Most parents today send their children off to kindergarten and school with the expectation that as they progress from infancy to childhood, and finally to adulthood, their offspring will absorb the values and worldview of the education system.
So, it would be alarming to Victorian parents if they discovered that there is nowhere in the state’s education system, including public libraries, which is not run by activists who are working tirelessly to push radical gender ideology on their children.
The Victorian government’s recently uncovered ‘Rainbow Libraries Toolkit’ for the state’s 290 public libraries has been published to ‘assist library staff in making rainbow families feel safe, welcome and celebrated in our libraries’.
This all sounds harmless enough. However, this toolkit has nothing to do with inclusivity and tolerance. When the detail is uncovered, it shows that it has everything to do with pushing an extremely fringe theory on young children which tells them that biological sex is a social construct invented by human beings in order to wield power over each other.
In other words, it tells little boys and girls that there is no such thing as little boys or girls.
To get this message across, the toolkit tells librarians that they should ask 5-year-olds what their preferred pronouns are, and that ‘non-gendered language’ should be used at all times. In addition, it lists books with highly questionable titles such as If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It and The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, by Lil Miss Hot Mess, and other children’s books such as Bye Bye, Binary and My Two Dads and Me.
In the ‘Searchability’ section of the toolkit, librarians are told that they might like to consult a resource called ‘Homosaurus’. This is a database of LGBTQ terms for use in libraries around the world. Terms range from ‘Bisexual Porn Films’ to ‘Sadomasochism’ to something called ‘Xenogender Identity’. But most of the vocabulary and their definitions listed in ‘Homosauras’ are too X-rated to print. The toolkit’s authors clearly intended that it is to be used by librarians, otherwise they would have left it out altogether.
It is astounding that anyone could think this is suitable for children. There is no single circumstance in which it is appropriate for a librarian to be having discussions about gender and sexuality with other peoples’ children.
Unfortunately, the public library has become yet another vehicle for activists who are convinced that this is exactly what they should be talking to your children about, and who are already entrenched in our kindergartens and schools.
The federal government’s mandated Early Learning Framework called ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming’, aimed at 0-5-year-olds, introduces toddlers to adult themes such as gender, sexuality, race, culture, and environmental activism. In primary and secondary schools, children are being subjected to compulsory ‘Respectful Relationships Programs’ which are a Trojan Horse through which radical gender theory is introduced into the classroom.
This is activism thinly disguised as education. We are now seeing the terrible effects of this indoctrination on our children, as student achievement continues to plummet. This year’s appalling NAPLAN results show that nearly 30 per cent of Victorian schoolchildren are struggling with literacy and numeracy.
The primary objective of our education system must be to ensure students learn the core skills of reading, writing, and mathematics, so they have the basic tools with which to navigate life. By focusing on ideology and radical theories about sex and gender instead of age-appropriate, fact-based education, we are setting another generation up for failure.
Mainstream Victorians are constantly berated by activists with demands for ‘respect’. It’s about time we respect the fact that children should be left to be children.
Dr Bella d’Abrera is the Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs.
