Announcing an ‘LGBT-inclusive’ update to all of its products, education giant Pearson has launched a guide to pushing ‘social justice’ activism in every part of the school curriculum.
‘Creating an LGBT-Inclusive Curriculum’ was produced by LGBT activist group Stonewall and is sponsored by Pearson, which owns the exam board Edexcel and publishes thousands of school textbooks as one of the UK’s biggest education companies.
Claiming an inclusive curriculum is “a crucial part of tackling” homophobic bullying in schools, the handbook advises ways in which teachers can alter lessons across the syllabus so LGBT pupils “see themselves represented in what they’re learning”.
Writing about the need to stamp out anti-LGBT bullying in a foreword to the guide, the senior vice-president for schools at Pearson UK, Sharon Hague, said: “LGBT students will only feel comfortable to be themselves if they also get to see themselves in their classrooms.”
Organised by subject, the guide lists suggestions to ensure LGBT visibility across the curriculum, for example recommending teachers set questions which reference homosexual relationships in maths and science, and introduce terminology specific to the lifestyles of sexual minorities in foreign language lessons.
One example given is to begin a question with: “Two women would like to have a baby together, and the doctor recommends they use In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF).”
The vast majority of suggestions go far beyond issues of visibility and representation, however, with most of the handbook’s tips for creating an LGBT-inclusive curriculum promoting hard-left ‘social justice’ activism and identity politics in the classroom.
Advice on teaching maths includes an example lesson in which children learn about codebreaker Alan Turing. Teachers are instructed to “provide pupils with some information about Alan Turing’s life, including the arrest and trial for his relationship with another man”, and to introduce a discussion on “the historical treatment of gay people by the secret services”.
In history lessons, pupils should “study the links between different social justice movements”, while art teachers are urged to “explore the way that art has been, and is being, used to effect social and political change, including LGBT equality, race equality and tackling climate change”.
The handbook calls for schools to push a left-wing agenda across every subject, recommending science teachers “explore gender stereotypes and barriers to participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects”.
Suggested activities include tasking pupils with devising a campaign to get more women involved in STEM, and discussing questions such as “Why is it important that diverse groups of people, including LGBT people, enter STEM professions?”
Pearson’s president for core markets, Rod Bristow, said the company will use the handbook to “help update our own products and resources to ensure they are LGBT inclusive”.
UKIP education spokesman David Kurten stated that the “despicable” move is bad news for children and parents, who he pointed out will “effectively have no choice but to be exposed” to politicised education material due to Pearson’s position as the largest supplier of textbooks for schools, and the owner of Britain’s largest exam board, Edexcel.
“Maths should be about maths, it should not be about sexualizing children,” he told Breitbart London, warning the new textbooks will make it significantly more difficult for parents “to protect their children from the malign influence of left-wing identity politics”.