As a bisexual woman who was raised attending a religious school, these types of practices make my blood boil. I had friends in middle school and high school who came out and were effectively barred and excommunicated from the community—expelled from school, asked to no longer attend church and gossiped about by their former teachers and peers. The emotional blowback was immense on these children’s—my friends—lives. My parents were *literally* the only family who stepped in. This was an immense organization, not some tiny private school. Children were kicked out of their homes by their parents, had their entire social and educational structure ripped from them. It’s appalling and grotesque and changed my perception of the church forever. All because these fools choose to cherry-pick verses to fit their own narrative.
Thankful for you holding these clowns accountable. To damage small children during their formative years for not fitting into your small cherry-picked world view is unconscionable. Keep fighting the good fight🪱
May 30, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by David Farrier
I’m so sorry you experience this, thanks goodness for your parents. How horrid. And completely the opposite of what I believe good Christian’s should do. Their God is all loving. ALL loving.
Heartbreaking to know their story is not uncommon. Just one of many. I would think NZ would be doing a better job of things and not making a mess of crossing church and state the way we are so damn good at in the U.S. And you're right, Natalie! The irony of preaching Jesus' teachings and to enact the exact opposite on your own community is not only disturbing but also deeply bizarre. If there is a God in the way the Christian faith likes to characterizes them I just cannot fathom they'd be happy with the way their "disciples" are enacting their word. It's all fraught!
May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by David Farrier
Public schools in NZ are obligated to be secular thankfully, far more inclusive that way. Private schools are another beast though. A lot of religious families tend to send their children to a private school associated with their church because public is secular, and they also teach sexual health in public too. Definitely can't have teachers talking to students about sexual health!
I do think the integrated thing is so annoying in particular: if you're taking any taxpayer money directly - for the purpose of educating kids - that money needs to stop the second you start making LGBTQI+ kids feel shit.
What's most concerning is studies have shown there is a link between neurodiversity and spirituality i.e. you are more likely to be involved in religion and spirituality if you are neurodiverse than if you are neurotypical. Do you know who is also tightly linked to neurodiversity? The LGBTQI+ community. So of all communities, religious ones should be making inclusivity their top priority, with or without the funding.
Like a dog with a bone. I freaking love it. Because we all know as soon as we look away it's the status quo all over again. You have to keep shining the light to get people to clean up their act. The school will get safer too. As will the other schools that see that you don't get to get away with this stuff without people calling you out. Then we all shuffle slowly closer to equality. You are making a difference.
I’m not sure if BC is similar to an American charter school, but considering that it runs of taxpayer $ but still has enrollment with a waiting list and all that, it sounds like there is some crossover. There is a lot of danger when a school is allowed to have their own mission and values that don’t relate to learning, but rather instilling cherry-picked religious beliefs or “ethics,” but still runs on the dime of the community. There are plenty of amazing charter schools here in America, but also plenty of corrupt ones as well.
As a teacher, it breaks my heart to think of students whose identities are being invalidated or even being told they are immoral for who they have a crush on. It truly feels like censorship to not acknowledge or to damn sexualities and identities that don’t align with a school’s so-called morals. Makes my blood boil and makes me want to cry for those hurt by it at the same time. Gah.
My heart goes out to those students impacted by schools like this, and the lack of accountability and change being made by the governing bodies meant to keep them in check. It’s really shitty all around.
Thanks for keeping up with this and for the update. I think it’s great we have a thing called ERO, but I think like so many public resources, they are underfunded and under resourced. ERO are supposed to review schools every three years and I recently looked up own children’s school to see how their most recent review went and they haven’t had one since 2016. So they were overdue when the pandemic hit and haven’t caught up as things have started to settle. 3 or more years is a long time when children only attend that particular school for a couple more than that. And most especially when the issues to be addressed are as serious as this. I really hope that the renewed attention lights a fire under the ministry of education and ERO and they see this through properly.
It's actually *on average* every 3 years. If a school shows "a stable reporting history and can demonstrate good self-review processes and use of assessment information" then it's less frequent. And I'm sure Covid did affect things but it's likely not as late as it initially seems for your children's school.
Having worked in media or comms for a million years I have to say this new iteration of Ministry of Ed comms (the last four years or so) is fucking appalling. I’ve basically given up on sending them media queries because they never answer a question. On top of that when you send an OIA they give the person you’re doing the OIA about your contact details just FYI. Pretty fucking bleak and dangerous - especially if your queries are around right wing extremism and LGBTQIA+ representation in schools.
The Ministry of Education is balls to deal with (their top dogs). Their comms people are just doing the best they can - but the MINISTRY kinda sucks, eh.
They definitely shouldn't be sharing your contact details without your permission. I work in an OIA team and we only share details of requesters if they've given permission (we always ask first).
