Pride in primary school

[Askingforafriend24]

Help me get my head around this. Primary school is making a huge deal about pride, and running a themed summer fair to celebrate. The whole school - kids and parents - are expected to get involved. Including an educational seminar for the parents that we are expected to attend!

I’ve been told point blank I am a dinosaur for questioning why there is such an emphasis on celebrating LGBTQ+ communities to a bunch of kids who probably don’t think about any of this stuff yet. There is already a carefully planned curriculum around all of this from the LA so I am confused as to why the school feels the need to go even further, particularly holding a massive event outside of school hours! I feel I have other things I would rather do with my Saturday morning, and I feel attending Pride events should be a choice for families to make for themselves.

One parent is no longer speaking to me because she was so horrified I even questioned the event - so hoping someone could come along with some advice.

Don’t get me started on sports day, when the kids all compete against each other (up until year 5) - which means the boys win pretty much everything and the girls come away empty handed. Again apparently I am ridiculous for daring to point out how unfair it is. Really fed up with it.

How old is your child, OP? I would feel quite comfortable not going along, and I would tell the school about my unease with indoctrination of children via rainbows, but I suppose if your child is old enough to want to go then it's a bit trickier.

Cass reported on many children who were so confused by the teaching of gender that some of them have been coerced by adults into irreversible surgery and drug treatment. Do those children deserve inclusion, respect? Is it heteronormative to suggest that the school should make sure that ALL children are safe and included?

LGBTQ is not teaching about gender...

My kids have been taught since a young age that 2 men or 2 women can get married. The first wedding my daughter went to was our two male friends.

Schools already teach about same sex relationships and different family set ups in am age appropriate way.

But a primary school having a weekend pride event with pressure to attend seems weird and unnecessary. Cynic that I am, I would be suspicious that it was an attempt to foist some gender nonsense onto kids that they couldn't get away with in the classroom.

(Also I have barely had a free Saturday morning with kids not needing a lift to one club or another since they were toddlers, so I wouldn't be able to go anyway )

Up until a few years ago I would have been all in favour Pride celebrations in the interests of redressing the balance as far as same sex relationships are concerned. If children are old enough to read stories where heterosexual relationships happen (the prince and princess live happily ever after) they're old enough to read age appropriate stories with same sex relationships too. As above, in particular materials showing children with same sex parents as most primary school children are too young to be actually having romantic relationships of any kind.

However in recent years 'inclusive' materials seem to have become obsessed with trans ideology. Presenting it as fact that people can change sex, or promoting the idea that someone who doesn't conform to societal gender norms must have been 'born in the wrong body' is dangerous and damaging. I've seen a book in an infant school which is full of nonsense about pronouns and 'assigned at birth'.

These days any celebration of Pride, especially in an educational context, makes me very nervous indeed about the messages children are getting from it.

In my view LGB is entirely from T and should not be lumped together. If anything trans ideology is homophobic. Just one more reason it has no place in schools.

Whit

The T is for 'transgender'.

i can think of 100’s of nice things to do on a Saturday morning and a primary aged school pride event isn’t one of them. While it’s positive for people to be their authentic selves and i have taught my own kids to respect others, I’d feel my kids were too young for a pride event and would wonder if this event would place pressure on young kids to conform to social stereotypes? I’d rather my kids were running free and playing creatively and not focusing on

I’d be pissed off, make my views known, ignore the “bigotry” comments (so cheap) and not attend.

Primary school children don’t need to know about adult sexuality. I agree that of course they need to know that “families come in all forms” (I think that’s a disingenuous argument in favour of Pride in schools, actually), but they can work that out for themselves from what they see around them.

Just let children be children. Stop thrusting your adult agenda on them. Please.

No chance I’m voting for him.

Sounds like the education seminar will help you.

I’m sure you are overthinking this in terms of sex education. Pride for children that age is surely just about understanding we love who we love and some families have two mums or two dads.

If it helps, I had a friend in school with two mums and I didn’t once think about their sex life. Just like I never thought about what happened between other parents.

This reads as quite sinister. People who disagree with you don't need "educating". They're allowed freedom of thought and expression.

