The Problem with Sex Ed
Porn is not the problem
Special thanks to my current subscribers, if you are a free subscriber maybe you could consider becoming a paid subscriber? A yearly subscription is just £30 per year, £4.00 per month or founding membership £250. Every penny makes a difference & allows me to continue advocating for children & childhood. Or buy me a coffee? Thank you!!!!!!
The Problem with Sex Ed
Porn is not the Problem
There is a lot of attention on ensuring that children *do* or *do not* get ‘sexual/sexuality/health/relationship’ education at their schools. But what’s really going in?
When one falls into the remit of discussing comprehensive sex education in schools all sorts of questions emerge. Do lessons start at 3 years, or 13? Does the resource include anal and oral and…. fisting? Are the orange juice-tampon and banana-nutella exercises useful? And on and on and on. (what a world!)
These questions dominate the news and message forums, I suspect (?) because (somewhere internally) everyone recognises that there (may be) boundaries being transgressed, it sets off alarm bells. Some will say that the children have already leapt over the actual garden gate and therefore educators must follow to pick up the pieces of their ‘bad sexual choices’ (keeping them safe!). Some might say that the horse has bolted the gate (towards sexual experiences), the kids are going to get there anyway so we might as well prepare a landing net (keeping them from *inevitable* harm!). Yet others cite this might not be road the kids are already on, but one being prepared by the school system itself (keeping them from being groomed!).
And this ‘panic’ charges people up. (justified or not)
I wish we saw 1% of this interest in things kids actually benefit from in their day to day. But no, forget a new football pitch wee Jimmy, it’s your sexuality and sex lives we need to focus on!
Truth be told the current iteration of sexual/sexuality education seems to be (either by accident or design) part of a much larger picture of undermining the very foundation of childhood. With that comes the undermining of the family and specifically the parental role.
I was recently asked to be part of a conference organised on behalf of the Family Education Trust in Belfast (Ireland) about the Scottish RSHP (Relationships Sexual Health Parenthood Education) and the work of The Scottish Union for Education for which I am the Parent and Supporters Coordinator. My role is to help parents to navigate challenges they are facing in their schools. Much of what I hear from parents is related to the problems with the RSHP curriculum.
The other speakers included Anna Loutfi (The Bad Law Project), Callum Webster (The Christian Institute), Liam Gibson (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) and Lucy Marsh (Family Education Trust).
Whilst our organisations may diverge on certain topics and issues, the central theme of concern for the undermining and targeting of parents in the education system is shared. This assault on the parental role is putting children at risk. No one cares more for children then their parents. Whilst there are outliers who may buck this trend and *do not* care for their children, or love them unconditionally, they are outliers. Therefore policy must work hand in hand with parents at the forefront to deliver what is best for future generations. At the current moment policy seems to assume that parents are negligent at best, and therefore need to treat all children as abuse victims. (in my humble opinion)
Scottish Union for Education believes that the role of the school and parents have been turned around - wherein schools now see themselves as the moral and psychological arbiters of children’s lives, and parents are left to pick up the pieces of reading, writing and maths. School’s goal posts are no longer about ‘education’ as we might have once expected but rather ‘activism’. This comes under the mantle of many contested subject areas our children are now delivered as facts including gender ideology, critical race theory, climate catastrophe, and any number of political conflicts in the world presented simply as a good versus evil arguments.
In the meantime Scotland faces the worst literacy rates in decades, an epidemic of violence in the classroom and a catastrophic rise in ‘mental health’ conditions. Clearly the kids are not alright.
How did we get here?
I think in order to understand the issues faced in Scottish education (and where RSHP fits in there) we must first look at the *scaffolding* in which it was permitted to roost.
Not long ago school, teaching and education (in general) was rooted in a *physical* reality. Learning was delivered via text books, jotters, and workbooks which inevitably would make their way home. Books may have been cumbersome but they were also more accessible for parents to informally observe that learning was happening (at the very least), and even to casually see what was being taught.
