It's never too early to begin instilling a sense of right and wrong in school boys.
Still agree?

Boys as young as five are to be taught about 'gender equality' as part of a government campaign to tackle violence against women. This includes compulsory lessons on domestic violence as part of personal, social and health education.

Are you still nodding your approval?

Now, I'm not one of those people who believes that everything taught in schools that's not the three Rs is a case of political correctness gone mad. Some of the most fascinating and illuminating lessons I remember from my own school days were in PSE, as it was then called.

But I'm wary of the prospect of five-year-old boys being taught about the evil that men do to women in the home.

Boys will get a different sort of lesson on 'gender inequality' when they being to notice how far girls outperform them in the classroom. You might think their self esteem would be fragile enough, without them being cast as potential wife beaters from the age of five.

Men aren't good at standing up for themselves as a gender. Whenever I'm moved to do so in print, I first have to get past the fear of coming across as a humourless, moaning misogynist.

But now and then there's a spasm of male grievance in the media. You wait for an article lambasting sexism against men, then two come at once.

First James Delingpole in the Telegraph highlights a survey published in the journal Sex Roles, which finds that, contrary to popular myth, men do their share of domestic tasks after all.

Then The Times, having invited readers to submit examples of casual sexism, finds itself inundated with examples from men.

Advertising is the prime culprit, and it's the double standards that grate. Bloke after bloke points out adverts which, if the gender roles were reversed, would never get made.
There's the man thrown out of the house because the girl brought the right brand of pain relief ("If only getting rid of all pains could be as fast.")
And there's the ad in which a boyfriend is thrown from a limousine for buying the wrong ice-cream ...

Pondering the Times readers' examples, Mark Jones writes: "I wonder what parents think is worse. Their girls are expected to aspire to be thin, gorgeous, sassy and rich.
"Their boys are expected to become scruffy losers whose pathetic existence is brightened up only by a pint of Carlsberg and their weekly fix of Nuts magazine."

But when the ad breaks finish and the programmes start, men are often the butt of the joke. Anyone who's watched Robert Lindsay humiliate himself in the cuddly, mainstream and joyously anti-men My Family will know what I mean.
With the portrayal of men in the media as either a menace or a waste of space, it's never too early to instil a sense of worth and self-respect in boys.
So while I'm all for tackling domestic violence against women, I'm not sure that raising awareness of the issue among five-year-old boys is the place to start.