Birds and Bees Grounded
NZ First cancels "woke" guidelines for teaching about sexuality.
Sexuality - Strong and warm and wild and free
Sexuality - Your laws do not apply to me
Sexuality - Don't threaten me with misery
Sexuality - I demand equality
Song: Billy Bragg.
First, thank you to everyone who took part in yesterday’s survey. Some questions worked better than others, but I found them interesting, and we may drill down a bit in the future.
Watching your answers come in, I skimmed Twitter for a topic. Winston Peters’ social media has been a rich source lately; I’m not sure if they hired someone new or if they let the old fox run wild, but what was once a rather dismal set of reckonings has now reached new lows.
Each day, he picks a fight with someone or goes on a bizarre Trumpian rant, looking increasingly out of touch with modern society—if you’re being kind—or reality, if you’re being less so.
Maybe some of you think that’s a bit unfair, remembering the old Winston of salt-of-the-earth Kiwi battlers rather than the one who champions folks with fairly fringe views on science. But do you really think this is the guy to decide what our children learn about sex and relationships?
What’s the goal here? More teenage pregnancies or STIs? It's pretty weird.
I could understand it if it came from social conservatives like National’s Simeon Brown, who have previously sought to restrict the rights of others in line with their personal beliefs, but I never thought of NZ First as being particularly interested in sex. Normally, they focus on the important stuff - like which bathroom people use.
To be clear, this is all about Winston First and foremost. National could care less; they're happy if the kids learn the three R’s and don’t use their phones.
ACT's interest in children involves eliminating standards to allow private individuals to profit from charter schools while engaging in a bizarre game of chicken to see if Christopher Luxon will flinch when supporting school lunches being flown in from Australia instead of having a local business prepare them.
We’re allowing the guy who shows daily that he’s not the man he once was and increasingly looks elsewhere to set the guidelines. Let’s take a look and see what he’s celebrating.
The Changes - What and Why?
As Peters tweeted, the Ministry of Education has removed guidelines on teaching students about relationships and sexuality from its website.
These had been released in 2020 following an Education Review Office (ERO) report in 2018 that found “schools had gaps in sexuality education, particularly around consent, digital technologies and relationships.”
I can well imagine that these need to be updated. Obviously, sex and, in fact, sexuality remain as they always have been - talked about or otherwise, but digital technologies must be a minefield for educators. These guidelines covered matters that previous generations never had to deal with, such as readily available hardcore pornography, cyberbullying, and social media.
C’mon Winston. It’s not like in your day when you might find an old Playboy magazine in the garage—there are acres of information out there that young people can access.
You’re not stopping them from getting information - you’re just stopping them from receiving accurate information from a position of wanting to teach young people healthy views on sex and sexuality; there is plenty out there that is much, much worse and will still be seen.
Content that doesn’t show respect, safe practices, or loving relationships but teaches young people to hate their bodies and to see sex in the way of angry young men with twisted views about abusing and degrading women.
Winston would have our young people learn about intimacy and loving relationships from the Andrew Tates of this world because those people will still be there talking to them when the teachers who provide balance are not.
Regardless of Winston's efforts to remove the guidelines, they were always optional, and there was a provision for parents or caregivers to opt out.
So why has Peters gone to such an effort? Is it just a gimmick to rile up dull-witted, small-minded people with prejudices?
Yeah, actually, that’s about the size of it.
Peters called the guidelines “woke” and “out-of-touch”, and his party’s coalition agreement with National states that they will - “Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines.”
Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa director Fiona McNamara said, “A lot of schools are just deciding to put a hold on teaching relationships and sexuality education at the moment because they just don't know what's going on, and they don't want to get it wrong. It’s a huge issue. It just means that there are young people who are going to miss out on this education.”
Labour’s Chris Hipkins said, “We’ve got to be realistic here. Our kids need good, robust, impartial information to keep themselves safe. The guidelines that they removed aren’t just about sex … It’s a step back - 20 years, more than 20 years. I don’t think this is good enough for our kids.”
The ERO summarised the guidelines as “consensual, healthy, and respectful relationships being essential to student well-being.” Which raises the question:
We all know the answer to that, don’t we? Those who wish to prey on and exploit young people. People like former ACT Party President Tim Jago. Not someone with the best interests of students at heart.
Here are some of the comments folks made on my page:
Karen: “And tomorrow we’ll be screening The Handmaid’s Tale!”
Glenda: “Why is this senile idiot allowed to make decisions like this? He is past his use-by date and out of his territory.”
Karin: “When I was a teenager, I had a slightly older friend whose dad bought her up after her mother's death. She thought she was dying when she got her first period. She was also raped. This was 50 years ago. We are going backwards.”
When the government said it wanted things “Back on Track,” did anyone realise it meant a return to the 1950s?
Hayly: “They will say that education can be provided at home, but so many kids don't have safe homes or families that can deliver that message for whatever reason.”
This should not be a partisan subject kicked around for political point scoring, which raises another question:
Where are the Liberal Nats?
If it’s not Winston’s anti-woke crusade to take us back to the prevailing views of his youth or Brian Tamaki’s mob of hateful thugs frothing at the mouth over storybooks being read to children, it’s Christopher Luxon - sitting there doing nothing, happy that his conservative views, which he assured us before being elected wouldn’t be a problem, are implemented in the name of others.
It makes me think: where the heck are the liberals in the National Party? That party had a tradition of people with fairly bleak views in other areas who nevertheless held decent dissenting voices on social issues in the past - well, where are they now?
Chris Bishop, Nicola Willis, it’s mighty quiet. I don’t want to sound like I’m parodying NZ First’s approach to teaching kids when I say that silence means consent, but if you don’t start speaking up, it does suggest you support this.
I’m looking at you, Erica Stanford.
You like to project this image of being a bit like Jacinda, albeit with less kindness and more tough love, but a decent person if a bit underwhelming in your role.
How does that image sit with the fact that you’re the Education Minister overseeing these changes in our schools?
Is that what you imagined when you were sitting around the quad at Uni? Did you laugh - one day I’m going to be the Minister of Education, and I’m going to get rid of all this consent bullshit for you blokes as the males present charged their drinking horns and cheered?
I’m guessing not.
This action is sad and nasty, and it will hurt some people—some may even die. I’m not kidding, but it won’t change anything. You might as well try to hold the tide back as try and control young people by denying them information - you’ll only make it more likely that they make decisions which hurt themselves or others.
Have a great day, all of you lovely people. I took a punt on this one, anticipating that it might reach 100 likes, and decided to make it open to all.
I looked at a few songs today, and although I’m pretty sure I’ve played this one before, Billy Bragg’s Sexuality summed up the feeling today for me.
Gimmicks, pandering, positioning himself for the next election. Peters is well past his use by date, and Aotearoa's vaunted foreign policy is mostly pussy footing. So much damage being done in the the name of what? No plan, no vision, just piecemeal destruction.
You are so right Nick. Many of my high school students thought that the porn they watched was normal sex. They need teaching about relationships and sex when they are vulnerable teens.