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The Media Panic About Sex Education Changes

Sex Education, Sex Ed, Blackboard

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bobmccoskrie.com


One of the superb parts of the coalition agreement between National and NZ First was the plan to scrap the controversial and radical RSE curriculum being indoctrinated in schools by harmful groups such as InsideOut (RainbowYouth) and Family Planning Association. But the media and the teacher unions are mad! And they’ve already started campaigning against any changes to their agenda.


TRANSCRIPT:

One of the superb parts of the coalition agreement between National and NZ First was the plans to scrap the controversial and radical RSE curriculum being indoctrinated in schools by harmful groups such as InsideOut (RainbowYouth) and Family Planning Association. Lots of McBlog episodes on that and we’ve been researching and raising the red flag about this curriculum since 2018, and last year I was travelling around the country informing parents about the radical curriculum, listening to the concerns (and anger) of parent groups, and empowering parents to push back. It’s paid off.

But the media are mad!!! And they’ve already started campaigning against it.


So you’ll remember that in the coalition agreement between National and NZ First it said Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines.

And it also said

Enforce compulsory education and address truancy.

Focus on doing the basics better through emphasising reading, writing, and math.

How unique. But that all has the media, academics and the teacher unions in a panic. Fancy expecting schools to focus on “reading riting and rithmetic”, and not be allowed to indoctrinate our kids with the ideology that they have 112 genders to choose from and 200+ sexualities.

Let’s have a look at the articles

28 November – Axing sexuality, relationship education guidelines would be ‘huge mistake’ warns co-writer on taxpayer funded Radio NZ.

The lead writer of the sexuality and relationship education guidelines is alarmed the new government has agreed to remove them. [Auckland University] Education professor Katie Fitzpatrick said removing the sexuality and relationship guidelines for schools was a backwards step… [She said the guidelines] reflected huge progress in education around consent, inclusion and shifting societal norms.

Oh yes – teaching children they can choose their gender, adopt preferred pronouns, understand the role of hormone blockers, learn that there are 112 genders and more than 200 sexualities to choose from, normalise transgender identities in primary schools and help 11-12-year-olds know that they can get confidential advice on contraceptives without parents knowing, and learning about the types of sex including anal and object sex – that’s certainly shifting societal norms.

Radio NZ then quoted Post Primary Teachers’ Association acting president Chris Abercrombie who said schools needed more information from the new government. And to be fair to Radio NZ, they did quote Emeritus Professor Sue Middleton who wants the guidelines replaced because she disagrees with how gender is defined under them, and says that gender is not a matter of identity but is rather a matter of biological sex. Correct.

But then the reporter rushes back to the Auckland University author who says “there was fear around gender that she thought came from a lack of knowledge.” Ah yes – so Emeritus Professor Sue Middleton’s problem and anyone who disagrees with gender theory is “a lack of knowledge.”

Now on the same day as the state radio article by Radio NZ, the state broadcaster TV1 Breakfast decided to also do coverage of this – with the author also.

Govt’s plan to axe sex, gender guidelines in schools ‘concerning’.

Speaking to Breakfast, Education Professor at University of Auckland Katie Fitzpatrick said the removal would be an “attack on young people”. “Because it’s young people that have been asking for meaningful consent, sexuality and relationship education in successive petitions to our Parliament since 2017,” she said.

Now that comment about petitions is real interesting – and I’ll come back to it shortly. The news report also says

In a statement to 1News, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said it’s a parents right to know what their child is being taught before, not after, the event and the replacement of current guidelines is about transparency.

But there’s two quick clips I want to show you. Firstly have a listen to this question

Now I’m pretty sure that the interviewer wants the answer to be “no – it’s all based on biology and research and facts – which all parents will agree with.

Here’s the answer though

Well it depends on what the knowledge is, whether it’s based on facts, whether it’s age-appropriate, whether it harms children

And then a request for examples. Apparently, it’s a discourse of fear!

We should open it up for discussion rather than shut it down. You mean like Posie Parker?

Three days later, Stuff decided to have a shot.

1st December – Scrapping sexuality education ‘repressive’, says guidelines author

“Repressive” and “backwards”, that’s the reaction of Professor Katie Fitzpatrick to news the government plans to axe the sexuality and consent guidelines she helped to write… “We’re not in the 1950s anymore…Families come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, with different gender and sexuality identities.” Fitzpatrick said international research suggested that relationship and sexuality education was in fact “really protective” and tended to delay when young people engaged in sexual intercourse.

Uh nope. Not true.

So Christmas and New Year came and went, and while everyone was at the beach and not thinking about their gender and preferred pronouns, Radio NZ thought they’d have another crack. January 10 – Government accused of ‘conspiracy’ thinking in changes to sex ed

The union representing primary school teachers says there still has not been any consultation or guidance from the government over planned changes to the sex education curriculum, a few weeks out from the school year starting.

