Summarised by Centrist
Ex-ACT leader Rodney Hide shares alarming details about the Relationship and Sexuality Education curriculum for Year 9 students at Wakatipu High School, where his daughter attends.
Hide’s request to review the materials was partially granted. “My concern became informed consent: I couldn’t see the material that was to be presented to my 13-year-old daughter,” writes Hide.
Course providers limit parental oversight by hiding behind the ‘intellectual property’ label.
Hide describes the course as promoting full-on gender theory and includes explicit content like how to masturbate and the promotion of anal sex as just a few of the points included.
Hide mentions that his daughter and the other students would be taught by a male teacher. He notes the absence of marriage and abstinence education, focusing instead on pleasure, consent, and contraception.
Although the curriculum is presented as compulsory, the Training and Education Act 2020 states it is optional.
To top it off, in the postscript Hide reminds readers that the Ministry of Education banned new toilet blocks and upgrades.
“For the Ministry, not all boys have a penis — and it’s wrong to make boys without penises feel excluded,” he writes.
Editor’s note: See our story here on the relationship app developed for teens by the University of Canterbury.
