To want to know exactly what LGBT teaching in schools will entail?

[Toorahtoorahaye]

There has been lots of attention around the push to teach LGBT issues in schools - Birmingham being the flash point with many parents protesting. AIBU to have doubts about what is going to be taught and to want to know which orgs will be providing the material and exactly what this material teaches?

They won’t though, because there’s nothing to report.

Monchat your point about asking advice from internet randoms could apply to pretty much any MN thread surely? I've interpreted the OPs requirement here as finding out what may be happening in other schools, how other parents have successfully (or not) challenged ideas before they approach their school. This also interests me as I want my DD to continue being the warm, open and inclusive kid she is with everyone she meets. If at any time though her (protected in law) rights and dignity are threatened to accommodate a trans child - such as a trans girl being allowed to change for PE in the girls changing room and my daughter has to accept this with no question or debate - I'm going to have a problem.

And Mermaids. Stonewall etc have huge, HUGE influence so it's naive to think that as the supposed "experts" that influence won't reach some of our schools.

And what bezalelle said at 8.35. With bloody bells on.

That just .... isn't even vaguely true.

Yes, if you have interests in legitimising paedophilia, you could use queer theory as a framework. Or you could use legal history as precedent, or you could cite libertarianism, or you could argue it as an extension to feminism, or whatever the heck you chose. Couldn't you?

Any theory that posits any degree of freedom of choice can be twisted to claim paedophilia is just fine and children 'choose' it.

That doesn't make it the fault of theories that posit degrees of freedom of choice. It makes it the fault of paedophiles.

The theories about gender identity are very clearly saying girls are not entitled to their own boundaries, if people can't see that that is leading to issues with safeguarding them I don't know what to say.
It's easier to cry bigot than to actually listen. I spent 10 years working for an HIV charity, in my twenties I spent my entire social life in gay pubs, is it likely that suddenly in my forties myself and women like me became bigots.

In the case of DD2's school I hope it will involve an update to the video that they show at the end of Y5 and which their teachers probably watched when they were at school in the early noughties, that has not one single mention of kids possibly having feelings towards the same sex.

I don’t think we need to worry ourselves about accusations of bigotry.

Like the word “transphobia”, it’s lost all meaning through over-use.

your point about asking advice from internet randoms could apply to pretty much any MN thread surely? I've interpreted the OPs requirement here as finding out what may be happening in other schools, how other parents have successfully (or not) challenged ideas before they approach their school.

Yes, anything you read on the internet should be taken with a huge bucket of salt. People could literally be anyone and have many reasons for saying the things they do.

OP should definitely approach their school but I think shes probably spending her time getting very worked up, only to find that what the school teaches is absolutely ok and only includes what I and others have said on here about families being different which I don't think many parents have a problem with.

With schools, I think some people are preparing for a battle which isn't going to happen. I understand the concern about some of the groups advising schools, but I haven't seen any evidence that anything concerning is filtering down into lessons. If I did, I would be very concerned, the same as I am concerned about how some in the medical field are dealing with things.

I may be a bigot, but i don't think this this kind of education should be in primary schools at all, and they organisations pushing this curriculum are beyond dodgy.
Why so much need to sexualize kids?

That doesn't make it the fault of theories that posit degrees of freedom of choice

Teachers that embed queer theories into schools so much so that the only people without that freedom of choice, just so happens to be girls; and then can't work out why people are unhappy about their girls having no freedom of choice when the boys have all the freedom of choice, should hang up their teaching credentials and stop indoctrinating kids in my opinion.

As they are a huge part of the problem.

monchat

It is happening. School staff are being trained by Mermaids and Stonewall. We are being told the Equality Act means a boy can change for PE with the girls provided he says the magic words “I identify as a girl” and no parents need be told. I’ve been informed by the head of a charity that advises schools on teaching SRE that it would be problematic if I were to tell a child that humans can’t change sex.

Open your eyes.

FamilyOfAliens

They may be being trained by these groups but to my knowledge, nothing even slightly concerning is being taught. In the primary schools I know, gender hasn't even been mentioned.

My children know you can't change sex. You can't. If people want to call me a bigot for that, then that is fine.

