While I applaud any effort to educate people and raise their awareness so that they don't discriminate against individuals and/or groups of people just because of an emotionally based prejudice, baseless and without any rationale (you gotta be able to defend your rationale before you can credibly be a discriminator), I am aware that govt programmes, school programmes may involve no little cost to apply and administer.
Pursuant to this I also wonder just what is the percentage of Australian schoolchildren who are struggling with a sexual orientation crisis of indecision and doubt?
I suspect that the proportion is rather low and I wonder therefore if it is a justifiable use of taxpayer money to spend it on such narrowly focussed issues.
It's a rather fine brush with which to paint. and it doesn't quite capture the depth of colour and contrast which might be applied if there was a dedicated school program which taught respect for all people and their private choices and inclinations (so long as those inclinations did not adversely affect the public weal.)
Surely the money could be better spent on a programme which emphasised respect for other people just because they are people, being worthy of respect to be free to make their own choices. That sort of freedom is worth teaching about; it need not be a programme with such a narrow focus that it obscures the bigger picture.
We have no such school programmes which teach about the evils of our capitalist economic system and about how this system is systematically destroying our environment and plunging millions of people into abject poverty, while enabling a relative few to rise to obscene levels of wealth and prosperity, do we?
We have no such school programmes which examine the teachings of the various religions and subject those teachings to scrutiny about their particular teachings about gender equality or their teachings about how to perceive those who identify themselves as LBGTI (etc) do we?
We want to focus our attentions and our money on a programme which teaches that it's wrong to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation, but we still allow and even support the right of religious institutions to teach this discrimination and condemnation of anyone who falls outside their religious perception of being "normal" as part of their Doctrine?
Unless we actively speak out and condemn those religious ideologies which teach misogyny, homophobia and intolerance of the freedom of people to self-identify with respect to their sexual orientation then we are missing a really big part of the argument and neglecting to address a really big part of the problem.
We don't need remedial school programmes to teach us respect for our fellows so much as we need to put a stop to the active teaching of the cultural attitudes by the various religions which teach the lessons of intolerance and non-acceptance and actual hate of people who might not find themselves quite able to conform to "doctrine" without suffering some serious pyschological angst.
If we put a stop to those people actively teaching intolerance, then there might be no need to pour money into making amends for the damage which those teachings cause.
It's a bigger problem than it appears to be.
The safe schools programme is just a bandaid on a severed artery if we refuse to address the societal and cultural reasons why we, as a society are being bled dry of all compassion for our fellows by our churches, our synagogues and our mosques, etc
Don't teach tolerance of difference.
Rather . . . Stop the preaching of hate and intolerance of difference. I believe that this is going to be far more effective and cost-efficient in the long term.
and this is where I'm possibly going to lose support for my argument:
Let's have a national school programme which teaches our kids that religions may seek to indoctrinate us with some very dubious and nasty values and that religions (all of them) are not a part of the solution; they are in fact, a major and root cause of the Problem
Let's have a dedicated school programme which teaches that.
It's of no value (apart from lip-service to a cause) to have a national school programme which teaches acceptance of personal choice if we don't address the subversive and undermining contrary messages being taught by those in our society who claim to be religious teachers demanding respect for their opinions not because of what they teach, but because of who they are.
The safe schools prog is nothing more than damage control if we continue to allow the source of the damage to continue unchallenged and unchecked.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t.
