UN This Week Jan 22-26
[Cornerstone of UNESCO Headquarters Laid in Paris] - [PAR-7861 through PAR-7871]
UNESCO
For those unaware, UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and works to improve education systems worldwide through multilateral cooperation. Improving education systems is an incredibly challenging task even for a single country, let alone the whole world. But, as is the case with many UN agencies, the larger, broader, the more unattainable the goal, the better for fundraising, marketing campaigns and bureaucrats who like to tap themselves on the shoulder for doing something important, namely for “changing the world.”
On January 24th, in celebration of the International Day of Education, UNESCO hosted an event, “Learning for Lasting Peace.” They kept reiterating the same old feel-good, generic statements we all heard countless times, such as “Education is important!”
How does UNESCO plan to improve education? To learn more about their plans, you can check their most recent recommendation but let me spoil it for you- their vision is as progressive as it gets.
It includes a provision on sexuality education that would also apply to primary education. The provision reads as follows:
“All learners should be empowered through comprehensive sexuality education that is non-discriminatory, evidence-based, scientifically accurate, relevant to cultural contexts, and age- appropriate. This focuses on building the knowledge of reproductive health and infection prevention, as well as the cognitive, social and emotional, and behavioral skills for healthy, respectful and equitable relationships.”
From a conservative perspective, that statement is problematic in so may ways, but let me point out to you the “age-appropriate” part. In her paper, Why Comprehensive Sexuality Education is Not the Answer, Rebecca Oas warns that
“The definition of “age-appropriateness” is often disputed, and Comprehensive Sexuality Education curricula have generated outrage for introducing explicit sexual concepts at extremely young ages without the involvement of parents or over their objections, including promoting moral relativism on homosexuality and transgenderism, and even encouraging children to experiment with and decide for themselves about their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
So who will decide what constitutes age appropriate content? UNESCO and its highly progressive personnel? Well, that’s great news…🥴
Below is a short clip from the event where Christopher Castle, Director of Division for Peace and Sustainable Development at UNESCO, tried to justify the inclusion of the comprehensive sexuality education provision in their reccomendation on peace and education.
Regrettably, Mr. Castle, that did not make any sense.
At the event, they also talked about dangerous speech.
Whenever progressives talk about the need to respond to “dangerous” speech, I cannot help but cringe a little bit. To them, the whole conservative worldview is dangerous! For example, saying that there are only two genders might qualify as a hate crime. What a time to live in!
Emeline O’Hara from the progressive Dangerous Speech Project was invited by UNESCO to address how to combat dangerous speech through education.
“People need to be educated on hate speech in their contexts and collectively reject it, that way they can internalize the “anti-hate” norms.”
