English schoolchildren as young as six years old are being taught lessons about “stimulating” their own genitals, following the government updating the national sex education curriculum.
The lessons are part of the All About Me sex education programme being taught to six- to ten-year-olds, with children being taught “self-stimulation” and that touching their own “private parts” in bed or in the bath is perfectly normal, according to documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday.
The lessons are being taught at 241 primary schools across Warwickshire County Council and as part of sex education classes.
Under a section entitled ‘Touching Myself’ targetted at six- and seven-year-olds, teachers are told to explain to the young children that “lots of people like to tickle or stroke themselves as it might feel nice” which may include touching their “private parts”. The teachers were told to make clear that even if someone may said that masturbating is “dirty”, they should tell their young charges that it is “very normal”.
Children are to be taught “rules about self-stimulation” such as that it is “not polite” to touch your genitals in public, but should be done in the bathroom or in bed. In one lesson, pupils are told a girl called Autumn “has a bath and is alone she likes to touch herself between her legs. It feels nice.”
Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) classes for all schoolchildren from the age of four have been made mandatory by the Conservative government from September 2020, and the All About Me lesson cycle could be introduced by other school districts across the country.
Two parents pulled their sons out of lessons at Coten End Primary School in Warwick during the week the programme was taught, which is currently the right of any British parent. However, the government has made RSE classes mandatory from next year and parents will not be allowed to withdraw their young children from learning about masturbation or other topics set to be taught including gay relationships and transgenderism.
The notionally Conservative government has set out a broad and vague guidance on RSE and for age-appropriate lessons; however, individual schools, authorities, and lesson providers will produce content they deem fit for topic and age which the parents cannot object to.
Conservative Party MP David Davies, who backed the government forcing all schoolchildren to receive RSE, criticised the “sexualisation” of young children through these lessons, saying: “I and many other parents would be furious at completely inappropriate sexual matters being taught to children as young as six. These classes go way beyond the guidance the Government is producing and are effectively sexualising very young children.”
Religious and family groups have warned that the vague rules set by the Department for Education for RSE could result in chlidren being taught inappropriate content, with parents legally powerless to protect their children from sexualised material or ideas incompatible with mainstream religious beliefs.
Breitbart London has been reporting since 2016 on the Conservative government’s plans to overhaul how sex education is taught in the United Kingdom, taking it out of the hands of parents and fully under State control. Sold to the public as a means of teaching beyond the “science of reproduction”, the government said it aimed to protect children by arming them with knowledge of domestic abuse, sexual grooming, and online safety, as well as “preparing young people for success in adult life” in “modern Britain”.
It was then in February 2017 that the government announced that these classes were not just intended for teens, but for children as young as four years old, that parental opt-outs would cease, and classes would be forced upon children not just in State-run schools, but private schools, academies, free schools, and religious schools which are by nature socially conservative.
Draft guidelines kept mostly under wraps, in December 2017 the government confirmed that part of the four-to-eighteen curriculum would include lessons on same-sex relationships and transgenderism, with a shift from taking sex education out of the realms of biology into the realm of “values” whereby progressive ideas about sexuality and gender are to be taught from the position of acceptance and, as parents and conservative activists argue, celebration. The government maintained that lessons would be developed around “age-appropriate content” and taught in a “sensitive” manner.
February 2019 revealed government guidance would include teaching young children on gender reassignment, LGBT “families”, and discussing challenges to religious teaching on gay sex.
Regulations on teaching relationships, sex, and health education were passed on May 9th, and despite petitions and calls from religious and parenting groups, the government did not back down from allowing parents opt-outs for their children.
Christian group Christian Concern warned that teaching about sex, transgenderism, and LGBT lifestyles to young children risks “robbing them of their innocence”, while a Jewish orthodox activist warned that Jews may be forced to leave the UK rather than allow their children to be taught from a young age from the government’s progressive sex education agenda, counter to religious teaching.
In June, the education secretary confirmed that all children will be taught same-sex relationships in keeping with the “diversity of our society”, and some schools ran with the Conservative government’s new regulations to begin teaching same-sex relationships to very young children now, the lessons sparking protests in spring and summer 2019 from parents in Muslim-majority schools after teachers began teaching gay relationships to their children.
Mass protests were held for weeks at Birmingham schools Anderton Park Primary School, Parkfield Primary School, and Chilwell Croft academy, with Muslim community leaders and parents saying the classes were “promoting homosexuality” and were “sexualising” children, with some as young as four showing signs of confusion after being told that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. The i newspaper reported last week a spike in the number of children in Birmingham being pulled out of mainstream schools into homeschooling, determining it to be related to Muslim parents’ objection to sex education classes.
Whether seeking to stay faithful to the letter of the government’s law, or taking it to extremes such as the Warwickshire schools in teaching six-year-olds about masturbation, it is likely that more parents will opt to homeschool, with homeschooling having increased 40 per cent in three years, numbering some 48,000 children as of 2018.
However, the government is set to take control over teaching in the home as well, with legislation planned to force parents of homeschooled children to sign a register agreeing to protect their children from “dangerous influences”. Parents and homeschooling activists are concerned that the proposed law will result in government intrusions into the foundations of family life.