Worries mount over political correctness going too far

CIS's questionable handling of a gender-confused student is the tip of the iceberg of schools going too far trying to be politically correct.

Parents in the United Kingdom and the United States have voiced concerns about gender and race issues creeping into children's education.

It was in 2020 that the UK education ministry made relationship and sex education compulsory in all schools.

British mother Clare talked of shocking discoveries in materials provided to her two daughters by the School for Sexuality Education, an external organization with links to a commercial website that promotes pornography and sex toys, according to the Daily Mail.

At a school workshop students were told they lived in a "heteronormative" [straight] world and they should be "sex positive."

But Clare failed to learn more despite requests to the primary school that both her daughters attended in South London.

In 2018, Natasha, then nine, told her mother she had been told to refer to historical figures as "they" rather than he or she as people in the past were unable to choose their preferred pronouns and there were "many more" than two genders.

"That was when the warning bell rang," Clare said. "I complained to the school and was staggered by the pushback from the governors and the head teacher."

She said she had been happy for her daughters Isla and Natasha to be schooled in the state system.

But then she learned that "Pop 'n' Olly" - a group claiming to be an "LGBTQ+ equality educational resource" and created by author and illustrator Olly Pike - had visited for the school's anti-bullying week.

"The first thing I knew about it was when I arrived home to find my daughter watching an Olly Pike cartoon about a girl who has an overnight sex change that solves her bullying problem," said Clare.

"Even if you take away the issue of whether you should be discussing trans-sexualism to children in primary school this is highly misleading."

But when Clare complained she was told Pike was recommended by the LGBTQ+ lobby group Stonewall, backed by the UK's Department for Education.

A Hong Kong mother who frequently comes across such news online said a problem today is parents having no idea what is in education. "It's politics and business interests when schools open the gate for activists to run the curriculum," she said.

She feels the Western world is "on the path to insanity" in promoting sexual neutrality in schools.

Fighting back, the US state of Florida last year passed a parenting rights in education law.

The law, often called the "Don't Say Gay" bill, censors instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Former Florida lawmaker Joe Harding, who introduced the bill, told The Epoch Times he had heard of cases when parents were barred from school meetings on children's gender identity.

One case involved a 12-year-old girl having multiple meetings behind closed doors with people from the school helping her to change her identity.

Such situations have caused much controversy in the United States, including Disney employees launching a protest and urging the company to fight against limiting parental rights in education.

eunice.lam@singtaonewscorp.com