Lots of those kids have 2. Mums 2 days gay brothers. If it prevents bulling and promotes understanding then great and part of education

Mums 2 days gay brothers.
I think we can all agree with this wise sentence.

I think most people have no issue with celebrating LGB. It's the T that's the issue.

Suggesting to very young children that it's possible to change sex or that they might be born in the "wrong" body or that they must conform to regressive gender stereotypes otherwise they're actually the opposite sex inside - all of this is deeply harmful and yet seems to be the focus of Pride/LGBT these days. A lot of my friends who are LGB no longer have any involvement in Pride events as they associate them with gender ideology and as homophobic.

Education like this perhaps? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50511063.amp

A lot of the original gay activists (those actually there at the Stonewall riot etc) are distancing themselves from Pride now.

The census showed that 5% of the population are same-sex attracted, so the reality of it is that Pride is irrelevant to the vast majority of children.

Being bisexual myself (and not realising until about the age of 14), not sure how helpful Pride is at primary school age, and actually could be damaging. I've heard schools go around and ask children what sexual orientation they are and that sort of questioning and forced grouping (ostracisation in the 2000s) terrified me. My sexual orientation does not define me!

And I feel that Pride promotes negative stereotypes, and will probably make questioning children feel worse and more confused.

Who knows if Pride was promoted when I was at primary school? I may have ended up on here detailing my detransition.

As isaid (excluding the typo) tolerance prevents bullying. Perhaps you should attend?.

Ok, so all those who think Pride in primary schools is a great idea, please can you answer these questions below? Imagine you’re talking to a curious six-year-old. You’re happy that your child asks questions and are keen to answer in a way that is truthful, makes sense to him / her and aligns with values that you’re keen to promote to your growing child (I’m leaving LGB out of my questions because I think it’s the other letters that the Pride flag represents that people are concerned about):

1. What’s Pride?
2. Why do we do Pride at school?
3. What does T stand for?
4. What does Q stand for?
5. What do I and A stand for, and what about all the pluses?
6. What are all the colours ? What is the circle on the flag? And the black and brown stripes?

Really interested to hear your answers. I’m six and very curious so be ready for lots more questions if what you say doesn’t make sense.

In terms of sports day, I’ve always thought it was best practice to mix boys and girls before puberty because boys don’t have an advantage until that point. Girls and boys are equally fast or strong until testosterone kicks in properly.

Statistics regarding sporting records from USA schools shows a considerable disparity between boys and girls from the age of 7 onwards. There are outliers of course but overall boys perform better than girls even before puberty.

I wouldn’t say ‘lots’ of kids have same sex parents or gay relatives’. ‘Some’ or ‘a few’ but not ‘lots’.

I would say more emphasis should be put on tackling bullying in general, not just in relation to this one factor.

JFC

Feel free to pull your child from school and keep them home to indoctrinate them in your bigotry but fortunately you have no power to stop schools teaching them that the world is broader than your horizons

This is a very good point.
If it were me I'd ask, in the spirit of innocent curiosity, when the school would be having a diversity and inclusion event around people with disabilities, or people of different ages.
And in the meantime I wouldn't waste my and my child's Saturday morning going to an event that sounds like overkill considering 'some people have two mummies' etc is presumably covered and/or modelled by the curriculum and by general school culture.

The existence of adult gay/lesbian couples/parents can and should be covered in primary school in a very matter of fact way, without any need to “celebrate”. It should just be presented as a normal part of society because it is a normal part of society.

the sexuality of young children should NOT be covered because it is totally inappropriate until children are intellectually and emotionally mature enough to begin to understand themselves in that way.

likewise the trans issue is complex and confusing for adults to negotiate and comprehend, not something young children are equipped to begin to understand.
it really must be separated out from gay/lesbian, there really is only a small amount of common ground (if any) between the two. It’s conflates two separate experiences and different sets of challenges. It is impossible to address those experiences/challenges as one homogenous issue, they just aren’t the same. Some people might see themselves as both gay and trans, in the same way that some people are both gay and disabled. It doesn’t mean that you can bundle it all together because doing that diminishes those very different experiences. There is no way that children can understand that complexity.