Hi AE,

Yes, yes, I know I left to lead my life. However I still do lurk and thought your post merited a response (though not necessarily from me, lol).

I am not sure that teaching children philosophy at an early age is what they need. To take Jiddu Krishnamurti as an example: he discarded knowledge from books and started looking and listening to life itself. Admittedly, that may be beyond the comprehension of most. Even today children do make informed decisions. The question: where do the answers to their questions come from? They may look for more information, through sex ed for instance, but that will not ensure an informed decision in saying 'no' or 'yes'. If sex ed proclaims abstinence till they reach their 18th birthday they are better informed, right? If they learn from the available literature that sex between children and adults is morally wrong they will make an informed decision... but it is not the decision MAA's like, eh? I would therefore discourage children reading philosophy until they understand themselves, their physical needs and emotions.
Philosophy and other scientific reading tends to cloud your wisdom: it takes your eyes off of what is really there in real life. It is just repeating what others have said before or thought before. Mankind is still not very different from, let's say, 2,000 years ago. Only our means have progressed. As long as we insist on basing our views on what others have said or thought before we will not see any enlightenment.

For children to make informed decisions they need to learn that their bodies are all they have in life. That includes their minds but also their natural physical responses. They should not learn that the mind takes precedence over their bodies (that has brought us into our current predicament). They should learn that their bodies can experience pleasure and that this is natural. Girls for example can experience pleasure from an early age since their sensual glands are active from an age as early as two-three years old.
Fact is that young girls do experience those pleasurable feelings and enjoy it. Only when they start to 'get informed' do they learn that experiencing those pleasurable feelings is wrong, at least when it comes to experiencing them with an adult who is not their father or mother (and even then...). That is when regressive therapy kicks in, among other veil divices developed by our beloved scientists. Our scientific development, among which I count philosophy, has so much indoctrinated our collective psyche that this is very hard to get away from. It is present in every media we know today: TV, newspapers, the internet, and so on. Ask Sib who is to blame.

Point is that we as individuals can make a difference though it may be a small one. Make it your goal to enlighten children that experiencing bodily pleasure is not bad. Regardless of any philosophy this is what children need to learn: that their bodies are their posession and they must feel free to experience pleasure from it. I have a hard time imagining such a turn around in our collective thinking is going to happen but you can start at the bottom, perhaps making one small difference somewhere, somehow.

regards and take care,

Smeagol