MoE sharing your contact details and information about your request seems like a pretty clear breach of Principle 11 of the Privacy Act. Definitely worth making a complaint to the OPC if you can be bothered. Unless they're sharing with other government agencies for the purpose of consulting on a response, that's where it might be a grey area.
I dont want to go off on a rant, as I am prone to do, but my firmly held belief is this: there should be NO religious indoctrination in any school anywhere. No gubblemunt money to any religious organisation whatever, and all churches need to be taxed like the for profit "Businesses" they are. Separation of church and state, yo!
I figure it's worth staying on top of things - even just so people (me included) can see the process and how *difficult* these systems are to change. Not that we didn't know that already - but seeing it play out is kinda fascinating.
This is a great little example of why our education system is doing such a poor job generally of creating safe environments and teaching kids effectively. There is no accountability anywhere in the system, because the customers are kids and they have no voice, and the grown ups have very strong incentives to work nicely with each other and not have to actually confront problems. ERO and the ministry have such a high bar for doing anything, and in the mean time, its only the kids who suffer. To be clear though I don’t blame the individuals in the system (other than those folks at BC, they’re deranged as you say)- it’s the system itself that’s the problem, and a lack of political will to fix it.
I’d forgotten about the slight to your ethics! WTF, you’re an award winning journalist! ....on the podium with John Campbell. I like that ERO is telling the school that you enquired. Hope they said...’award winning investigative journalist DF was asking about the review’ and ‘maybe it’ll be his story in the awards next year’ Bring it on.
As a comms person here is a blow by blow account of what happened when your email popped into the Ministry of Education inbox:
1) "Fuck"
2) Some poor schmuck on about $60k a year who probably reads Webworm calls his boss and forwards the email on with a suggested
3) "Fuck"
4) Boss asks schmuck to reach out to the Subject Matter Expert (SME) who has been dealing with BC and get the latest. Boss then fowards your email to their boss cc'ing in about 17 people
5) "Fuck" x 17
6) An email thread occurs where people higher up the chain say vague things.
7) Schmuck writes up a clean clear media response which actually answers your question. Saves it. Sends it as an attachment to his boss.
8) Boss edits the attachment and sends to the email chain of 17 people with the ❗️"important" notification turned on in Outlook.
9) Boss gets 23 different versions of the same doc back. Some are completely rewritten. Some have tracked changes. Some "fix" minor "errors" which are actually against the Ministry's style guide.
10) Boss tries to resolve all these changes into one document and after 47 minutes he decides to put the mess into Chat GPT and get it to rewrite the whole thing. Copy. Paste. Sends it back to the Dep Sec who the quotes will come from for approval.
11) Dep Sec rewrites the whole thing again, hits send, then immediately calls the schmuck, who in their head is like "Why are you calling me?" and dictates further changes to them despite them not having the email.
12) Schmuck calls the boss, passes on the changes.
13) "Fuck"
14) Boss makes changes, and sends response back to Schmuck to send to you.
15) Schmuck sees the bad grammar and mistakes, has a quiet chuckle to themself and then hits send.
16) Schmuck heads home and refreshes their personal inbox waiting for you to send out your next Webworm.
Oh I get so grumpy when the church claims marriage is this exclusive thing created by God. Nope. Originally it was just a legal process, nothing to do with church, God etc. Just your standard sale and purchase agreement.
This is such great work. Keep the heat on, hopefully they’ll be forced to change.
I wish the education system was more progressive. It’s not just the religious schools that are stuck in the dark ages. My daughters school is only just giving their uniform a revamp to include shorts next year. I mean, come on. She currently bikes to school in a pencil skirt.
One of the many reasons I was unpopular with my teachers (many years ago now) was that I suggested that school uniforms were instruments of fascism, and should be banned outright on that basis. I loved detention, though (to date myself even further) it was pretty far from The Breakfast Club.
I had a similar experience at school, where in a social studies class the teacher was discussing why Jews in concentration camps were all made to dress the same (stripping identity, control, etc). I was the one who raised my hand and pointed out the elephant in the room. To be fair to that teacher they did say they weren't a fan of school uniform, but of course it wasn't up to them. They certainly never pulled people up on little breaches like jewellery.
Sarah - the role of school uniforms in Aotearoa-New Zealand is a giant plus IMHO, as a student of limited means who went to 5 different schools in my time. The kids with well off parents wore the same uniform, and had to adhere to the same rules of uniform standard, as the kids with really poor parents (and the schools had an active 2nd hand market of good quality uniforms to recycle down at low cost). It was almost impossible to tell which was which, which is the whole point. It is even more valuable in these days of much more expensive & varied designer clothing & footwear where the disparity in access to such things would be much more pronounced, and less well off kids made to feel they are missing out OR be bullied for having tatty clothes etc.
