If you disagree with anything your children’s school is teaching them – well, tough. There has been an educational coup d’état. It’s happening all over, and amazingly in some countries it’s going down well. ‘Elite’ elementary schools in Iceland are teaching boys to put on nail varnish and body massage each other, while girls are being discouraged from crying. This is all to play down the development of ‘gendered behaviours’, and is the philosophy of self-described radical feminist Margret Pala Olafsdottir, who runs 20 nursery and elementary schools in Iceland, which parents are choosing, and happily paying extra for.
The philosophy is called the Hjalli model. It is based on gender segregation, with children working in small gender-divided groups for most of the day. According to Boas Hallgrimmson, who teaches at a Hjalli model school: ‘Using this method, both genders get nourished on their terms and both girls and boys get the freedom to work on honing their full range of good qualities. Stereotypes do not prevail. Another key element is the fact that everyone at school is required to wear a school uniform, not only the children but also the staff. This makes every child equal to the next and helps avoid bullying at school, but not only that – the individual shines more once not judged by his or her cover.’ (Hallgrimmson also performs with the ‘loud rawk outfit Reykjavik’ – which is something to do with Björk, and men wearing corsets and angel wings; plus rainbows and pride.) Their mission is to create a better future for all children, based on active ‘gender deconstruction’. Girls crying is considered weakness; boys changing dolls’ nappies is seen as empowering.
UK schools are not being left undamaged. As David Kurten clearly reported for TCW, while parents’ right to remove their children from relationships and sex education is about to be strictly limited, Stonewall continue to develop even more transgender policies – extreme even for some of their supporters. In a letter published in the Times, Stonewall came under fire from well-known supporters for ‘demonising’ anyone who speaks out about transgender issues.
Leading members of the lesbian, gay, transsexual and intersex community have started a petition urging the charity to rethink its transgender policy, saying it threatens women’s rights, undermines gay and lesbian identity and stifles freedom of speech.
People are not happy about this in Scotland either, where recent draft education guidelines ordered that children be told that ‘your gender is what you decide’ as soon as they go to school, aged five. Thank goodness, at least one Scot is speaking out against it. David Robertson of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity has warned that, from a Christian perspective, children are being ‘indoctrinated’ and harmed by transgender ideology. He wrote: ‘The greatest potential harm is when activist teachers, or those keen to get a “Stonewall award”, indoctrinate children with this ideology. I think of the young girl telling the speaker at a nativity service, “You can’t say Mary was a woman. How do you know that?” or the primary girl coming home upset and asking her parents if she was a boy or a girl because her teacher had said she could choose.’
The wholesale indoctrination of young children into first believing that homosexuality and, more recently, transgenderism are totally normal and to be celebrated is the ultimate example of ‘mission creep’. Especially as parents have never been asked for their permission. Indeed, it’s now got to the stage where it will be illegal to withdraw your child from these compulsory lessons.
Jordan Peterson was in no doubt what parents should do in these circumstances. ‘Take your kids out of school!’ Ah, if only. Do that in England, and you can be hit with a fine for unauthorised absence. But that’s only scratching the surface. Parents refusing to follow the politically correct line may find themselves subject to all sorts of pressures.
Take the case of Christians Sally and Nigel White. Upset by their son’s confusion when a six-year-old classmate changed his gender, they removed their son from his school. Little did they reckon on the hatred it would unleash. They were reported to be planning a legal challenge in the hope that guidelines which require schools to accept the wishes of children and their families regarding gender identity, and which are being rolled out in schools the length and breadth of Britain, will be open to public scrutiny.
Since then, in its most recent Briefing Paper of August 2018, the government has set out its current and proposed positions on sex and relationships education in schools in England. As of now, parents are free to withdraw their children from SRE if they so wish, with the exception of the biological aspects of human growth and reproduction involved in National Curriculum Science. But a policy statement from the Department for Education confirmed that an amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill was laid in March 2017, to take effect from September 2019.
The Department has committed to retaining parents’ rights to withdraw their child, but not from relationships education at Primary. As yet, there are no guidelines as to procedure, should parents refuse to agree to these statutory requirements. But given the existing powers of the Family Courts, where it is the case that parents’ rights over their children are not legally absolute, parents are right to be concerned at the prospect of third-party interventions into their family life. The definition of ‘the best interests of the child’ is likely to be open to dispute in just this type of situation.
It is already the case that many parents do not want their children indoctrinated in other ways. According to The Conversation, there is ‘a growing problem’ with parents taking their children out of RE lessons on Islam.
The evidence suggests requests for withdrawal affect three-quarters of all schools though the Conversation report says a ‘mere 10 per cent’ of these parents are open about why: ‘racist or Islamophobic reasons’. The ATL teaching union is very concerned about this, condemning racist parents, and urging the Government to put a stop to it.
I would like to believe that our lawmakers and educationists are genuinely trying to safeguard the interests of children and their families. But when I see how things are now pointing to the suppression – rather than the safeguarding – of parental rights, that naïve optimism crumbles. Parents need to face up to the fact that their children are no longer their own. They have been kidnapped by the state’s brain-washers. Legally, there’s nothing you can do about it. And you are also having to pay for it.
Anybody game for changing all that? Because, if we don’t, it could soon become illegal to be a conservative parent.
