Dept. for Education doc "Primary school disruption over LGBT teaching/relationships education"

I am looking in from the outside, as I don't live in the UK but, having read the FAQs, I am struck by the fact that, despite this being a compulsory subject, each school or chain of schools will be teaching it all differently.

I would have thought that if it is compulsory that is because there are some particular elements they want all children to know.

But this way, it is harder for a nationwide protest and easier for grooming to take place in schools where the parents are less actively involved.

It’s about being told their (the children’s) biological reality is wrong
It’s about being told their lived experience is wrong
It’s about being told their boundaries are wrong
It’s about being told how you name and define yourself is wrong
It’s about enforcing corrosive gender stereotypes
It’s about erasing gay/lesbian young people

It’s about being told their body is wrong

This is an ideology that celebrates young people - disproportionally girls/ those with autism and / or trauma - removing healthy organs and tissue, becoming infertile and journeying down a path of lifelong medicalisation for fucks sake.

Yet simultaneously - allows any adult just to say ‘I am a man/woman’ and bingo they are what they say they are

This is an ideology that removes safeguarding in plain sight

No no no.

It's the typical kind of brain washing you expect from the state.
The difference to us and places like China is that they generally admit it.

But there have been other parents all along who had other lines

My line isn't "trans". It is "indoctrination" and "anti-science".

I see increasing sexism and policing of gender norms in primary school kids, which I think is related to homophobia or turns into it when they are older. Kids are obviously just reflecting the attitudes picked up from home and wider culture.

I absolutely think tolerance towards differences needs to be taught, encouraged, modelled and gently enforced in schools. Whether that difference is in ability, race, religion, sex, sexuality etc.

Teaching a child the observable fact that some children have two mummies/daddies and that is OK is not forcing that child to have same sex parents nor is it forcing that child to be gay. It is in no way comparable to the current wave of organisations entering schools to teach about gender ideology. They are not teaching children to tolerate differences. They are teaching children a whole bunch of ideology that is utterly anti science (the comparable is creationism, surely).

There is no way to opt out, gender atheism is not recognised. Child is indoctrinated into a system of trans and "cis". Told to work out what their "gender identity" might be, aided by helpful charts with questions about their personality and how closely it adheres to feminine and masculine stereotypes. Told that stereotyping is actually a bad thing to do and is what you are doing when you use your senses to tell you whether the person in front of you is a woman or a man; a girl or a boy.

I think schools could deal with this but they would have to have the courage to be able to say that indoctrination is the line and they won't teach anti-science.

uncompromisingwoman great post and 100% agree.

I am conflicted about this. On one hand it is right that schools should be supported in stopping groups protesting daily outside them - especially primary schools. Given the open homophobia of some of the protests and the fact that the protesters were led by a non parent with no stake in the schools I'm not going to ally myself alongside those protesters.
The elephant in the room is the religious identity of the majority of the protesters - this is the State quite clearly mobilising against a specific group. The lack of any 'partnership with parents' is worrying. Having taught SRE for years in ethnically diverse schools, it has been by talking, meeting and discussing with parents that the schools I know have been able to develop SRE programmes that meet the needs of children and only in exceptional cases have a tiny minority of parents not "accepted" the curriculum.
The schools in recent cases seem to have steamrollered through factually incorrect and proselytising approaches adopting a confrontational approach to parents (as has been discussed on here before). The 'we know best' approach rather than one where they tease out the common ground. But that's what happens when adults prioritise a political 'queering the primary curriculum' approach rather than centring the developmental, emotional and social needs of young children.

I guess it's not called compulsory education for nothing.

Depending on how things go, I would not be at all surprised to see increasing state control over elements of private education as well, or restrictions on home education. Though it may not be necessary as both become difficult for parents in a poor economy or one where all adults have to work to get by.

But I do think it's important to look at the bigger picture. For lots of people gender ideology is the point where they are not happy for the state to be teaching their kids values, or a philosophical perspective. But there have been other parents all along who had other lines. The real question is, to what extent should the state be looking at trying to influence or teach kids on these types of subjects at all? And what measure can a supposedly secular, non-partisan institution use to decide what it's values are, especially when one of those values is meant to be diversity and acceptance of everyone in society?

At one time there would have been proper piloting of innovations with interactions with the parents so that they

A. Know and understand what is happening and

B. Can reflect back so that the weaknesses, unexpected consequences, and things that turn out to be plain wrong in the real world can be ironed out.

And this should have happened with the educationalists and teachers long before that.

It seems to be a one way version of A.

At best, imposing ideology will just result in deep seated mistrust which will not achieve the stated aims in the long run.

We've been heading in this direction for a long time, with schools emphasising teaching students "correct" attitudes about all kinds of social, historical, and scientific subjects. Dismissal of the views of parents deemed to have incorrect and backwards views. I'd go so far as to say there's been an almost triumphalist attitude to the use of state schools as a means to create and promote "desirable" social attitudes.

This attitude was present already back in the late 90s when I was in high school and people who spoke against it were seen as conservative bigots. It's only been when it's started to cross people's personal line for indoctrination of their own kids that more have begun to object.

@Langcleg

Disturbing

"parents influencing their schools' teaching."

So much for school-parental relationships

I take it there is nothing about monitoring the influence of partisan political lobby groups whose aim is to ‘remove single sex exemptions’, who purposefully ignore the law and undermine/erode child safeguarding —Stonewall looking at you