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/

@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.

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/

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 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

was always going to cause a conflict.

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

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...

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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.

Why are the education authorities being so secretive about this.

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.

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

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

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