I feel bad for you guys, I feel the Muslim minorities up here are more integrated than the ones in England (that there are less of us in Scotland helps of course) but yeah I feel there may be a bit of unfortunate mistrust in many communities down south on both sides that causes issues like this to be improperly handled.
It also means regressive attitudes may continue to fester in minority communities as they close themselves off.
It’s a tough answer to these issues, I really felt we were going somewhere before the recession under labour but maybe that was me being young and naive. I deffo feel inter-community relations have widened, especially recently.
Tl:Dr Onto the school thing, of course kids should be taught about gay people, those parents are wilding. I dunno about the ages they learn them at, but around 12 should be a good age.
Even if the parents are against homosexuality, they have to recognise the reality that gay people exist in the UK and are everywhere, from the top of society as CEOs etc to the bottom, and they are screwing their child’s future by keeping them ignorant of them. (Of course this isnt the only reason to teach kids about LGBT+ but one of many.)
Normalising Gays and Lesbians can only be a good thing for children, so toxic homophobic attitudes don’t foster. In a more ignorant time, I used to be homophobic which I regret immensely and it was due to a lack of knowledge, and I wish I had been taught about them sooner.
If what you’re teaching is basically, “some people don’t identify with the gender assigned at birth, this can have some very serious implications in terms of mental health, we should support people in how they identify” then I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that being part of these specific lessons.
Which is why I hve a problem with the people who are like “dont promote this stuff to kids!!!1”, because it isn’t about promotion, but merely education and acceptance.
For the youngest kids this stuff is along the lines of “lots of us have a mum and dad, but some of us have two dads/mums/whatever and there’s nothing weird about that”, there’s nothing inherently sexual about it, it isn’t about who does what with their genitals.
“some people are attracted to the opposite sex, some people are attracted to the same sex, and some are attracted to both sexes and we call that bisexual”
Something like that, but more artfully done. It’s not hard. And nobody is having those conversations with four year olds
Correct it isn’t about promoting, but it doesn’t have to be.
Teaching about homosexuality and bisexuality is totally fine, because it’s just a sexual preference, and if a kid makes a mistake in their preference it doesn’t matter, you would have just explored something. Transgenderism however firstly posits a false science, and next it can create a zeitgeist which has real connotations. I have a family member whose a 14 year old girl, she’s flying to America for hormone treatment which may shorten her lifespan and is not reversible. She may chose to chop off her breasts. What if she has made an error. She’s 14. Easy to convince a kid whose depressed, lonely, paranoid or simply just naïve or rebellious to make a catastrophic life choice if you tell them gender is fluid.
I get the impression that many places have communities which largely have their backs to one another. Not necessarily in conflict but with little interaction beyond walking past one and another in the streets. Unfortunately this sort of thing is good breeding ground for the far right and Islamic extremism.
Can’t help but feel that New Labour got immigration wrong. Not only was it quite a large increase in a relatively short amount of time, but there were no initiatives to create community cohesion and a sense of trust. London can be a great example of how to get integration right but I guess that was aided by being a massive cultural hub anyway
Why are you using the word “convince”? It seems like we’re talking about education, not stuff that amounts to coercive behaviour. And I simply do not believe that the LGBTQ lessons being spoken about in this story cross a line into promoting children transitioning. I can’t say for sure, but I’d be very, very surprised.
Even if there is nothing wrong with this education, what is the rush?
Why do we need to tell kids below 10 about all this?
You can conduct the same exercise between the age of 9-14 and get the same result.
However, you are needlessly loading a curious bunch of kids with vague information which lets them to explore the notion aggressively.
Especially with Transgenderism, it is very dangerous because we are filing a child’s mind with something that may not pertain to him/her as they explore their existence in this world.
And as I was writing Strangepass has a perfect example to showcase.
In my first statement I was talking about what this kind of education is like for the youngest kids in the range you presented. Mum and dad, two dads etc.
You then asked how bisexuality would likely be explained, so I replied with my thoughts, but clearly added that that kind of conversation wouldn’t be had with the very youngest kids I was talking about in my first post.
Only thing I will say when growing up in secondary school, the word gay was used in an extremely negative manner between heterosexuals very commonly at the expense of those groups, perhaps if it was normalised when we was younger such behaviour wouldn’t of even amassed.
Yeah. My point was that it might be mentioned to kids who are bit older, but not to the younger ones. Because my initial point was that the youngest kids aren’t taught sexuality as such, it’s just about mums/dad’s etc.
You don’t have to agree with my political position and obvs don’t expect you to, but I don’t see why you’re struggling with what I’m saying here. I’m not contradicting myself, however hard you’re seeking it. I’m just answering your questions
It was negative across the board back then, so I don’t think that’s relevant with newer generation.
They won’t come across that word being used negatively for them to replicate.
Fair enough.
I just don’t believe it’s necessary and we are just adding curiousity to a child’s mind who can otherwise go about his childhood normally and deal with these subjects at an age where he/she can contemplate.
By convince I don’t mean coerce I just been the inevitable draw of ideas. You haven’t actually countered any of my concerns?
You’re quite right by the way for younger children it will be very softly taught. But for teenagers it’ll probably be the gender unicorn fluidity chart or something similar. It’s not even scientific. How on earth is gender fluid? In the U.S the number of Trans people is 0.3% so that means for 99.7% of people gender matches sex. That’s not very fluid is it?
You’d teach five year olds that gender is fluid? Surely it would be better to simply encourage boys and girls to think about gender stereotypes, something which I’ve personally taught, and found very useful for children.
Agreed, London is basically where integration has possibly worked best, you’ve got many communities mingling with eachother (not without some tensions) but it’s a world away from the likes of Birmingham, Manchester, Blackburn, Bradford I’d imagine.
In my experience, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Scotland in general is probably in between these 2 extremes in terms of integration. Minorities have their separate areas, but the whites and browns know about eachother and mingle.