Roderic O’G: Transgender issues added to primary curriculum

Pretty hard to use the internet without being able to read or write in fairness.

Again, my point is we have never had more access to information than we have now. Theres never been as big a focus on mental health as there is now (some might say there still isn't enough) yet mental health issues of all types in teens is increasing.

My point is you cannot say with any certainty that increasing a focus on a particular topic will lead to a decrease in mental health issues when the evidence I see in the bigger picture would suggest this isn't true.

I would ask, how do you make out that there's nothing to lose from a mental health perspective?

I appreciate we do not know the details of this suggestion by ROG

Well, the same way I know trhat there's nothing to lose by teaching primary school kids Irish, religion, history, science and so on....

Are you just going to keep asking me "how do you know:?" every time I make a statement? How do you know that I don't know the details of the suggestion? How do you know I'm not actually O'Gorman posting this?

Science has actually defined what a woman is - most people just don't like the definition and that's where the opposition comes from. And as far as I know, there's no "climate of fear" and if there is, I doubt that it's resulting in professional scientists and politicians turning away and saying, "nah, let's not do this - we don't know what it all means." But the same could be said for the same education at secondary school and even beyond.

Pretty much every post I've read this morning is of the "don't do this because something bad might happen" variety whilst not actually defining what that 'bad' thing is. Anyone got anything beyond the hypothetical?

5 year olds have been exposed to lunatic ideas for as long as there's been an education system. Religion primary among them. Just so happens transgenderism and ideas about boys/girls "being born in the wrong body" is the current societal brain fart. No doubt it'll claim some victims, but there's always something doing that....

Well homosexuals are two people of the same sex that people know are the same sex.

We have come a long way and are more accepting of homosexuals which is great, one of my best friends is gay.

Transgender is a feeling people have in there head, with homosexuals it is two men who I can see, when a man says he is a woman, I see a man so it exists in his head.

I would bet the majority of Transgender people suffer mental health issues because of a few loudmouths who try ram ideas down normal people who just want to get on with life.

Was it Dublin parade they threw a hissy fit when asked a few questions about what being Transgender is.

Yet people think we should tell kids about something trans activists won't actually talk about when asked difficult questions.

I think it would be more helpful for the nations children if “Roderic” sorted out the chronic lack of child mental health services in this country

Is this an issue for you? Why? if you have kids, ask the teacher to give them other work when this goes on. The remaining kids will learn some of the basics and get on with their lives and probably understand the benefit of learning about the world around them.

This is the benefit of the doubt here, given your posting elsewhere, this is likely an issue for you to rail against.

It is an issue for me because I do have kids in primary school.

Why do primary school kids need to learn the basics of this?

Do primary school kids learn about gay, lesbians and people with disabilities.

They are very likely to encounter those people.

They might never have a conversation with a transgender person.

So tell me who benefits from kids being told about this because kids don't benefit from it and kids go to school to learn and benefit from learning.

Primary school teacher here. I did all of this with my class last year. It was in no way "indoctrinating" them - that's just how we are expected to teach religion. I did it in June (pride month) and it was just a "different families in our society" manner. I covered heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, single parent families, transgender couples, couples where one is transgender and one is not, interracial couples. No one is saying we need to beat children over the head with any of these as a single lesson. However, my class and parents loved the approach and it actually lasted for about 3 weeks in total.

Says who?

They're professional people who's entire job is answeting childrens' questions, deep and otherwise - why wouldn't they?

EDIT - there's a post two posts above this from a teacher - answers your questions.

They learn about the world, they learn about what seemingly sends one of their guardians frothing at the mouth. If it's important enough for you to get worked up about, then it's probably important enough to learn about (more than a lot of the facts they'll learn at school, never use, but are important knowledge nonetheless).

You are literally making it beneficial to learn about.

And had you learned more about the world at that age, you may not be so insular today. Food for thought.

And if you feel really strongly about this thing which doesn't matter and shouldn't be taught, you can ask the school to exclude your kids from lessons about it. Ain't that great?