On Monday, the Education Secretary Damian Hinds of the Department for Education in the UK, confirmed plans to reconstruct the Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and health education curriculum, which will take place September 2020.
The new curriculum would make it mandatory for schools to teach students about gay and trans relationships in both primary and secondary schools, and would prevent parents’ rights to remove their child out of the classes in secondary school, according to The Daily Mail.
“Growing up and adolescence are hard enough, but the internet and social media add new pressures that just weren’t there even one generation ago. So many things about the way people interact have changed, and this new world, seamless between online and offline, can be difficult to navigate. Almost twenty years on from the last time guidance on sex education was updated, there is a lot to catch up on,” Hinds said in a statement.
The Director of The Christian Institute in the UK, Colin Hart, criticized the new curriculum, saying, “No one objects to trying to make children safer online by teaching them about the dangers of social media. But primary-aged children are far too young to be learning about the radical political agendas being promoted by homosexual and transgender lobby groups. Topics such as same-sex marriage are far better left until secondary school. Even then, parents should be able to withdraw their children from lessons they deem unsuitable.”
As The Christian Institute reports:
Currently, parents may withdraw their children from lessons covering the sex aspect, up to age 18, but this will be lowered to 15.
After the announcement of the new guidance concerned parents started a petition, “Give parents the right to opt their child out of Relationship and Sex Education,” which received over 100,000 signatures.
“We believe it is the parent’s fundamental right to teach their child RSE topics or to at least decide who teaches them and when and how they are taught. We want the right to opt our children out of RSE when it becomes mandatory in Sept 2020,” the petition reads. “We have grave concerns about the physical, psychological and spiritual implications of teaching children about certain sexual and relational concepts proposed in RSE and believe that they have no place within a mandatory school curriculum.”
The parents who signed the petition signed for good reason considering some of the questions that the schools will be covering with students of various age groups:
For ages 3-6
“What can other people do to make me feel good?”
“Where do babies come from?”
“When is it OK to let someone touch me?”
For ages 11-13
“Are there ways of enjoying sex that don’t risk pregnancy or infection?
“If a woman gets pregnant, what choices does she have?”
“What are the best websites on sex and relationships for young people?”
For 16 and beyond:
“What is the experience e like of ‘coming out’ about being gay, lesbian or bisexual to family and friends?”
“What does transgender mean and how can I challenge transphobia?”
One thing I am continually baffled by is the government teaching kids about sex and relationships. Parents should be doing this! The government should never be involved in teaching something so vital to children. And also, the fact that they don’t want to allow parents to withdraw their child from class shows that they are trying to do some form of mass indoctrination.
We’ll see how this continues to develop for the folks in the UK.