What I envisioned happening so many years ago, was a process by which
'parental control' would transform into a 'mentorship' style. In the
late 60's early 70's there was a vogue of 'free education' for children.
Not necessarily 'gratis' but the idea was given a set of things that
a child should learn, clearly a value judgement there, children may have
widely varied paths to obtaining that learning. There were various
grassroots style schools, organizations, and some set of academics
who supported this type of 'new' style of child schooling.

I've placed a couple of URLs for John Holt, as his books are part of
a body of works on 'free education' for children.

What is ironic, is that while I don't know the religious/philosphical
backgroun of John Holt, his works have been used as a basis for the
modern 'home school' movement, and that movement has sigificant folowing
amongst the fundamentalist christians, who feel the public schools are
not teaching their children the values the parents wish to pass on.

One can also find seeds of 'individualized schooling' in the writings
of more accepted 'child development' sources, such as Piaget. Almost
all suggest that children have individual patterns, and most schools
are set up to address a 'bell' curve's worth of standard development
a standard ages, i.e. most children have capabilities x at age y.

In the particular case of sexual development and knowledge, it should
be obvious that there are individual differences, and even at young
ages, individual desires. I tend to think of the AOC, espcially high
values such as 15 and above, to be a '99%-tile' style of limit, i.e.
99% of the children have 'developed' to the point of sexual 'maturity'
for the purpose of sexual activity directed to production of progeny.

It should be just as clear that a child of 5 is not sexually mature
to engage in sex to produce progeny. But by the same token, a child
of 5 can derive pleasure from simulating the genitals etc. hence
any limitation on such activities should be in keeping with an idea
of 'harm' relative to any other play activity that children now
engage in.



------- Several URLS for review --------

John Holt references

http://md.essortment.com/whoisjohndomi_rlsh.htm
http://educationreformbooks.net/how_learn.htm
http://www.naturalchild.com/guest/marlene_bumgarner.html