"Sex work is rewarding, pupils told by education providers."

[ResisterRex]

In today's Times:

Sex work is rewarding, pupils told by education providers.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/35cd493a-fee1-11ec-88db-ae1b6b9bdd3e?shareToken=9c11ec9640b2734f2d77adc7f059f54dd_

I think we are all familiar with these "education providers" but even so, it's another shocker. It's already been picked up by the Mail:

School children are told prostitution is a 'rewarding job' by sex education providers who promote 'kinks' to pupils including flogging, beating and locking people up in a cage

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10996893/Children-told-prostitution-rewarding-job-sex-education-providers-promote-kinks.html

Everyone involved in this should be investigated and/or fired.

Not as rewarding and creating crappy ‘education’ materials and pedalling them to schools.

I assume this was aimed at boys and girls? 😡

I don't understand why there is no regulation?

It makes my head hurt to think that kids have to contend with not only graphic and sexual tv, freely available pornography from a young age and shared at schools, the internet and all it involves, and THIS is what they are taught at schools. What on earth are we doing?

Do the schools just hand out contracts for RSE without due diligence? Or do they look at these creeps' websites and think, "perfect, this is great". I read the Daily Mail article and this guy/company was worse even than I'd imagined.

It's worth looking at the actual primary source - the website itself.

I chose randomly and came across an entry from a girl wanting to learn to 'deepthroat' to make sure her boyfriend stayed with her and the main focus was on toxic relationships, sexism and consent.

That's as far as I got - I'd be interested in reading the actual entry on sex work if anyone can find the link.

I work in a school. My teenagers have recently finished high school. For the past 12 years we've been repeatedly warned about the harms to children from dubious online individuals and organisations. We've been constantly advised, quite rightly, to make sure we know what are kids are up to when using their computers and devices. Now we realise schools have been inviting these groups into our schools, under our noses to peddle this crap. Safeguarding is a complete joke. Why do some schools outsource sex education these days?

I don't know what's reported to be taught in the classroom but this is a 2016 response to a question.

www.bishuk.com/your-questions/ask-bish-should-i-get-paid-to-have-sex/

Sex work is degrading and leads to PTSD in a lot of women who undertake it.
Fuming would be an understatement for how I am feeling right now.
Sickening just actually pure vileness.

I think it is one of the problems is that too many schools think their responsibility ends with what is taught in the classroom by external providers (and a fair amount of that on this issue is inappropriate), whereas they should also recognise that children may well end up looking at these providers’ websites. An endorsement of a provider by bringing them into the classroom or using their materials, is by extension an endorsement of the provider’s website. Schools need to recognise this, carry out due diligence and take responsibility.

I don't know what's reported to be taught in the classroom but this is a 2016 response to a question.

That probably was the one being referred to in the media. My view is that it is certainly not ideal as an answer and it should have emphasised the sexual politics more (and the fact that sex work is mainly about women catering to men's demand in a capitalist sex industry) and also the potential harm more.

I also wonder if the letter is genuine.

This is also where gender neutral language invisibilises misogyny. We know that it's girls who are being softened up for the sex industry. It's not boys who are being told they can only escape their circumstances on condition of having unwanted sex with men for whom your degradation is the whole point. We have to pretend this is being done by people to people. It disempowers the whole argument against it.

This really winds me up that this happens in education. The whole point of education is so that you gain knowledge and intelligence so that you have a wide range of opportunities available to you.

Girls go to school and university so that they can get highly paid jobs and not end up with no qualifications and have to sell sex to make ends meet.

This is queer theory in action - now gaslighting even the youngest of children to have no sexual boundaries whatsoever.

I read this this morning and a couple of things stood out. Firstly that the government has (rightly) made SRE compulsory, but (wrongly imo) not created a defined curriculum, instead leaving it up to schools, they have then created a fund to encourage schools to outsource provision. When parents ask for teaching materials they are told it’s commercially sensitive.

To me this seems like a disaster waiting to happen, complete lack of regulations is bound to bring bad faith actors into the mix and schools absolutely should be using due diligence, but the really awful stuff isn’t clear, the provider hasn’t gone to school stating they want to teach about the legitimacy of sex work, or normalise underage sex without contraceptive. These things are on a website that is part of a package that schools sign up to, the providers know schools have access to funding, they no doubt have great marketing materials, they all seem to be able to say they work with lots of schools.

What is needed imo is clear curriculum and regulated provision.

From what I'm able to deduce from the OP links (tabloids don't always tell us the full story and may twist or mislead to suit agendas), is that the provider of the sex education also has a website which goes into more detail and covers more mature topics. The website isn't designed for the classroom, the students are taught different material. They are secondary school age, yes they're still children but they're at an age where they will hear about sex and have questions. School sex+relationship education is now mandatory in England since 2020.

Re the sexwork part, this appears to be referring to a post on the website (and not a classroom discussion), the provider has posted this “There are many many people doing sex work who do enjoy what they do — even if they don’t necessarily enjoy the sex. It can be a really difficult job but many people find it rewarding — just like other jobs.". Make of that what you will but he does say "many" and not "all".

I am suspecting by some of the wording used may possibly just be tabloids being tabloids trying to stir up a mountain of a scandal out of a molehill which we've seen over and over before.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4584917-miriam-cates-mp-on-what-your-children-are-being-taugtht-in-schools

Miriam Cates was on the case recently. The discussion ended with a promise of further investigation.

Due diligence is a surprisingly scarce skillset.

It puts me in mind of the professed scepticism of posters who have demonstrated that their goal is contrarianism to the point of being unable to give an accurate presentation of the contents of a link that that self-same poster had given.

Such posters tend to have a history of uninformed comments on sex work threads. Their lack of due diligence and failures of basic reading comprehension (kindest interpretation) wouldn't be disturbing except for the influence such posters claim to have by virtue of their occupation which involves working with young people or vulnerable groups.

This. With massive bells on.

Dear God.

@wonderstuff there is now a statutory curriculum for PSHE, introduced in 2021.

www.bishuk.com/your-questions/ask-bish-should-i-get-paid-to-have-sex/

So this is where the "sex work is rewarding" comes from. A blog post from 2016 which wasn't even mentioned in the classroom.

Maybe a report could be made to the IPSO about this article regarding accuracy.

*About the Daily Mail article just to clarify.

The Times is not a tabloid?

You seem to be privy to details that nobody else is, given the confidence of your assertions. However, you've been very confident about stating your interpretation of events for which you've given a link and for which the actual facts were at odds with your own account.

Unless, of course, you were in the classroom? If so, it would be interesting if you presented your account.

Please share your letter to IPSO as I'm intrigued as to the grounds and your wider argument.

Or maybe make a report to Ofsted / safeguarding organisations about:
".. teaching children that prostitution is a “rewarding job” and failed to advise a 14-year-old girl having sex with a 16-year-old boy that it was illegal ".
or other organisations " teaching children about sex also promote “kinks” such as being locked in a cage, flogged, caned, beaten and slapped in the face ".

If you wish to discuss sex with other people's children then you need to demonstrate a thorough understanding of the concepts of age appropriateness, boundaries, safeguarding, the criminal law about sexual offences with children and the dangers of being enthralled by queer theory. Which the majority of adults promoting queer theory and kink to children appear to be sadly lacking in.

due diligence

In my experience, PSHE leads have simply downloaded lessons without even reading them and handed them on to other teachers to deliver.

You would not believe the defensiveness and resistance when problems are pointed out.