Editorial: Safe Schools returns — almost

Editorial: Like a bad cold, Safe Schools is the sex education program NSW schools just can’t seem to shake.

The Daily Telegraph cartoonist Warren Brown’s interpretation of Safe Schools.

LIKE a bad cold, Safe Schools is the sex education program NSW schools just can’t seem to shake.

Having been given the boot back in April, today The Daily Telegraph reports that education bureaucrats have tried to slip material from the program back into the classroom, in ­defiance of parental wishes and ministerial orders.

Among the material posted on the NSW Education Standards Authority website was a PDHPE guide for students in Years 1 to 10 which links back to a teaching resource from Safe Schools.

Thus teachers would have been sent straight back to the old contentious material including gender-swapping exercises for Year 7s and activities that ask Year 9s to pretend they are in a gay or lesbian relationship.

A woman tries to break through student protesters to reach an Australian Christian Lobby seminar against the contentious Safe Schools program. Picture: Ian Currie

And, in keeping with the program’s history which has been shrouded in secrecy — right down to attempting to hide which schools were running it when it was still being used in NSW — parents might never have been any the wiser.

It was only thanks to eagle-eyed parents calling themselves “You’re Teaching Our Children What?” who found the link and blew the whistle on the reintroduction of material that reads less like a worthwhile resource on sexual heath and relationships and more like an indoctrination manual.

In the exercise where students are asked to imagine they are gay, they are confronted with questions such as “Could you invite your partner home with you?”, “Will you be able to get married in Australia?” and “Would you and your partner be able to adopt a child?”.

As if that’s not confronting enough, the exercise ­reportedly calls for them to score their ­answers, with the student with the lowest score left standing in front of the class.

Credit must be given to NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes, who not only was the first state schools chief to axe the insidious program back in April but who, when contacted by The Daily Telegraph, took immediate action against the material.

It just goes to show how deeply embedded this sort of politicised gender theory is in NSW’s classrooms and education authorities. Minister Stokes will have more work to do to root out this nonsense.

Parents, too, should talk to their children to find out what’s going on in their classes.

NO TEARS FOR JIHADI’S DEATH

AUSTRALIAN jihadi Khaled Sharrouf has reportedly been killed — along with two of his sons — in a coalition air strike near Raqqa several days ago. Although there have been suggestions of Sharrouf’s death in the past, authorities are treating these latest reports as credible. Sharrouf became famous when he appeared in Islamic State propaganda seeming to encourage his own sons to hold aloft the severed heads of Islamic State victims. While the death of any young person is a tragedy, the fate of his sons belongs directly to their father, who took them to an active war zone when he signed up to the cause of evil.

Australian jihadi Khaled Sharrouf and two of his sons are believed to have been killed in an air strike near Raqqa, Syria.

TIME TO GET MOVING

ARE you sitting down? Sorry, that’s not good. Because if you are, there’s a very good chance you are among the 50 per cent of Australians who have done no exercise in the past three months.

It’s an epidemic of physical inactivity reported in today’s Daily Telegraph that is taking a toll on our waistlines and our wallets as health systems struggle to keep up with the health demands created by our sedentary lifestyles.

We’re in danger of becoming couch potatoes.

To put into perspective just how dangerous our sloth-like behaviour has become, experts from Medibank, who compiled the alarming research, are now comparing this sort of inactivity with well-known health threats such as smoking. Just as worrying are findings that levels of anxiety, depression and stress have climbed since 2010.

The good news is the cure is easy — easier than quitting smoking, at least.

It’s simple. Just get moving. The health insurer is launching its own commendable program of free exercise events over the coming five years, but for most of us even that’s not necessary.

The journey to a healthier life begins, quite literally, with the first step.