And yeah - some things (like trousers & shorts for girls) can be out of touch & stupid, but doesn't negate the benefits overall. Of course, rich parents can send their kids to "better" schools, but they still have to wear uniforms as far as I am aware ...
At the core of BC's policy regarding LGBTQI+ is an unwavering belief that one is not "born that way" but is groomed or conditioned by the environment to be "deviant". Grooming is very topical these days and all the garbage coming out of the US regarding LGBTQI+ must be quite validating for them. From that standpoint they are sure that they can pray away the gay and convert the deviant individual even if secular and political positions say otherwise... because GOD. And BIBLE. So, as your coverage has clearly shown, they can change what's written on paper but that doesn't change their beliefs or practices.
How might ERO or even the MoE possibly be able to uncover conversion practices in a community that is so thoroughly mindfucked? Experience leads me to doubt the MoE will do anything of substance, particularly in an election year. ERO will put out a report that accentuates the positives and glosses over the serious issues with vague encouragements to review policies. In the meantime any students there who are grappling with a growing sense of self and identity that doesn't fit the deeply entrenched narrative will be feeling the fires of hell rapidly approaching.
In my not so recent past I’ve worked in comms for several govt depts including MoE - and the bullshit that simmers away in these organisations makes me want to eat my own vomit. The wrong things are taken so seriously- the hierarchy, the Minister, and the head of the Ministry- it’s all very “yesMinister” (reference to old BBC comedy about English politics). Some of the Comms people believe their own bullshit and stay in their roles for ever. Others get real jobs. Again thank you for the insightful reporting David.
Yup, keep on it David. For the sake of the kids, LGBTQI+ and otherwise. Your take on the MoE ain't wrong, sad to say. It's a big, messy, bureaucratic dinosaur full of well meaning but mostly out of touch people. I know a handful of awesome folk there who are frequently frustrated at the tightly woven red tape that holds together an inefficient and disconnected mashup of microsystems.
The fact that BC believes LBGTQI+ people exist because of “deviant behavior,” rather than being born with an orientation is very telling and incredibly disturbing. They want to “save” people, but not because they care about them: it’s to perpetuate the ugly grooming lie that’s spreading like a virus. They only care about their image, not helping or supporting people who need help.
So do they think gays are like Dementors or werewolves? One "grooms" someone and then that new gay becomes the next groomer? How utterly insane are humans. People aye.
I LOVE the name "Webworm", but it could have been called "Dog With a Bone"! Thanks for living up to your journalism award standards & following up on these things. Too many times in this media saturated world of crises (real & imagined), something is brought into the light of day but allowed to sink out of sight because journalists go chasing the next bright shiny story.
BC will only change over time if their practices become unacceptable to the community that they draw their students from, and in many cases I would suspect parents coming into the system now would not be aware of some of this, so the more publicity the better.
As an analyst that works primarily with evaluators (in the US), I totally get their response. The worst part about being an external evaluator is that you can scream until you're blue in the face but unless there are actual levers in place (eg consequences), all you're really doing is writing a report that can be summed up with 'the students desperately need your help - won't you please listen?'. Sometimes publishing the report publicly helps guilt them into changing, but honestly your old school sounds so totally arrogant that I don't even know if public pressure would make a dent.
I hope your Ministry has those levers outside of just dismantling the whole school.
As a bisexual woman who was raised attending a religious school, these types of practices make my blood boil. I had friends in middle school and high school who came out and were effectively barred and excommunicated from the community—expelled from school, asked to no longer attend church and gossiped about by their former teachers and peers. The emotional blowback was immense on these children’s—my friends—lives. My parents were *literally* the only family who stepped in. This was an immense organization, not some tiny private school. Children were kicked out of their homes by their parents, had their entire social and educational structure ripped from them. It’s appalling and grotesque and changed my perception of the church forever. All because these fools choose to cherry-pick verses to fit their own narrative.
Thankful for you holding these clowns accountable. To damage small children during their formative years for not fitting into your small cherry-picked world view is unconscionable. Keep fighting the good fight🪱
I’m so sorry you experience this, thanks goodness for your parents. How horrid. And completely the opposite of what I believe good Christian’s should do. Their God is all loving. ALL loving.
Heartbreaking to know their story is not uncommon. Just one of many. I would think NZ would be doing a better job of things and not making a mess of crossing church and state the way we are so damn good at in the U.S. And you're right, Natalie! The irony of preaching Jesus' teachings and to enact the exact opposite on your own community is not only disturbing but also deeply bizarre. If there is a God in the way the Christian faith likes to characterizes them I just cannot fathom they'd be happy with the way their "disciples" are enacting their word. It's all fraught!
