After the courts ruled that the content of controversial pro-trans and ‘sex positive’ sex education lessons may be kept secret from parents, MPs prepare to legislate to force disclosure. The Spectator leader column this week backs the move. Here’s an excerpt.
Rishi Sunak tends to shy away from social issues so it has been left to a backbencher, Miriam Cates, to introduce a Bill which would oblige schools to disclose to parents the materials which are being used in their children’s sex education classes.
The Bill is necessary because the Conservative Government has allowed sex education in many schools to be taken over by campaign groups with a radical agenda who wish to persuade children that it is wrong to think in a ‘heteronormative’ way.
The scandals that have recently surrounded schools reveal the scale and severity of the problem. Children have in some cases been taught that there are dozens, even hundreds, of different genders, and that somehow they must discern and choose their own. Some have been told that when talking or writing about historical figures they should always use ‘they’ because we don’t know a past person’s preferred pronouns. Muslim parents in particular have protested against their children being given ‘age-inappropriate’ information about sexual practices. They insist that parents should have a right to know what their children are being told.
The rise in the number of children claiming to be transgender seems to have caught the Government by surprise but, given what pupils are now being taught, it should not have done. One popular schoolbook, for instance, tells of a Cinderella-like figure who undergoes a successful gender realignment overnight with no complications and no regrets.
We have a brave London mother, Clare Page, to thank for finally bringing the scandal to light. Page asked to see what her daughters were learning in sex education but to her astonishment she was rebuffed by the school. She then complained to the academy trust which ran the school, and was briefly shown an extract on a laptop which confirmed that children were being taught a concept known as ‘sex positivity’. The trust refused to let her see any of the lesson plans in detail. Even after Page took the matter to the tribunal, she was still denied proper access to the materials. The tribunal ruled that the commercial interests of the School of Sexuality Education, the company which provided teaching materials on relationships and sex education to her daughters’ school, took precedence over parents’ rights to know what their children are being taught. This is an extraordinary development.
The arrival of online teaching materials has allowed a situation in which what children are taught can be kept a secret, with copyright laws used to enforce that secrecy.
The dangers of this ought to be apparent. Pressure groups on a mission to disrupt societal norms should not be allowed to provide sex education to young children. But the more fraught the whole subject becomes, the more eager schools are to contract out the whole business. Teacher training has anyway become politicised, and young teachers are often themselves indoctrinated with gender ideology. Last year Teach First announced proudly that it had won a gold award in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.
The article concludes that “the Government has let down a generation of children in allowing ideologues to infiltrate lessons”.
“Backing Miriam Cates’s Bill to oblige schools to divulge teaching materials to parents would be a good start.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.