No gender theory in federal ‘respect’ project

The federal government is spending millions of dollars developing resources to teach respectful ­relationships in schools.

The federal government is spending millions of dollars developing resources to teach respectful ­relationships in schools but education officials have denied any links with a Victorian program of the same name criticised by Scott Morrison for its sexually ­explicit content.

The federal government is spending millions of dollars developing resources to teach respectful ­relationships in schools but education officials have denied any links with a Victorian program of the same name criticised by Scott Morrison for its sexually ­explicit content.

The Department of Education and Training has moved to distance the project from Victoria’s controversial respectful relationships education program, claiming the new resources would not contain lessons around gender theory, toxic masculinity or case studies about young people’s sexual activity.

The Prime Minister slammed the state’s respectful relationships program on radio last week, agreeing with 2GB presenter Alan Jones that classroom role-playing activities made his “skin curl”. “I don’t want the values of others being imposed on my children in my school,” he said.

“How about we just have state schools focusing on learning maths, learning science.”

Mr Morrison declined to comment on the federal government’s own project yesterday, as did ­Education Minister Dan Tehan.

The Department of Education and Training has allocated $5 million to the project — unveiled as part of the previous Turnbull government’s $100m women’s safety package announced in 2015 — that aims to change the attitudes of young people to violence.

Respectful relationships is contained within the national school curriculum and programs in most states and aims to teach students social skills, inclusiveness, co-operation, problem-solving, handling conflict and navigating changes and transitions in relationships.

The Victorian program, however, has been heavily criticised as social engineering, with its ­Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships resource attacking fairytales for promoting gender stereotypes in preschools, introducing gender theory in the lower primary years and teaching senior students about “male privilege” and “hegemonic masculinity”.

“Being born male you have ­advantages … and this will be true whether you personally approve or think you are entitled to this privilege,” a secondary-level curriculum guide says.

“An awareness of the existence of male privilege is critical in understanding why there is a need for feminist perspectives, and education on gender at all.”

The resources were developed by Deakin University and the University of Melbourne.

The federal government was not involved in developing, funding or endorsing the Victorian program, a spokesman for the federal education minister said.

“The education resources produced under the Australian government’s women’s safety package to stop violence do not reference gender theory or outline sexually explicit content,” the spokesman said.

“Educating against domestic violence is designed to help prevent domestic and family violence by changing the attitudes of young people to violence.

“The resources are grounded in an evidence base, are age-­appropriate, educationally sound and aligned to the Australian curriculum.” The new respectful relationships resources will be released by December.