Consent courses extended: Why the need?

Any welcome for the news that college consent classes will be rolled out to secondary schools and sports clubs must be tempered by a question or two: Why are they necessary? How have we reached a point where our young people need guidance on this most basic self-discipline?

Is it because our older people — their parents — have failed in their duty to teach their children how to behave, how to respect others? Are they, like the fallen woman in JG Farrell’s Siege of Krishnapur “so intoxicated as to be unavailable to the voice of her conscience”?