The Kids Are Alright
It’s the grown ups we need to worry about
In the build up to the upcoming local and European Parliamentary elections, I see that UKIP – fishing desperately for vote winning policies that aren’t immigration related – are keen to protect our precious primary school children from ‘ideas about adult sexuality’.
Well. That might be a complicated one to put into practice.
I mean, if one of the teachers becomes pregnant, must they leave before anyone notices? What about if someone mentions going to a wedding? What if someone is from a family that has parents who are adults, and the children come into contact with them? What then? Will no one think of the children!
Oh. Did they just mean the gays?
Well, they have kids at school too. At pretty much every single school, if you look at the odds and percentages. There are gay and lesbian and bi (and even some trans people) in every playground, every staffroom, every high street and community. They’re on cinema screens, and on tv and even in cartoons.
The kids already know about the gays, honey.
They go over for tea at their houses. They go to birthday parties there. They wave at them in the playground. They get taught by them – and they have been for years, without ever ending up catching homosexuality. They get lunch served by them. They get the bus home driven by them. They walk down the street past them and they live next door to them. And they have done for years, for generations.
We really have always been here, you see.
Having relationship lessons in primary school – which is where children learn about different families and how all families are not the same – is not going to teach children about LGBTQ people existing. It’s going to reassure them that so long as your family loves you, it doesn’t matter what shape or size it is. Families can have two mummies or two daddies, or just one dad or mum. Or just a grandma, or a foster mum and dad, or a step mum and dad, or a mother and father, and a bio mum and dad too.
It will teach them that it is ok to be different, and it will teach them about acceptance and tolerance. Things that will let them grow up with better mental health, and in an atmosphere that will have less bullying and more peer support.
And once they get to secondary school, and continue learning about sexuality when it is age appropriate, then I don’t believe that their parents should be able to choose to withdraw them from those classes, or RE classes, either, whatever their personal beliefs.
I used to think that this was an option to offer, to give parents that choice, if they wished. But if you are going to send your child to a mainstream school to be educated under the National Curriculum, why should you then pick and choose which bits your child gets to hear? We are talking about scientific facts, and letting kids know about what other people believe. And to withdraw your child from those lessons doesn’t protect your child from that knowledge. You make it into something exciting and forbidden that they will then find out about from their friends instead, because of course they will hear playground gossip even if they don’t ask about it. And the other children will be intrigued about why your child wasn’t there, of course. And don’t imagine for one moment that this won’t be taken advantage of in the worst imaginable way, and you will end up paying for years of counselling to undo the trauma of whatever stories they get told about human reproduction. I mean, the truth is pretty bizarre…
By the time they are at secondary school, a lot of kids may well know who they are when it comes to their own sexualities or gender identity. But because they’ve had lessons in acceptance and tolerance and equality in primary school, and because LGBTQ families are part of the curriculum right from the start of their school journey, hopefully they won’t face the confusion, bullying, and fear that so many teens have gone though previously.
These are policies that are making real, positive change for the future, and we can’t stand by and let parties like UKIP undo them with policies that spread misinformation and bigotry.
No one is proposing teaching little kids that gay people exist. It’s far, far too late for that, sweetie…