Ah yes, that’s all your children’s teachers are concerned about – apparently – according to their union. How are they gonna be able to indoctrinate your children with radical sexuality and gender ideology? Actually, most teachers are thinking about way more important things – but

[NZEI president Mark Potter] believed the change was coming from some areas of the community who were putting pressure on schools and the ministry. “A lot of it is very conspiracy-based thinking, and lots of claims about what schools are supposed to be doing that they just aren’t. Some very untrue statements being made about what children being taught. So we are wondering, who are they pandering to with this kind of move?”

I would challenge Mr Potter to look at all the info we’ve put out on this subject and tell us if there are any untrue statements. I don’t expect to hear from him – because there aren’t any. We have been very careful to base our concerns around actual and verifiable incidents and written curriculum.

Now just a reminder this is what Christopher Luxon said in the election campaign

In this Radio NZ article, Labour’s education spokesperson Jan Tinettu (who by the way was the Minister at the time who drove through the birth certificates bill which now says you can determine the sex on your birth certificate regardless of your biological sex) is quoted as saying that the government’s reasoning was “dangerously close” to culture war rhetoric.

“I was really concerned during the election campaign, that I was told by a candidate that we’re just trying to ‘trans-ify’ kids. What on earth does that even mean? I hadn’t even heard of the ‘woke gender curriculum’, I had to look it up, and saw that it was something that was an imported culture war. That really concerns me. Our kids are beyond that.”

Um no Jan – parents are beyond you and Labour and the Greens trying to confuse and indoctrinate children with radical sexuality and gender material. To say that you don’t know about concerns around telling children they can be transgender suggests a completely out-of-touch politician, doesn’t it?

But here’s the interesting bit. Radio NZ went back to the union president who said this

“We will be expecting a grown up conversation around what is needed. We want to make sure that politicians don’t interfere with the curriculum where they don’t belong. And what we’ll be looking to see is that there’ll be supporting professionals and developing an inclusive education system for all children,” Potter said.

Grown up conversation

Politicians should butt out – they were fine with politicians when they were introducing this radical syllabus but now that the politicians want to fix it and the union doesn’t agree, politicians should butt out where they don’t belong. OK – got that – interesting.

It should be left up to “professionals”.

Note who’s missing in all of that? You – parents. Move over parents. Professionals know way more than you – apparently – except they don’t. Your children are not their children. Remind them of that.

And finally, just two weeks ago, the media must have thought – nobody’s listening to us!

So another article – another shot – from Stuff

January 26 – Sex education changes ‘scary,’ ‘frightening’ and ‘dangerous’, union leader says

An education union leader has described the new Government’s plans to remove gender ideology from the sex education curriculum as “scary,” “frightening,“ and ”dangerous.“

It’s Mark Potter, the president of the NZEI again.

We’ve actually got some great words going here, haven’t we. ‘Huge mistake’. ‘Concerning’. ‘Repressive’. ‘Conspiracy’. And now ‘scary’, ‘frightening’ & ‘dangerous’.

But the union head for primary schools says this

He said there was concern a small number of “ultra-conservative” people believed pupils were being taught things that were not age-appropriate, but this was not the case. In some cases, teachers had unfairly received criticism from parents who had false ideas about what was being taught. “They’ve [teachers have] got people coming in, often being very confrontational and demanding schools stop doing things that the schools [are] not doing. “There have been claims that 5 or 6-year-olds are being taught sexual knowledge things around active sex. Now, that’s just not happening at all. Schools do not do that,” said Potter.

Nope we’ve never claimed that either. Around nine years old it may start – but we do know that the Ministry of Education has recommended that primary schools “normalise transgender identities”, gender ideology is introduced as early as age seven, teachers are encouraged by the Ministry of Education to keep a child’s gender identity issues secret from his or her parents by allowing the child to adopt a new persona whilst at school – including the use of preferred “pronouns”, and these are some of the words in the Glossary of Terms that are expected to be used in primary schools.

Dear Mr Potter. It’s everyday mums and dads who are concerned about this stuff. And you should be listening to their concerns.

Now, just one last thing. Remember in the TVNZ Breakfast clip that the academic said “it’s young people that have been asking for meaningful consent, sexuality and relationship education in successive petitions to our Parliament since 2017”

I decided to do a fact check on that statement – and what I found out will amuse you – and confirm how the media are pushing a one-sided narrative.

Here are the petitions I found since 2017 on this issue.

A petition calling for “better, more consistent” sex education in secondary schools was handed to Parliament in 2017, More than 5000 people have signed a petition started by 17-year-old high school students. Now it wanted Mates and Dates to be introduced into all high schools. Yeah – Mates and Dates – the programme we exposed, and which was recently dropped because it was extreme and age-inappropriate and pushed gender theory. So it was started by a 17-year-old, but it was signed by people of all ages. It wasn’t a school based petition.

