: the young people trapped in this evil, and those who have responsibility for their welfare, emotional, educational and spiritual.
Blessed Carlo Acutis, soon to be canonised, who died aged 15 and who was a whizkid at computer technology, would be a good saint to pray to about this?
Totally agree with you. I wish phones had been banned in my high school. That's a relatively easy fix compared to the longer term problem of how to reform sex education.
What can one do in the face of this modern evil?
At the very least, schools should ban smartphones during the school day. I think Holland has already done so. I wish the UK, where I live, would follow suit. And then schools should explain to parents why: not just to facilitate verbal interaction within the school community and to enhance learning - but also to stop pupils looking at and exchanging degrading images.
This might give parents greater confidence in their own moral standards, or alert them to their negligence.
This not just a religious question of sin; it is a social and psychological question of harmful youthful development, which involves parents and teachers in a secular environment.
In Catholic schools, proper education in sexuality should include explanation as to why pornography and masturbation are degrading to human dignity. And what sex is designed by God to be about. This also educates parents.
Educators, priests and parents cannot stay silent on so urgent a matter.
For those of us who are not, or no longer, in the front line on this question, we have an urgent duty to pray for all concerned: the young people trapped in this evil, and those who have responsibility for their welfare, emotional, educational and spiritual.
Blessed Carlo Acutis, soon to be canonised, who died aged 15 and who was a whizkid at computer technology, would be a good saint to pray to about this?
Totally agree with you. I wish phones had been banned in my high school. That's a relatively easy fix compared to the longer term problem of how to reform sex education.