Rotted culture blind to child exploitation

THE shock isn't that a photographer roams around a primary school checking the playground for nude models.

There's a few in every society, after all. No, it's that artist Bill Henson could do just that at St Kilda Primary School with the support of the then principal, Sue Knight. And not just hers.

It was with Knight's permission, Henson said, that "I went in there, had a look around at lunchtime and just wandered around while everyone was having their lunch".

Went in there to see which children looked good enough to photograph. Perhaps photograph naked, if their parents allowed.

Nor, alas, was Knight alone in seeing nothing wrong with Henson's playground trawl for talent (although we don't yet know if she was aware Henson is most known for his pictures of children and teenagers nude).

Even the Australian Education Union, whose members have the care of so many children, refused to condemn. Said acting president Meredith Peace: "Scouting - or whatever word you want to use -- of people in our schools occurs all the time . . . (O)ur politicians regularly use our schools to promote their own activities."

You read right. The teachers' union sees no difference between a politician invited to explain politics to a class of children and a photographer wanting to take the prettiest away to undress and snap nude. No difference between educating and exploiting. Is the union barking mad?

Writers and artists have likewise jumped to Henson's defence, and that's when one man's moral lapse becomes a symbol of a much wider rot in our civilisation.

Somehow our most self-consciously cultured class of citizens - the teacher-preachers - have forgotten taboos that are meant to protect the powerless and should instinctively warn us against a Henson.

And the pity for our children is that these clever people cannot even remember, even after deep thought, why we ever had them.

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