Then there was this one in 2019 – signed by 8,675 – but this lumped together sexual violence support services – which most people support – with gender indoctrination not just in schools but also early child education – yep 2-4-year-olds. Not created by students but by left-wing site ActionStation.

There was also this more recent one which has just 4,000 signatures and although it talks about “compulsory consent education”, it is basically about wanting the radical RSE curriculum and you’ll notice it says to start at year 1. Yep – 5 year olds. Started by a 24 year old Auckland woman.

And this one from the year before with 2,400 signatures – started by a girl in year 13.

There’s also this recent one

Stop New Zealand Government from Removing Gender and Sexuality Education which has a stunning 286 signatures on it

And this one from late last year

that the national curriculum includes equitable and inclusive teaching of sex education in Aotearoa New Zealand, including the experiences of the queer, disabled, tangata whenua, and refugee communities.

with an earth-shattering 222 signatories. How can a government ignore that?!


Oh and here’s a real big one – Stop the removal of gender, sexuality and relationship based education in Aotearoa with … um…. 428 signatures.

So, at the very best, you could say – yes there have been some petitions wanting sex education – and a couple of them were started by students – but that doesn’t mean that all the signatories are students. In fact, you won’t even be able to argue that all the signatories even live in New Zealand. And many people will have signed all the petitions. In fact, that’s very likely given that many of the petitions were hosted on the left-wing activist ActionStation website which are harvesting emails for pushing left-wing viewpoints. Keep that in mind when you get sent a petition hosted on ActionStation.

This is a letter they sent to all the signatories of all their petitions before the election encouraging people to effectively vote against right-wing parties and vote for left-wing parties – especially the Green party.

But let’s be generous and say – ok up to 8,500 people agree with the academic about retaining RSE as it stands and in fact beefing it up. But that 8,500 is not purely students’ signatures. Nobody can honestly say that.

Have there been any other petitions?

Let me think. Oh wait, there was this one

30,000 sign petition to stop NZ schools teaching gender diversity

Why didn’t our academic mention this one?

You’ll also note that Newshub accompanied the story with a puff piece for LGBTQIABC++#

In fact, the petition was eventually submitted to Parliament with 40,668 signatures. That’s more signatures than all the other ones I mentioned – combined!

But the media never mentions this one. Classic eh.

Here’s another question for you. What does the general public think about all of this? There have been surveys that the media will never tell you. They simply push one message. Affirm affirm affirm. Gender ideology cannot be questioned.

We recently did some polling through a reputable market research company to find out what Kiwis actually think.

In the poll of 1,000 New Zealanders commissioned by Family First but surveyed by Curia Market Research – so we paid for it but we didn’t do the actual surveying in order to maintain the independence and accuracy, respondents were asked a number of questions around gender ideology and the Relationship and Sexuality curriculum being taught in primary, intermediate and secondary schools which we’ve been warning everyone about.

Here are the results. Now we sent this data to all media outlets in NZ.

Only 1 in 10 (10%) think primary-age children should be taught they can choose their gender and that it can be changed through hormone treatment and surgery if they want it to be, while three out of four (76%) say they shouldn’t. 14% are unsure or refused to respond.

Yep – Only 1 in 10 support the radical aspects of the RSE curriculum

And lastly, remember the case of the high school math teacher who had his teaching registration cancelled after he refused to use the preferred pronouns and name for a 14-year-old student who was in the process of ‘transitioning’ from a biological girl to a boy.

We asked, “Should a teacher lose their teaching licence for misgendering a trans student (refusing to use their preferred pronoun or recognise their gender identity)?”

Only 16% of respondents said yes. Two in three Kiwis (65%) said the teacher shouldn’t lose their licence, and a further 19% were unsure.

It appears that the Teaching Council failed to ‘read the room’. But the deregistration of the teacher effectively told Kiwi teachers that if they aren’t willing to fully endorse gender ideology and tell a biological lie by pretending that a boy is a girl and a girl is a boy, then they’re not fit to be a teacher. Imagine if you’re a biology teacher. Your whole degree is a lie.

This polling – which the major media in NZ seem to have no intention of telling you about because it doesn’t fit their narrative – confirms that the majority of New Zealanders are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the gender ideology curriculum and agenda being rammed down in some schools.

This is what New Zealanders really think. This is what NZ First wants to get rid of – and which the media is campaigning to keep indoctrinating your children with.

In other words, we’re calling for a return to common sense.

We know it’s common because the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders agree.

It’s only the media, the radical activists and academics, and many politicians that seem to be the oddity.

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