My parents were not ‘involved’ in my education per se. They were too busy working and feeding my siblings and myself to have the time, let alone resources, to help me. That said, they saw my learning. They saw me at the kitchen table going through jotters and workbooks, they saw me returning from the library with novels, biographies and history volumes and it’s quite possible (unbeknownst to me) that they leafed through my science, history or maths text books.
At the same time physical learning was being delivered teachers were neighbours. Parents were not some ‘anonymous’ concept only seen 10 minutes at parents meetings, but shared community members seen at church, at the local shops, and community venues. Therefore when teachers were teaching they had a greater sense of accountability (and their role as teacher of subjects) because they would see the parents face to face… regularly.
All this changed quite dramatically with the advent of technology. Where we can see the benefit (and the allure) of ‘the devices’ their adoption came at a cost. And one of the most significant was the loss of physical learning. Parents can no longer ‘casually’ view what children are being taught. In order to follow up on classroom subjects a parent needs to sign into a device, scroll through some pages and if lucky come across a snapshot of classroom activities. The learning is also delivered very personally and intimately to the child alone.
At the same time teachers (by and large) do not live where they work. Therefore ‘the parent’ is not a personal member of their community with whom they have a collective responsibility for shared goals (safety et al) and whom they have to look in the eye regularly but an abstract concept. (I speak in broad terms of course). And when they relate to your child, it’s not because they *know* him/her within real time experience of shared physical environments outside the school. This is not to say teachers are bad people, or that they do not have good intentions but that the benefit of casual interaction and informal observation has been lost.
This virtual learning has contributed to a larger culture of dissociation. Both for the children from physical learning, the parents from having physical access to materials, and teachers from parents. (let’s not forget the addictive aspect as well)
During this time education has moved out of the realm of subject based learning. Activist aims have been directed by government diktat. And because the teachers might not understand or are qualified to lead on these impossible to understand issues (ask a teacher to explain gender to you is a perfect example, it’s gobbledygook), third party agencies (funded by our taxes) are let in.
When parents struggle to understand what is going on, or want to challenge what is being presented they are pulled into spaces of obfuscation wherein no one is responsible (we can see this clearly in the gender ideology issue but this is across the board). Though a lot *may* “happen” in terms of meetings and trails of emails (with it the message that they are *doing something* at same time nothing changes). Schools point to Scottish Government (“we are following government policy”) and Scottish Government saying ‘it’s only guidance’ therefore ‘nothing to do with us’. And the quangos having an absolute field day (funded by us). And our children in the middle continuing to be fed ‘the message’.
I have recently pointed out that what we are witnessing is worse then privatising of education. These organisations have all the benefits of private and commercial protections but none of public accountability. They are given full intimate access to our children and there is nothing (bar taking our kids out of school) that we can do about it. And we, taxpayers, are funding it. And I wonder with the teacher cuts (450 in Glasgow alone), as Head Teachers scramble to fill gaps in classroom time, will these ‘knights in shining armour’ (the quangos) show up, offering their services (funded privately or by taxes) to deliver? What then? Are we seeing a takeover of state education and our children’s lives?
Against the backdrop of ALL that- there has been a dramatic shift in teacher training from years past.
Until fairly recently those studying for the teaching profession would have had been provided a good grounding of child development theories. The heavy hitters would have been such theorists as Jean Piaget and Erik Erickson. Both had decades of research and were well regarded in their study into ‘how children learn’.
These days there is little to no introduction to child development in these courses. In fact, the University of Glasgow teacher training program has one required text…. “Social Justice Re-Examined”. Two of the main theorists cited in this text include Paolo Freire and Michel Foucault.
Both these theorists are from the field of critical theory. The basis of critical theory (as evidenced by the titles of above books) is to identifying power and dismantle oppression. Your children are no longer seen as children. They are merely cogs in an oppressive and inequitable world. It is the job of the educator to educate children how to be activists. None of these is done with any knowledge or reference to the fact that there might be vulnerabilities associated with being children.
