Times change, especially when it comes to kids. As new parents inevitably say at some point or another, “they grow up so fast”. One minute they’re a mewling, puking, shitting machine that whinges and moans about everything. Then they move out of their teenage years and leave home.

I jest. Actually, no I don’t, really.

I spent today doing supply teaching work for a local school. A local secondary school, to be as specific as I’m going to get in this post. As far as days at school go, I’ve had worse. Largely because I knew I was leaving at 3pm and that I was only there for a day, which meant that even if it was a nightmarish experience, I was going to escape pretty quickly anyway. This meant I could take a fairly relaxed attitude to the whole day and not get wound up by children who obviously do their very best to drive their teachers nuts at every opportunity. Water off a duck’s back. It was a new feeling. I liked it.

What I didn’t like so much was the discovery that Year 7 are into hardcore pornography, and aren’t shy talking about it in rather loud voices in the middle of a music lesson.

Now, I may have led a somewhat sheltered existence being a rural, country village boy, but I don’t think I even knew what “hardcore pornography” meant when I was in year 7. As I recall, most of my conversations in Year 7 revolved around whether the Sega Mega Drive or the Super NES was the best, and whether it was pronounced “Rye-oo” or “Ree-oo”. Much like today, in fact. The most anything even vaguely sex-related came into conversation was if someone fancied someone else – and even then, it was never talked about in terms of sex, just in terms of an Alan Partridge-esque “ooh, I’d like to… kiss her”. Oh, and there was the one time someone put a condom over a shower head in the boys’ PE changing rooms and turned the water on. We were all delighted to discover that said prophylactic would reach all the way down to the floor if you kept filling it with water.

But no porn. At least, no-one talked about it, anyway.

Part of the reason for this shift in the, ahh, “interests” of 11-year olds is clearly due to the Internet. Most of the discussion that these kids were having (and ignoring requests to please shut up about it, I might add) revolved around the sites that they liked to visit. There was no shame in this discussion, no taking the piss out of each other that “urrgh, you’re doing that so you can have a wank!” – just pure, unadulterated filth. From 11-year olds.

Now, all right, the area that the school in is, shall we say, not the best. But I was still pretty surprised and shocked to hear these sorts of things come out of the mouths of 11-year olds.

The regular teachers at this school seemingly weren’t, however. “Miss says this class is sex-mad, sir. Sex-mad! Sex sex sex,” one helpful young man informed me. I wasn’t arguing.

The moral of this story, dear readers, is clear, then. If you’re a parent, then for God’s sake take an interest in what your kids are doing on the Internet. Talk to them about what is and isn’t appropriate for them. By all means talk to them about offensive content and what they should do if they come across it (get your mind out of the gutter) but don’t just leave them to their own devices. From that springs porn-addicted, shit-talking, ill-informed arseholes who will inevitably grow up to become /b/. And do you really want to create an entire generation of /b/?