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Education Should Be about the Basics

four children standing on dirt during daytime
Photo by Ben Wicks. The BFD

Helen Houghton

New Conservative Co-Leader

nc.org.nz

Chronic truancy is not because parents don’t wake up in time to get their children to school as the National leader Christopher Luxon thinks and neither is it the fault of the majority of teachers or school leaders. As the PM and National leader blame each other and educators, the rest of us call for a serious investigation into what is occurring in our schools.

This issue of truancy is not surprising after witnessing minority groups being given access to education policy, resulting in many families now opting out of mainstream education. A culture of mistrust is causing a widening gap between parents and schools with the use of an ideology-driven curriculum rather than balanced and basic education. Truancy can be attributed to politicizing the curriculum.

Climate catastrophizing – expecting children to come up with solutions to fix worldwide issues, as well as educating around racial blame for colonization – the sins of the fathers put onto the children. Add to this the worldwide caution over the past year due to the alarming numbers of confused children and adolescents who are being led down a path of lifelong medical intervention and invasive surgery. This fad was fed in schools as well as online.

There are harmful and unscientific theories in NZ schools and what I call the ‘mutilation generation’. The largest gender services centre Tavistock, in the UK, was closed for business due to concerns about the rush to diagnose children without looking at underlying causes. Schools have been quick to remove gender ideology education and have ceased forms of affirming children who say they feel they are a different sex.  What about New Zealand?

Instead of questioning the cause of this discomfort children say they feel and then guiding children towards the care they deserve, the NZ Ministry of Education and other government bodies jump head first into embracing a fad where adolescents can choose to be on a spectrum that is fluid and often as a consequence of viewing hours of social media brainwashing by a variety of activists and influencers. This trend is then confirmed by the Ministry of Education in affirmative action.

Affirming a child’s confusion is nothing less than child abuse.

I first raised this concern in 2019, when I brought to Parliament my scrutiny of the sexuality resources that had been embedded into lesson content. I spoke to ten MPs on a select committee and labour MP Keiran McAnulty said he wasn’t convinced that NZ has a problem.

Students as well as parents continue to contact me with the growing mental health issues in our youth –  I think NZ has a problem. Since my petition gained over 40 000 signatures to remove gender ideology from schools, the M.O.E have tried to force schools to create everything gender-neutral such as toilets and school uniforms as well as learning objectives where students are expected to affirm an unscientific gender theory.

The ministry is culpable in feeding the craze that leads children to question their biology. Children are truant because our education system is indoctrinating them and they have had enough.  Children often understand when they are being taught nonsense.

Two solutions to the truancy rates are to stop talking nonsense about inclusion (as if for decades the teaching staff have not been inclusive). The PM and other parties think that is what will fix the problem, having yet more inclusion. The second solution is that government take their hands off the curriculum and leave educators and school leaders to do what they know is best for children.

We must bring education back to basics, not use children as experiments.


We are launching our first digital campaign for 2023 with a petition.

(1) Teaching that people can be born in the wrong body and change sex should be banned from NZ schools; and

(2) Puberty blockers (chemical castration of children) should be banned.

These policies will be part of our campaign next year. We are the party that will speak up for the rights of children to be free from puberty blockers that cause permanent damage and from the ideology that seeks to sexualise and exploit them.

These promises are a core part of the education and health reforms that will make up our platform for 2023.

Please sign and share this petition far and wide.

I am also working to initiate a referendum on this subject, get in touch with me if you are able to help out further.

Protecting our children while they develop through each stage of childhood and learn at schools is such an important issue, and certainly one of the most important issues of our time.

Helen Houghton
New Conservative co-leader
Sign the petition: www.nc.org.nz/gender

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