Radical gender propaganda fed to trainee teachers
INSTEAD of learning how to teach kids, university students in teacher training courses are being schooled in dangerous ideological agendas, writes Miranda Devine.
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IF you’re wondering how we’ve reached the alarming point where children are coming home from school confused about whether they are girls or boys, look no further than what one university is teaching its trainee teachers.
At the University of Technology, Sydney, first year students studying primary and secondary school teaching are obliged in their first semester this year to take a compulsory course called “Beyond Culture: Diversity in Context”.
Taught by two baby boomer academics with PhDs, Dr Wendy Holland and Dr Myra Dunn, the course thus far this year has delivered lectures on the topics of gender fluidity, race and identity.
In Week 3, in a lecture titled “Exploring Gender,” students were provided with Powerpoint notes which are mind-boggling, unscientific propaganda straight from the academic fringes of gender theory.
These UTS trainee teachers were taught that there are two views of gender.
One view, dismissed with just 13 words in the 15-page PowerPoint document, is described as “Essentialist”, and holds that ‘gender’ is “fixed and biologically determined … set at birth”. In other words, it describes reality as experienced by at least 99.7 per cent of people (not to mention animals).
The other view, which is the subject of the rest of the lecture, is described as “Constructivist”. It sees gender as “socially constructed, fluid and dynamic … a construct of language and discourse.”
The lecture goes on to claim that biological sex “Exists on a spectrum, with genitalia, chromosomes, gonads and hormones” merely “playing a role”.
It says about one in 100 people are born neither male nor female.
This is just not correct. According to the British Medical Journal, citing a 1975 chromosomal study of 14,069 newborn infants, “The incidence of genital ambiguity that results in the child’s sex being uncertain is 1 per 4500”, that is 0.02 per cent.
So the UTS gender lecture is only wrong by a factor of 50.
As for “gender identity”, the most generous statistics across the world show up to 0.3 per cent of people identify as transgender.
In Australia, in the 2016 Census, just 3,700 people identified themselves as a gender other than male or female, which is a rate of 16 per 100,000 people or just 0.016 per cent. Even then, only one third of those were “validated as intentional” answers.
Back to the UTS lecture notes which:
— Included a glossary of 21 terms such as genderqueer, genderfluid and cisgender and refers to the Safe Schools website, even though the controversial program has been banned in NSW.
— Said referrals to gender clinics have “skyrocketed (e.g. Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne: 1 in 2003 — 100 in 2014”.
- Advised “policing gender roles” in preschool
— Claimed that allowing children “free play” can “reinforce gender stereotypes”.
Trainee teachers who questioned any of the material were told the subject was “more a thinking subject, not a content subject”.
“The table I was sitting at in my tutorial was in a bit of shock,” said one student who asked not to be named. “I thought, ‘I’m not being taught how to be a good teacher.’”
The trainee teachers were also taught to keep an eye out for “sport and male hegemony [and] who dominates various playground areas?”
And they were encouraged to teach children about gender using “a wide range of resources that reflect diversity — e.g. The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch, William’s Doll by Charlotte Zolotow; units about families reflecting diversity of possibilities — two mums, single dads, etc.”
In other words, UTS is training the next generation of students in pure gender theory, a doctrine that holds that there is no such thing as biological sex, as in male or female, but a fluid continuum which changes at whim.
Gender theory holds that gender identity, gender expression and sexual preference exist independently of biological sex. If you don’t believe that you are “heteronormative” which is a bad thing, like being a bigot.
Gender theory is part of a variant of Marxist philosophy called “post modernism” which looks like a utopian substitute for religion, according to historian Keith Windschuttle, who says the ideas arose in the sexual revolution of the 1960s but only took off “after the fall of that other religion substitute, communism, in 1989-90”.
Canadian psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson has said that postmodernists view the world as made up of fragmented identity groups, divided into victims (according to race, gender and sexual preference) and oppressors (straight white males).
“Postmodernists have replaced Marxist claims of economic oppression with claims of identity oppression.
“Part of the postmodern attempt is to undermine the … classical social structures in the same way a Marxist wants to produce a revolution in a capitalist society to undermine the central power structures by whatever means are necessary.”
This radical ideology which turns science, logic and reason on its head is not about being compassionate to a tiny minority of transgender people. Quite the opposite.
It uses them as tools to coerce the rest of us to go along with the lie that biological sex does not exist.
Schoolchildren are at the frontline of this war on truth, as we saw with the Safe Schools program which posed as an anti-bullying program but was really about brainwashing children in gender theory.
“Gender identity policies can quickly generate politically correct speech codes in schools and workplaces,” writes Ryan Anderson, in his new book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.”
“Antibullying” programs can turn into antidisagreement programs. Dissent is equated with bigotry and hate, so no dissent will be tolerated. All students must accept gender ideology, and their parents will have no say in the matter.”
Most of the UTS trainee teachers are school leavers, aged 18 or 19. Some could be heard complaining as they walked out of the lecture theatre. “This is absolute bullshit” said one young man. “This is ridiculous. It’s so stupid.”
Yes, the ideology is all that, but it’s also creeping into every school, successfully warping the minds of children when they are at their most vulnerable, and is rapidly being mandated in new speech codes and laws.