Enter Scottish RSHP.
Colin Morrison (Doctor in Academic sense, no medical or psychological qualifications) is the architect of our current Scottish Relationship Sexual Health and Parenthood curriculum. His PhD (seen above) was on exploring the sexuality of learning disabled children.
Here is the intro:
I’ll let that sink in. So here’s the thing - what we often see is ‘good ideas’ we would all agree with (on the main) mixed in with some….. red flags shall we say.
The abstract refers to people (in this case learning disabled children) living ‘safe, happy, and fulfilling personal relationships” and '“lives lived with human dignity”. Who could disagree with that? But then wait a minute…. ‘sexual rights’, ‘social justice’ and ‘rights’. What Colin Morrison is referring to is the ‘sexual rights’ for learning disabled children. From the perspective of this paper - children being ‘free’, ‘having liberty’ to have sex is an issue of social justice and we will find, one that is devoid of any basis of developmental concerns or safeguarding.
SEX POSITIVISM (Queer Theory)
What the above represents is what is termed a ‘sex positive’ approach to sex ed. Throughout the whole curriculum we will see words that play into our best nature as humans. Because being ‘positive’ is good right? We don’t want to be ‘sex negative’! We don’t want to teach children that their bodies are bad, that they should feel shame, to be uptight and repressed etc etc etc…? But this is not about that. ‘Sex Positivism’ is ‘Queer Theory’ part of the critical social justice movement as cited above. Queer theory is not only not having boundaries, it’s about continually finding ways to transgress any boundaries that might be around. Colin Morrison’s view is that we should all be comfortable to be sexual as much as we want to with whomever we want to because that makes us… ‘positive’ and because it is our ‘sexual right’ to do so. Even children. Even disabled children.
It is worth noting that many of the queer theorists including Foucault who is cited in Colin Morrison’s PhD were in favour of paedophilia. Here is Professor Derrick Jensen playing ‘Queer Theory Jeopardy’ with his students. An illuminating insight into the foundations of Queer Theory.
CONSENT
One of the words that gets bandied about a lot in regards to sex ed and children is the notion of ‘consent’. Consent is the wrong word to teach to children from a developmental perspective. In order to consent to something you have to understand the consequences of your actions, and then you have to be able to take responsibility for said action you have consented to.
Of course children (being children) are unable to consent to things, as (developmentally) they are (by and large) unable to understand consequences nor would they be expected to take responsibility when things go tits up. It is the parents who will (by and large) move in to micro-manage things. Not the school, not the teacher, not Scottish government.
This is part of a wider trend of a ‘child-led’ movement feeding into the whole notion of ‘children’s rights’. Like sex ‘positivism’ it obfuscates the bigger issue, because we don’t want to ‘stop’ children from ‘being free’ do we? But of course children are children and don’t have experiences from which to understand consequences of their actions and they need to be protected and guided by adults. A child can be given ‘choices’ - ie. tuna or cheese sandwich but they are not ‘consenting’ to a sandwich, they are indicating a preference that has been pre-selected for them. My child may ‘consent’ to eating jelly babies all the day, but as a parent I know jelly babies are bad for him to eat - all the time- he probably will not agree, because he is… a child.
The idea that children can lead or consent is a trojan horse. Because children, evolutionarily and developmentally will defer to adults. So actually what it does it is allows a gateway for ideological or physical predators to move in.
What children do need to understand is boundaries. But boundaries are not part of sex positivism or queer theory. Nor is childhood.
Looking more critically at the Scottish RSHP curriculum there are three areas that need addressing.
CONTROVERSIAL CONTENT (including ideology)
I have touched upon some of the more ‘tricksy’ ideological frameworks that shore up the Scottish RSHP. Some of these bigger picture issues will come as no surprise to some- there has been a lot in the papers in recent years about the problems inherent in the Scottish Sex Ed curriculum. We have nursery children being asked about their gender identity, we have explicit, pornographic content, we have the very controversial sex survey and of course we have the ideological capture of the trans movement.
