Telegraph: Sex education for three-year-olds in Wales branded 'extreme and unbalanced'

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/high-court-sex-education-wales-25517931#comments-wrapper

The Welsh government appears to have taken the attitude that it's people are too dumb to understand government policy so it's pointless explaining it to them as they wilfully misunderstand the hard stuff

@FriendofJoanne there are examples in the curriculum review on the SSA website:

https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/AReviewwoftheeRelationshipsanddSexualityEducationnCurriculuminnWales--October_2022.pdf

Yes. Surely, if it is something that is generally regarded as good for society and for individual members of society - then there would be lots of positive PR about this all over the place, extolling the virtues.

But no. It's all secrecy, and parents have no right to know.

Why are the education authorities being so secretive about this.

Our children must be taught something important. But parents cannot be told what it is.
Yeah.
That is creepy and sinister as fuck, quite frankly.

tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/judicial-review-public-child-protection

You're spot on @foodfiend I read through the documents this year and couldn't see a problem with them, that would be why. It was all very vague, my concerns were triggered by the background of the authors but there was nothing specific I could point to.

I've been looking through the tribunal tweets, but found it hard to make sense of.

From what I can see the issues raised by the counsel for the parents group are around lack of basis in reality - ie no mention of men, women, boys, girls, parents not having the right to withdraw their children, and some links to ideological stance not widely held ie discussions of gender identity, I think that comes in at age 7 in the Wales curriculum?

Are there any concrete examples that can be pinpointed in the curriculum? Has anyone read the tribunal tweets already?

Yes, indeed.

And they could assuage the concern of all and any parents simply by giving them access to all the materials.

I mean, why wouldn't you?

Oh, I think it's absolutely deliberate, but it's very clever. The curriculum document itself is very bland, and really sounds OK if you're naive or not paying attention. I've seen parents having arguments on facebook, assuming that the people against it are all unhinged/ right-wing/ homophobes/ religious nuts because they can't see a problem, so it's easier to dismiss concerns as being from Bad People.

The curriculum has all kinds of dodgy stuff embedded in it but it's done in such a way that saying so makes you look like a conspiracy theorist. eg if you point out what kids are likely to actually get from these 'specialist providers', people just point to the bland statements about 'age appropriate discussions about bodily autonomy and consent'. But this could mean the NSPCC 'pantosaurus' song or resources talking to primary children about masturbation. Who knows? Parents won't be allowed to...

I do think the even bigger problem with it is that it fails to teach children the facts of life. The fact that it's 'sexuality' education, not sex education is a giveaway. It's all about the sex positivity; the essential information of how babies are made and who makes them is unsayable because you're not allowed to talk about sex as a characteristic, only as an act.

Anyone who doesn't think this is deliberate, is naive, in my opinion. The dismantling of safeguarding and boundaries, across-the-board, doesn't happen without motivation.

The curriculum reiterates the need for education to be pluralist, but then also encourages schools to use lesson plans and materials from 'specialist organisations', with no criteria.

If a school goes to a 'specialist organisation' they are likely to end up using materials which strongly push the ideological position that gender identity is more important than sex and that how closely a person adheres to gender stereotypes is more important than their biology (and that anyone who thinks differently is just a bigot). And also materials which raise other safeguarding concerns - porn is fun kids! Voyeurism is 'probably not cool'.

Take a look at the analysis of 'specialist providers' content on the SSA website:
safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Parents-Guide-to-external-PSHE-RSE-providers.pdf Lots of red flags, both in terms of introducing children to sexual concepts very young, and in terms of embedding regressive stereotypes about colours, clothing etc.

The RSE document doesn't use the terms male, female, boy, girl.

It is more important that a child understands the basics of human biology than anything else this curriculum could cover - without this information there is no way children can understand sex or sexuality, or keep themselves safe. A sex and relationships education programme which leaves children without a vocabulary for the people who may be able to get pregnant (formerly known as female) is worse than useless. It risks doing active harm to their safety and wellbeing.

It is also impossible to tackle sexual harassment in schools if we cannot clearly talk about the problem, which is overwhelmingly an issue of girls being harassed by boys. Gender neutral language is not appropriate for discussion an issue where sex is crucial - it merely obscures the issue and makes it harder to tackle.

This Curriculum also hangs schools out to dry - it tells them to be pluralist, while also giving them a highly ideological blueprint on a very contentious issue. They can't fulfil both.

