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

[ResisterRex]

This is an outline of the hearings which seem to have begun. Perhaps most chilling of all, is that children now don't seem to be children, but "learners":

"A Welsh Government spokesman said: "Learners will only learn topics that are appropriate to their age and development."

This is what the barrister for the parents said:

"Paul Diamond, a barrister representing parents, said the RSE code was "the most extreme and unbalanced documents there could be".
"When parents send their children to school they don't expect to have psycho-sexual theories and 'plus issues' taught from the age of three," he said.
"This is the most comprehensive change in the school environment and it places its entire focus on one issue, that of LGBTQ+."

Then this for very young children:

"The RSE code says that from the age of three, lessons should promote "an awareness of how to communicate wants and needs in relationships" and "awareness of how needs relate to rights"."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/15/sex-education-three-year-olds-wales-branded-extreme-unbalanced/

Apart from all the dodgy stuff, how can any teaching that includes T in the LGBT, not completely undermine the L, G and B?

It's a nonsense.

Jonathan Moffett KC, representing the Welsh Government, said many of the parents' concerns had been "plagued by inaccurate information".

Well, we'll see won't we.

Is there a share token for this at all?

Well, children have been called "learners" for a good 40 years!

Do you have a share token, or can you add more specifically what the issue is?

I can't see it's been archived yet anywhere and the Telegraph doesn't do share tokens. But normally a Twitter search throws up an archive link...not yet though...

If the parents had been raising concerns it would seem to be incumbent on the government to provide them with information.

Maybe let's see all the lesson plans out in the open then? Definitely up for that

Ah here's one

archive.ph/J1s0S

"an awareness of how to communicate wants and needs in relationships" and "awareness of how needs relate to rights"

Surely that just means "Mary wants to play with Jonny's doll. Jonny does not want to share his doll. Mary is upset, but Jonny has the right not to be scratched in the face by her"?

I don't see what is controversial.

(NB I haven't read the article due to the pay wall )

It isn't controversial. They are learning age appropriate things. This stuff is important. They are not being taught how to have sec etc at the age of 3!
Would you deny them access to books like And Tango Makes Three or Nen and the Lonely Fisherman? There's nothing to worry about here.

Do you have access to the material the parents are concerned about?

I've not read anything in there that concerns me yet, can you tell us what worries you?
We were using the word "learners" when I was working in schools 20 years ago, that's not new or particularly worrying.

In the context of parents being concerned about something to fundraise and go to court, where it involves 3 year olds, I'd have thought someone might've said

"You know what? Maybe learners is a bit odd here, because no normal member of the public talks this way, maybe we should say children. After all, we are trying to convince the public that there's nothing untoward and we go on to say that these parents are simply misinformed"

Something like that.

Frankly, if the public sector has been saying this for 40 years then they've been doing it on the quiet. Our school - and nursery given this JR captures 3year olds - has never and would never dehumanise children like this.

It's not in Keeping Children Safe In Education, I notice. Maybe it's in the Welsh version then?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/1101454/Keepinggchildrensafeeineducationn_2022.pdf

Perhaps, once you get into that mindset, it creates bad outcomes. Local governments have been switching between "service user" and "resident" when it suits (latter usually where you're availing yourself of a service like housing which you've every right to, but the shitty nomenclature they use makes it sound like you're a lazy feckless chancer).

Using language like that removes us from who we are talking about, which seems deliberate.

I've not been able to access the curriculum itself. This is the analysis that Safe Schools Alliance have carried out, but I found it a bit hard to follow:

safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/A_Review_of_the_Relationships_and_Sexuality_Education_Curriculum_in_Wales_-_October_2022.pdf

From the link

● The academic approach to the curriculum is that of posthumanism and Queer Theory. This involves reconceptualising, and specifically sexualising, established concepts such as the child. This is part of an “ethico-political project” known as “queering”.
● Children and young people are therefore considered to be sexual beings from birth. Normal healthy development in infancy is reframed as sexually motivated.
● Safeguarding and child protection is identified as an inhibitor to children’s development
● The curriculum code’s “sex positive” approach is grounded in socio-political theory and activism, which endorses criminal sexual activity, including for and among children
● A child’s sense of self is their “gender”
● The posthumanist approach imagines a “post-human” society based upon “assemblage”
theory. This is prioritised over human beings and human characteristics to enable
“inclusivity”
● The erasure and obfuscation of biological sex and the ideological redefinition of associated
terms is essential (aka “queering”). This includes diverging from established legal
definitions, including sex and sexual orientation
● Moral considerations are deemed irrelevant to a “sex positive” curriculum

Yet expressing sexuality through sexual behaviours and relationships with others is a natural, healthy part of growing up. For example, for children aged between 0-5, behaviours such as holding or playing with own genitals, curiosity about other children's genitals, interest in body parts and what they do and curiosity about sex and gender differences reflect ‘safe and healthy development’ (see Brook 2015).’

There's nothing to worry about here.

Got it.

"Perhaps, once you get into that mindset, it creates bad outcomes. Local governments have been switching between "service user" and "resident" when it suits (latter usually where you're availing yourself of a service like housing which you've every right to, but the shitty nomenclature they use makes it sound like you're a lazy feckless chancer)."

I am going to file this one, ResisterRex. I suspect it may come in useful at some point. 😉

Thanks, Datun - I just found it hard to follow because they didn't cite any examples from the curriculum itself.

I also don't think it's necessarily contentious to say that children are sexual beings from birth. Even Freud thought that. That is obviously very different from saying that children can consent to sexual relationships, but is it totally outlandish to say that children have sexual feelings from a very early age?

I'm not a child psychologist, but people who are have read it and are saying that the lessons are trying to equate normal child development with sexually motivated development.

Also SSA have gone through the entire thing with a fine tooth comb, and have concluded that the lessons are being taught through the lens of queer theory.

After you have read the summary, you can click on the hyperlinks to see exactly how they arrived at their conclusions.

It would be wise to be really cautious about sources and the notion that children are sexual beings eg from infancy. SFAIK, this has a dark history.

This is a good documentary (I accept it's from the late 80s) but it contains distressing content, and deals with the so-called father of the sexual revolution - Kinsey - who did think children were sexual beings from infancy and whose research was taken from a child sex offender's diary. The full Kinsey papers have never been released:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=UVC-1d5ib50

Yes. We're in this ridiculous place where any bloody fool can see that something is dodgy, but because it is often couched in general language, or terms that aren't specific, it gets rubber-stamped with 'plausible deniability'.

I've not read the Telegraph report etc but just to highlight this approach isn't new. I did advanced safeguarding training with the NSPCC about 10 years ago and one of the modules broke down by age the sorts of normal sexual development in children. There is a normal baseline (i.e curiosity about different body parts in preschool age) and it's essential practitioners understand that in order to spot unusually sexualised behaviours that might be indicative of abuse.

With the telegraph, if you open the article and immediately turn off the internet, then you can read it.

curiosity about sex and gender differences

Really? And gender? Ten years ago the NSPCC was teaching professionals about how to spot signs children are curious about "gender differences"?

I no longer have the materials so can't check the precise language used in my course. And I didn't mention gender in my comment, it was one word of many in the comment I quoted. I was pointing out that understanding age appropriate sexual development in children is nothing new and not the apparent red flag the previous poster was suggesting. Link to current NSPCC learning content (and their reference list) for info learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-health-development/sexual-behaviour#article-top