But even within the more mundane, anodyne content - there are problems. This project is a social engineering mandate. It encourages overshare, and it’s very approach is counter to how children learn.
Lastly (in my opinion) the quality of the materials and exercises is shite. As someone who has spent 30 years developing programs for children I find the resources utterly DULL. Part of that may be because ‘teaching relationships’ is an academic/philosophical exercise not geared to children’s development. Children learn by doing and experiencing not by ‘being told’. That said, I have not been able to find out how this one man, Colin Morrison, was given this mammoth task. Was there a tender, who were the others involved? Who assessed? How long was his original contract for and does it get reviewed every year?
And it is interesting to observe RSHP - like all the third party agencies accessing our children don’t appear to be subject to quality control and are given (unbelievably) bottomless budgets.
First things first. The intro to the RSHP document asserts ‘young person’ rights. This is one of the ideological slights of hand that has been happening across the board. We no longer refer to children, as children - but as *young people*. In my opinion this starts to obfuscate the protection needed for minors- as mentally we put them into another ‘person’ category and untether the evolutionary sensibility of the space (and boundary) between child and adult. Secondly in the second sentence ‘rights’ are mentioned. This is a document that supports and propagandises children’s sexual rights - as laid out in Colin Morrison’s PhD.
The following are some of the images that have been provided to me by parents that have been shown to their children in their classrooms. Before I ‘share’ a trigger warning. They are explicit. This is a small selection and they are by no means the only explicit images.
Scottish Government will say they have been chosen for ‘age and stage appropriateness’ but it is not clear upon what benchmark they are guiding this, as teachers no longer trained in child development nor does Colin Morrison have any medical or psychological qualification. In addition, I have seen no specific references to child development in the document itself. Without the foundation of child development it leads me to conclude that the ‘appropriate' delivery is left to the discretion of the teacher to ‘guess’ or ‘intuitively’ decide when the children in his/her class are ready for the particular materials.
Each school seems to approach it slightly differently so there is no single path, or set of resources that could be pointed to in every class. I reflect on this in so much as I am also aware that very few teachers will know the families of the kids they are teaching as a whole, as they are not involved in their day to day. Therefore their understanding of their ‘readiness’ is based on a very limited viewpoint. (This ‘luck of the pot’ is an issue in general with our Curriculum for Excellence as teachers expected to ‘learn on the job’ which means if unlucky kids will fail in literacy/maths let alone could get caught in a gender tornado with RSHP if their school leans in that direction….)
In Scotland we technically still have an opt-out of these lessons (though there are calls, as in Wales, to remove this right). Many parents do make the informed choice to remove their children from lessons preferring to educate their children at home on the subject of Sex Ed. Parents who allow their children to ‘stay in’ are often not fully informed as accessing the materials online is cumbersome and takes some academic capacity to untangle the many facets in the lesson plan.
One set of parents of a P7 child told me they spent hours combing through the materials, to ensure they knew every single aspect that was being delivered. This was also so they could be ready for any questions that might come home. This is not the same as say, maths. A child who is confused about math is not going to make ‘bad math choices’, or be exposed to ‘bad math’ and a parent will not mind their child talking to an adult ‘about math’.
Sex ed is an entirely different zone- handled badly a child ‘being confused’, ‘being exposed’, or ‘asking an adult’ could open them up to harm as we saw recently with the parent testimonies at Holyrood regarding gender activism in their children’s schools.
But it goes far beyond that. It’s that every intimate element of a child’s life is being anticipated and dictated. As one commentator stated ‘it’s getting kids ready for sex’. It encourages promiscuity. And promiscuity is the most harmful to poor kids from single parent households (I speak as a poor single Mum, I want my son to understand that stable families and loving relationships are the best long term, he sees this in real time).
But it’s not just getting them ‘ready’ for sex, it’s sex in a checklist. Sexual relationships become transactional. As one parent related ‘it’s like seeing the movie before reading the book. It takes away the ability- ultimately - to write the story on your own’. We can see in the descriptions that follow this resource for early primary. (P2-P4, 7-8 year olds).
