Schools learn their PC before the ABC

IT’S important that children are not brainwashed with propaganda, nor taught opinion as fact, nor thrust into adult concepts too early.

DISCRIMINATION has no place in our schools. Nobody, especially children in their formative years, should be mistreated ­because they’re different.

But just as important is that children in their most impressionable years are not brainwashed with propaganda, nor taught opinion as fact, nor thrust into adult concepts that they might not be ready for.

Unfortunately that appears to be precisely what has happened at Burwood Girls High School, where classes were cancelled and students required to watch a documentary about same-sex parenting called Gayby Baby.

The school’s principal, Mia Kumar, also urged all pupils to wear purple in support of LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer) students.

Given the level of specificity in sexual identity politics these days, it seems unlikely the school would even have students from all of these categories. For example, has there been an issue with intersex or transgender students at Burwood Girls High in the past?

As for gay, lesbian and bisexual kids, there are undoubtedly many in the school community and of course they must be treated with absolute respect. Have they been discriminated against? Not in Ms Kumar’s school, one would hope.

Either way, if there were problems with any of the above it would take more than a ribbon and a free movie to fix it. If not, this, like so many preoccupations of the modern Left, appears to be a tokenistic act of symbolism over substance. An attempt to show the world how right-on and progressive the school is without thinking about the practical effects.

It is worth noting the film was made by a former Burwood Girls student raised by two mums.

All power to her. She has every right to tell her story and anyone, given the documentary’s PG rating, has every right to see it.

But there is a world of difference between allowing interested kids to see a film of this kind and requiring all students to, regardless of their beliefs or backgrounds and without their parents’ express consent, as was the school’s original intention.

This was, of course, before the inevitable parental backlash that any sensible educator could have seen coming a mile away — indeed, what part of “parental guidance” doesn’t Ms Kumar understand?

It also speaks of an extraordinary naivety: The Burwood and Croydon area is enormously diverse and multicultural, with most students at the school coming from non-­English speaking backgrounds.

Clearly a 12-year-old child from an orthodox Christian or Muslim background is going to be hopelessly unprepared for the concepts raised by a film about gay parenting, especially if shown without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

In a worst-case scenario it might even provoke hostility or confirm for some students and families the worst cultural prejudices about homosexuality: that far from it being a naturally occurring condition, it is the result of sinister social engineering.

For we live in the real world, a place of complex and conflicting and entrenched social values, not the ideological Shangri-la of meaningless jargon and buzzwords that some education bureaucrats appear to prefer.

Indeed, so tight is the stranglehold of the bureaucracy that even the Education Minister himself seems too scared to utter a peep, lest he be steamrollered by his own department or crucified as a homophobe by the PC lynch mob.

And we wonder why our kids aren’t getting any smarter.

FAIR GO FOR THE VEST

SPEAKING of discrimination, readers will be shocked — or perhaps not so shocked — to learn of the latest group of people to suffer prejudice in Sydney’s trendy inner suburbs.

Yes, it appears that yet another old fashioned Paddington pub — a surprise in itself that there were any left — has decided to go up-market.

Of course, we all know that the once working-class suburb long ago went from Paddo to Volvo.

But instead of the usual sly trick of just pricing out the riff-raff with $20 drinks or the introduction of the dreaded schmiddy, The Village Inn has decided to call a spade a spade — even if those who use one are apparently no longer welcome.

They are simply banning workers wearing hi-visibility clothing.

Without wanting to jump on the usual outrage bandwagon, the obvious snobbery of this decision is outweighed only by the obvious stupidity: Someone in hi-vis is just as likely to be an engineer, foreman or surveyor on a six figure salary.

Private establishments have the right to impose dress codes — but it’s just another indication of the disconnect between inner city trendoids (who, ironically, consider themselves the bastions of tolerance) and the average workers who build the roads on which their Volvos drive.

Talk about blind prejudice. You’d think a hi-vis vest would be just the thing to fix it.