I have no problem with my children being told that some people believe that gender identity is more important than sex. As long as they're not told that as fact. This is what is happening in Welsh schools already though. Dd is now less able to talk about the facts of life than when she was six, as she now can't actually use any of the necessary vocabulary for fear of saying something accidentally transphobic...

The combination of

• You are not allowed to withdraw your children from these lessons
• You have no right to know exactly what it is they cover

If the Welsh government wanted to allay parents' concerns about what the lessons will actually cover, they could do this by being more transparent.

Something I think it's really important to remember is that this is in the context of public schooling.

Parents are welcome to raise their children with almost any set of beliefs they like, be it queer theory, Judaism, Marxism, or whatever.

That doesn't make it ok to teach sectarian or controversial philosophical beliefs in schools as if they are somehow accepted by all and sundry. These kinds of non-religious ideologies are just as sectarian in their own way as any religious system.

I don't think there is any requirement to show that this stuff is clearly wrong, even if I think that. The fact is that it's controversial and many parents believe that, and state schools have no business trying to undermine the views of parents.

The person behind much of this is EJ Renold whose Cardiff Uni autobiography says:

I am a Professor in Childhood Studies at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Wales and the author of Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities (Routledge 2005), Children, Sexuality and the Sexualisation of Culture (Palgrave 2015). Working with feminist, queer and post-humanist approaches my research explores gendered and sexual subjectivities across diverse institutional sites and public spaces across the young life course (2013-18).

Jacob Breslow, former Mermaids trustee who stepped down after he spoke at a pro-paedophile event, is a fan of EJ Remold and has quoted her in his work:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63137873

Safe Schools Alliance draws parallels between his views and those manifested in Welsh RSE materials:
safeschoolsallianceuk.net/2022/10/09/welsh-rse-code-queer-theory/

@Ladybrrrd if you are going to come to this board and defend this then it would be helpful if you actually engaged with sone of the points that have been made.

Such dismissal of safeguarding concerns is a huge red flag.

Anyone who subscribes to gender ideology is hellbent on reinforcing gender stereotypes. Transgenderism relies on them to exist. It's the whole point. You cant have a 'gender identify' without them. That's what it is.

How are they challenging gender stereotypes if they cant define girl, boy, man, woman? How are they challenging homophobia if they cant define homosexuality?

The resources make reference to ‘The Good Sex Project’, in which McGeeney cites Gayle Rubin’s ‘Charmed Circle’: here the concept of ‘erotic injustice’ is discussed in relation to the fact that children are prevented from engaging in certain sexual activities such as ‘cross-generational sex’, pornography and prostitution.

Erotic injustice.

It's notable how so many people seem to view children's lack of a 'sex life' as reely sad for them. Deprivation almost. For them. It's always about ' providing something' for the poor child. Their rights. Them.

For example, how can you challenge stereotypes when you have redefined sex and insist everyone instead has a gender identity.

"The Redefinition of Sex
The redefinition of biological sex within the Welsh government curriculum code and guidance is indicative of the influence of posthumanism and Queer Theory. In the Welsh curriculum guidance (Document D), which is now in use in schools across Wales, male and female instead follow the tenets of Queer Theory, and are redefined as “genders” from a spectrum with which one must identify, distinctly separate from sex. The transition to this posthumanist mode of thought begins with the scientifically inaccurate definition of sex"

"Not that deep". "Pearl clutching" "a load of hot air".

Anything more constructive to say?

Yeah i did the analysis. I thought it was a lot of hot air. Then I read the actual code and could not see anything inappropriate about it.

"This new RSE Code was chiefly designed by two academics who subscribe to queer theory, EJ Renold and Ester McGeeney. The Code is based on the idea that queer theory should make its way into the classroom as part of the ‘perpetual revolution’.
Prior to the final version of the Code, two major preparatory documents were written up to justify their changing of the curriculum content and its title from ‘sex’ to ‘sexuality’. These documents contain no testable hypotheses or evidence-based research.

Have you read the analysis of it?

The fact you call concerns about safeguard "pearl clutching" is a red flag in itself. The whole code is influenced by queer theory which seeks to break down societal boundaries and overrides safeguarding.

safeschoolsallianceuk.net/2022/10/09/welsh-rse-code-queer-theory/

No it doesn't. It asks that educators address this under the umbrella of transgender identity. It's quite the opposite of challenging stereotypes. It's assuming that those who do not conform are likely to be trans.