schminnocence

When people talk about kids, they throw the word "innocent" around a lot. I've noticed this even more since I started working in an elementary school (in Korea, by the way). Innocence is considered  an inherently good quality for a child to have, and is often spoken of by adults in awe, like it's some ideal and magical state that one way or another crumbles and is lost by the time we hit six or seven, or earlier. How precious! How fragile! How ridiculous
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So innocence, what is it?  Lack of guilt, a perfect conscience, a clean slate? Lack of knowledge, naivety, gullibility? Purity? Goodness? I have heard the term used to express all of these.

People would have you believe innocence is something to be valued and something to be protected and something which cannot be regained.
(Just like 'virginity', another bullshit term which only serves to commodify sexuality. What's the term for someone who hasn't been snowboarding, who has never had a foot massage, who has never driven a car?

"You're just a virgin who can't drive." -Way harsh, Tai, but the words speak volumes. There are no labels for people who haven't snowboarded, been massaged, driven, yet we ascribe the term 'virgin' to somebody who lacks this one specific experience. And a particularly heterocentric one at that, as usually it's applied to someone who has not yet had a penis in their vagina, or a vagina on their penis, no matter how many dicks they have sucked or clitori they have licked to orgasm.) -Okay, I digress a little, but like 'virginity', innocence is something we are seemingly born with, something pure and special that is associated with youth, that we want our children to retain for as long as possible and that once it's gone, we are forever changed. (barf.)

When I was undertaking research for my thesis (which I have yet to write about on this blog, whoops) I spoke to sex education teachers, sexual health educators and youth group leaders about their experiences with young people and their quests for sexual health information. The issue of innocence cropped up in numerous interviews.. when was too young to start providing that information and what negative effect may it have on them -there was this acceptance that education was necessary but oh wasn't it a pity they couldn't just remain 'innocent' a little longer?  Education is not a dirty word, knowing about sex does not make a kid less wholesome or more 'guilty' than knowing about flowers or pokemon.

When is innocence lost? The first time a kid tries to find out if they can reach the cookie jar when their dad's not looking? The first time they start to doubt the existence of the tooth fairy? The first time they accidentally see an erect penis when mom forgets to delete her browsing history? And what, suddenly they're not as perfect as they once were, they're tainted? Fuck that! It's called learning, it's called critical thinking, it's called curiosity. These are skills and values to be encouraged in kids, not considered some sort of perverse development that is threatening grown-ups' idealised notion of 'innocence'. 

I don't believe in innocence (apart from the judicial kind). Ignorance is another story. We're all ignorant about plenty of things, but gradually we learn more and more. Kids are ignorant about a whole lot of things. That's okay, it's allowed, they're new here and they'll pick it up as they go along. But let's stop pretending their lack of knowledge, of understanding and experience is itself wondrous and something to be revered. It's not. Their thirst for knowledge, on the other hand, is.