Hopefully these ideas would not have entered into a seven year old brain yet. But here they are not just illustrated but detailed in intimate language which cannot be unseen by the child once introduced.
I have previously written about Scientology and how Scientologists do not recognise childhood, rather seeing children as adults in small bodies. One of the exercises they do is to have new members sit across from a ‘trainer’ wherein the trainer will say increasingly explicit, distressing, emotion creating things to the new member. The goal is to ensure that the new member manages to not respond in any way for three hours straight. What this does is breaks the new members instincts. Over time that person will not be able to tell what is appropriate (or safe) in a given situation. And like the Scientologists, Scottish Government RSHP, through the introduction of explicit language and materials, is not increasing safety but risk.
Dr. Jenny Cunningham, paediatrician of 30 years and Board Member of Scottish Union for education related to me that ‘in the past a child using highly sexualised language would have been a red flag for teachers and caregivers that some sort of abuse was taking place, now we are teaching all children that language’.
No where is the transgressing of boundaries more apparent then in the materials for children with additional support needs (ASN). Keeping in mind that this was Colin Morrison’s specialist subject area.
The reasoning is because ASN individuals are often non-verbal they need to be provided with visually specific images. I cannot help but see this as anything but grooming. As stated in the start of this paper, Colin Morrison does not acknowledge the vulnerabilities of children, let alone disabled children. His framing of his project is one of ‘sexual rights’ wherein everyone regardless of age, or developmental stage (which he does not acknowledge) has a ‘right’ to explore their sexuality. And it is the educators role to provide that opportunity.
RSHP does not acknowledge privacy (except in relation to keeping things from parents) or innocence.
But everyone’s hot to trot for comprehensive sex education. I mean lordy me, I have NEVER seen people SO interested in children’s lives as with this. (please if you are one of those people can you please get some local sports, youth, dance, drama, arts clubs going PLEASE).
One of the main arguments for the introduction of such materials is a concept called ‘HARM REDUCTION’.
“Harm reduction” has come up a lot in recent years in relation to the drugs crisis. the idea being addicts are going to use drugs, so we might as well provide ‘safe spaces’ to do so. (there is a lot on this that is wrong I suggest you follow AnneMarie Ward’s campaign Faces of Recovery who is doing excellent work to bring light to the politicising of this issue at the expense of actual recovery).
The same concept is being brought in to our schools in relation to RSHP. It seems kinda common sense. Yes. Children do have access to more explicit and pornographic content then ever before. Yes. This is a problem. But IS the comprehensive RSHP the answer? Does it do what it says it does?
Uh, it appears not.
But we continue on regardless. Because there is no regulatory measure to assess this program and it’s effectiveness. And no one is accountable. Ask Headteachers about the curriculum they will reply ‘Scot Gov made me do it’. Ask Scot Gov about the RSHP in schools and they will reply ‘It’s up to the Headteacher’. Back on the hamster wheel…..
Except our kids are in the middle.
And it’s not just the explicit material that’s the problem. The whole program is engineering our children’s thoughts. Take the ‘friendship unit’ in P2/3 (7/8 years). It seems quite anodyne. But one does not ‘learn’ about friendship through ‘talking’ about friendship when one is seven…or 47. Children learn how to navigate relationships through shared doing - in sport, activities, games. So what we have is a series of exercises that trains children to follow adult cues on what to say and how to say it. It also sets a precedent for them to share intimate aspects of their lives with strangers. And that makes them vulnerable as they move up in the curriculum and the content becomes more intimate.
(If you want to see where this can go, check out the latest Glasgow Greens Candidate for MSP who didn’t consider that pinning kink to the header of his twitter might not be professional or appropriate for candidates for public office)
Our children are not only fed this diet of sexuality, sexualised material or overshare through RSHP only however. This activism is being embedded into the curriculum through third party agencies. The most notorious of these is LGBT Youth Scotland and Time For Inclusive Education.