As for boys and girls changing together, at our primary, that happens anyway up until year 4 or 5. If it happened at secondary due to a trans child and my child was uncomfortable I would speak to the school. Most things are easily sorted out.

I really do have my eyes very open. I just won't get caught up the mass panic when I'm seeing nothing to panic about in schools. Doctors, psychiatrists, information on the Internet, that's what I'm more concerned about.

Why so much need to sexualize kids?

But it isn't about sexualizing kids. It is about explaining that people have different types of families and that that is ok.

I am not naive; I see that there is a real concern a bad teacher (or just one who doesn't know what they're doing) might make a child think if she likes football she must be a lesbian or trans, or small boys might come home saying brightly they plan to be girls when they grow up. (I might point out that small children have been saying similar since the dawn of time, and in general it is entirely harmless).

But why use that example of a bad teacher to throw out the whole programme? That is plain homophobia. All of these fig leaves of 'I don't mind if my child is gay ... when they're grown up' or 'I have nothing against lesbian mothers but I don't like queer theory so I object to this programme - they strike me as excuses.

They may be being trained by these groups but to my knowledge, nothing even slightly concerning is being taught. In the primary schools I know, gender hasn't even been mentioned

Which is this “knowledge” that you have? Do you work for a local authority or for the DfE?

I work in a primary school and belong to networks of colleagues in neighbouring schools. As a designated safeguarding lead, I regularly meet with other DSLs and this subject comes up constantly.

I’ve been on a training course recently where school staff who had been trained by Mermaids used this training to demonstrate how they would ignore safeguarding policy in order to validate a child’s perceived trans identity.

Don’t tell me this is “mass panic”.

I see that there is a real concern a bad teacher (or just one who doesn't know what they're doing) might make a child think if she likes football she must be a lesbian or trans

This isn’t about “bad teachers”

This is about bad information being given to schools, healthcare settings, voluntary organisations, the police, firefighters and the like by lobbying groups whose agenda - and more important, funding - relies on getting everyone to agree that gender identity is real for everyone, that it should be taught to school children as a real thing, and that anyone who objects is a bigot and homophobe.

Fgs, we’ve even had that name-calling on this thread. Surely you can’t deny that?

Wasn’t a high school student in Scotland taken out of class and reprimanded for not accepting the gender identity over biological sex ethos the school had obviously adopted. I believe he was expelled.

Sarah - how can you keep insisting that you just know for sure that the policies Stonewall and other LGBT charities advising schools are not being taken on board and implemented?

I'm not panicking however if my 11 year old DD didn't want to change next to an 11 year old trans girl, guidance from influential organisations is that she should basically get over it. That's potentially not easily sorted out. So I'd be pissed off as opposed to panicking

You've got me mixed up with another poster, I think. Never mentioned Stonewall.

Yes, pick out Stonewall and ignore everything else - I think you’re dishonest Sarah even if fairly subtly so. As you’re all knowing and all seeing - what’s in my oven for dinner tonight?

OP, it’s “monchat* who has taken what she has seen in one or two schools, extrapolated it to the whole of the UK and concluded that there’s nothing to worry about.

Sarah is the poster who thinks this is all about homophobia and if any school has had training from Mermaids or Stonewall and implements that training in school, its because they are a “bad teacher”.

Sarah is the poster who thinks this is all about homophobia and if any school has had training from Mermaids or Stonewall and implements that training in school, its because they are a “bad teacher”.

By that logic, the schools who have got Stonewall or Mermaids in to train the teachers must be bad schools or have bad management, because anyone implementing the guidance is seen as a bad teacher. So why are schools using these groups for training?

Schools are using Mermaids and Stonewall for training because they are recommended by the DfE.

Oh dear, apologies to Sarah on that - it’s hard to tell some posters apart.

Surely people can see that there's a different between teaching that gay relationships are fine and natural, and teaching that you can CHANGE SEX either through magical thinking or through mutilating/sterilising your body. SURELY.

When people talk about 'changing sex' this is only impossible if you persist with interpreting it as the changing of chromosomes.

But that is not going to be what they mean by it. They will either be using sex as a synonym for gender, or the sorts of physical things that can be changed.

You don't have to agree with someone else's usage of terms, but you cannot substitute in your own meanings into the terms someone else is using, in order to prove that they believe impossible things.