World News

The more you look into what's being planned here, the worse it gets

Are we reading the same things? Here are some quotes from the article that I found problematic:

Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships

They're trying to pin porn as the cause of misogyny and that's really stupid for a variety of reasons.

As part of the government’s flagship strategy, which was initially expected in the spring, teachers will be able to send young people at risk of causing harm on behavioural courses, and will be trained to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.

See, these classes are not meant to be a part of the normal sex ed curriculum where they're taught to everybody because the information is valuable. They're specifically meant to be punitive. The idea is to signal out kids and force them to take these classes as a consequence.

To out of touch activists, this sounds good, but in reality the kids who are being sent there are going to feel humiliated in front of their peers, and they're going to resent both the material being taught and the system that put them through it.

Keir Starmer, announcing the strategy, said: “Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships. But too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged.”

This is a theme that's echoed in the entire article, and it is also reflected in the actual strategy. I could've quoted a bunch of different statements, but I specifically chose this one because it's coming from the top. You have the PM here pushing the false idea that only girls can be victims and that boys are the problem.

The much-trailed strategy is expected to focus on three pillars:

• Preventing young men being harmed by “manosphere” influencers such as Andrew Tate.

Are you kidding me? The "manosphere" is an online slang term, Andrew Tate is a meme. How can you possibly draft policies in general, let alone ones about education, on something so vague, unsubstantiated, and unacademic?

The point is that if the entire curriculum was taught like normal sex ed where it's apolitical, fact based, and required to be taken by all students because it contains useful information that they need to know then there wouldn't be an issue. However, that's not the case. It is narrative driven, it is not entirely fact based, and it's not applied to all students across the board. The whole thing just seems unprincipled and poorly thought out. This strategy looks like something planned by radfem weirdos on Reddit, not by people who are in charge of the education system of an entire country.

Schools should focus on facts. Not political narratives about the evils of pornography necessarily leading to misogyny and sexual assault or that they are all 'manosphere influenced' until prove otherwise. that kind of mentality is some witch-hunt bullshit.

Porn is also incredibly diverse its content. Like video games, or comics, it's treated as if it was this singular mass of crassness and crudeness and could never have any redemptive value. There is a vast difference between sexual assault fetish commercially produced porn and a loving couple who just wants to share tehir passion for sexual pleasure with each other with the world and make a few bucks on onlyfans. And the former is a dying breed.

Yeah, for those of us whose school-provided sex education was actually informative, including puberty and sexual health units in mandatory health class in multiple different grades, I don't see why this would have to be inherently badly taught.

It's a weird "oh it's impossible to teach anything properly so let's not try" attitude that applies to a lot of discussions about education, even core academic subjects like math and science and history.

I recommend you read the article, it's a pretty quick read. The way that this is planned sets it up for failure. This sounds more like something some politicians came up with to appease the activists in their base than something made by actual experts in the field who have the kids' best interests in mind.

I think I saw that one.