A "journey of sexual discovery" and shame

I have read the Telegraph today instead of the Times, and two items caught my attention.

Under the headline "Channel 4 teen sex series in morning", the newspaper reports on a sex education series to be broadcast by Channel 4 in November. Searching the schedules of Channel 4 Learning, this is going to be a series of short 5-10 minute programmes intended for use in PSHE teaching programmes in schools. The show is entitled KNTV Sex, and I believe it has/is being produced for Channel 4 Learning by a company called Tern TV.

Two things struck me about the Telegraph report and the (limited) information I could see about the programmes in a web search. One is the un-real nature of the presentation -cartoon figures Kierky and Nietsche (drawn from an earlier Tern TV series on philosophy - get it?) set in a fictional "last remaining communist state" of Slabovia, comedy footage from television shows. It looks as if human sexuality will be treated as a bit of a joke, communicating a certain gap between the messages the programme series is trying to get over and consequences in the real lives of young people.

The second is the description of the series as a "journey of sexual discovery" (quotation marks in the Telegraph report, so, presuming the professionalism of the journalist concerned, taken verbatim from Channel 4 or Tern TV's own blurb/news release - though I couldn't find anything directly to check this out), and the statement that the series will discuss different ways of having sex, bisexuality and "coming out". In other words, an intention, not just to communicate information and then leave young people to make up their own minds, but to develop and form a particular immoral view of sexual activity. I use the word "immoral" advisedly - the reporting of the programme gives no indication that there is any right or wrong at stake ... And given the participation of THT and SEF in preparing the materials, we aren't surprised.

In the comment section of the paper, Liz Hunt has a short piece entitled "Have we no shame?" The photo accompanying the piece illustrates precisely what shame (in the good sense) is not: it is not humiliation, and definitely not public humiliation. Liz Hunt's context is not that of human sexuality, but rather of situations where celebrities have found themselves undertaking community service orders for offences. One of the chapters of Pope John Paul II's book Love and Responsibility that I have always found very striking is that entitled "The Metaphysics of Shame". There is a perfectly correct and healthy way in which we should be ashamed - as a judgement of conscience when we do something wrong - and have a preference that what we have done does not become public knowledge. The seal of the confessional has always occured to me as a way of respecting this legitimate character of shame after sin. On the other hand, shame does have a public character in the sense that what is seen by society as shameful and to be frowned upon acts as an incentive towards moral behaviour, towards behaviour that will not lead to an experience of shame. [Aside: imagine how smokers feel these days!]

Now, have Channel 4 and Tern TV and their collaborators lost their sense of shame?