David Scott has just done a fantastic overview on “The Queer Industrial Complex” in Scotland. In it he outlines in forensic detail how LGBT Youth Scotland- despite having a history of the worst child abuse in Scotland’s history- continues to march through schools into our children’s lives with no accountability. Like RSHP there is no regulatory framework, no quality control, no oversight, unrestricted access to our children and lots of tax monies paying for it. Through much hard work of individuals like Sam Cowie, Parent Watch Glasgow, Scottish Union for Education, For Women Scotland, journalists such as Marion Scott and Dan Sanderson and many others the harms are coming to light. I previously wrote why I declined participating in a local P4 Pride Disco.
What these organisations do quite successfully is play into our best nature as humans. They use rascal words like ‘equality’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom to be who you are’ and ‘inclusive’ - which are all good words. Because it goes against our nature to do the opposite (which is how it’s framed). And this is a master move of obfuscation as it distracts well meaning people from seeing the harms they create.
No where is this more evident then in the fully funded Time For Inclusive Education. In 2022 Scottish Government voted that every school in Scotland would be ‘fully LGBT+ inclusive’. Meaning every lesson plan, every school policy would *include* LGBT+ people. Stepping aside for a moment that the logistics of that are bonkers and that in order to do that (and what we see) if the prioritising of LGBT+ activism over actual education (well hello falling Scottish literacy rates…) it seems ‘nice’.
In fact when TIE offered their own survey to Scottish parents - parents (because by and large we are not JERKS) said of course we want our schools to be inclusive. TIE took that as a green light that their own program was fully backed by parents. But that’s not what they asked. They didn’t provide their *actual* resources for parents to view, they asked if they thought children should be taught to respect people with different sexual orientations. And it’s not clear how they gathered the data. So hardly research worthy.
Someone said to me once, the goal of these organisations should be to not exist. Identify a problem, set a goal, solve it, disband. Doesn’t seem to go that way with this lot. Funny that since both LGBTYS and TIE have been in post things have gotten worse for LGBT people according to their own metric! Curious that. Perhaps they need to up their ‘inclusion’ game.
Last year they started the ball rolling by making Castleton Primary in Glasgow the first Primary school in Scotland to embed LGBT+ learning into the curriculum.
A little backstory on Castleton Primary and Castlemilk the area the schools sits in. Castlemilk is an area on the outskirts of Glasgow. It was ‘created’ in the 1950s as a housing scheme, relocating many families out of crowded slum spaces in central Glasgow such as the Gorbals. The area has high unemployment, a lower life expectancy and there is a high level of alcohol and drug related admissions in comparison to the rest of Glasgow. There is little in the area except for (mostly housing association) houses and flats. And there is no grocery store or shop. Five years ago locals campaigned to have a grocery store local so they could feed their families economically and not have to get on an (expensive) bus out of the area for food.
But it was not to happen. So children are taught on the one hand the importance of inclusion but on the other hand denied basic amenities by the self same government.
What f***ed priorities. Pardon my profanity, but this deserves it and it shows up EVERYTHING that is wrong with this WHOLE program. If Scottish Government (and the school) saw it MORE appropriate to put LGBT+ propaganda which is degrading their education (the very thing that will get them out of poverty) at same time denying them FOOD - we have a problem.
We must bring our schools and communities back to the physical experience of teaching actual subjects, we need to get the activist education out, we need to invest in the things that children enjoy and need AS CHILDREN. There is so much their lives could enriched with. Instead we - societally - fail in our duty as adults to provide for them. It is time to acknowledge, celebrate and preserve childhood- it will not come again.
Special thanks to my current subscribers, if you are a free subscriber maybe you could consider becoming a paid subscriber? A yearly subscription is just £30 per year, £4.00 per month or founding membership £250. Every penny makes a difference & allows me to continue advocating for children & childhood. Or buy me a coffee? Thank you!!!!!!