Public schools in NZ are obligated to be secular thankfully, far more inclusive that way. Private schools are another beast though. A lot of religious families tend to send their children to a private school associated with their church because public is secular, and they also teach sexual health in public too. Definitely can't have teachers talking to students about sexual health!
Totally. It's so miserable.
I do think the integrated thing is so annoying in particular: if you're taking any taxpayer money directly - for the purpose of educating kids - that money needs to stop the second you start making LGBTQI+ kids feel shit.
What's most concerning is studies have shown there is a link between neurodiversity and spirituality i.e. you are more likely to be involved in religion and spirituality if you are neurodiverse than if you are neurotypical. Do you know who is also tightly linked to neurodiversity? The LGBTQI+ community. So of all communities, religious ones should be making inclusivity their top priority, with or without the funding.
Like a dog with a bone. I freaking love it. Because we all know as soon as we look away it's the status quo all over again. You have to keep shining the light to get people to clean up their act. The school will get safer too. As will the other schools that see that you don't get to get away with this stuff without people calling you out. Then we all shuffle slowly closer to equality. You are making a difference.
I have so many thoughts.
I’m not sure if BC is similar to an American charter school, but considering that it runs of taxpayer $ but still has enrollment with a waiting list and all that, it sounds like there is some crossover. There is a lot of danger when a school is allowed to have their own mission and values that don’t relate to learning, but rather instilling cherry-picked religious beliefs or “ethics,” but still runs on the dime of the community. There are plenty of amazing charter schools here in America, but also plenty of corrupt ones as well.
As a teacher, it breaks my heart to think of students whose identities are being invalidated or even being told they are immoral for who they have a crush on. It truly feels like censorship to not acknowledge or to damn sexualities and identities that don’t align with a school’s so-called morals. Makes my blood boil and makes me want to cry for those hurt by it at the same time. Gah.
My heart goes out to those students impacted by schools like this, and the lack of accountability and change being made by the governing bodies meant to keep them in check. It’s really shitty all around.
Thanks for keeping up with this and for the update. I think it’s great we have a thing called ERO, but I think like so many public resources, they are underfunded and under resourced. ERO are supposed to review schools every three years and I recently looked up own children’s school to see how their most recent review went and they haven’t had one since 2016. So they were overdue when the pandemic hit and haven’t caught up as things have started to settle. 3 or more years is a long time when children only attend that particular school for a couple more than that. And most especially when the issues to be addressed are as serious as this. I really hope that the renewed attention lights a fire under the ministry of education and ERO and they see this through properly.
I just added an edit to the top of my piece - BC sent out a newsletter confirming what I said.
2 ERO's in under a year is a big deal. BC will be pissed. They *are* pissy. And gaslighting.
It's actually *on average* every 3 years. If a school shows "a stable reporting history and can demonstrate good self-review processes and use of assessment information" then it's less frequent. And I'm sure Covid did affect things but it's likely not as late as it initially seems for your children's school.
Having worked in media or comms for a million years I have to say this new iteration of Ministry of Ed comms (the last four years or so) is fucking appalling. I’ve basically given up on sending them media queries because they never answer a question. On top of that when you send an OIA they give the person you’re doing the OIA about your contact details just FYI. Pretty fucking bleak and dangerous - especially if your queries are around right wing extremism and LGBTQIA+ representation in schools.
The Ministry of Education is balls to deal with (their top dogs). Their comms people are just doing the best they can - but the MINISTRY kinda sucks, eh.
Also congrats on the voyager!
Thank you, Emily. I feel proud of that one. Also - hi! Gosh I like seeing you here, always.
😍 I’m always here x super proud of you and your mahi always!
Unless they sought your permission, surely sharing your details with someone else is a breach of the Privacy Act?
This seems pretty balls, I agree.
I felt annoyed when the ERO dropped in "We're telling BC, too".
Gee, thanks.
They do the same thing they said to David - they let you know in the letter back.
They definitely shouldn't be sharing your contact details without your permission. I work in an OIA team and we only share details of requesters if they've given permission (we always ask first).
MoE sharing your contact details and information about your request seems like a pretty clear breach of Principle 11 of the Privacy Act. Definitely worth making a complaint to the OPC if you can be bothered. Unless they're sharing with other government agencies for the purpose of consulting on a response, that's where it might be a grey area.
I dont want to go off on a rant, as I am prone to do, but my firmly held belief is this: there should be NO religious indoctrination in any school anywhere. No gubblemunt money to any religious organisation whatever, and all churches need to be taxed like the for profit "Businesses" they are. Separation of church and state, yo!
That's not a rant, it's succinct - and I agree.
I love that you are shining a light on these things, and not simply letting it go. The world needs more of it!
I figure it's worth staying on top of things - even just so people (me included) can see the process and how *difficult* these systems are to change. Not that we didn't know that already - but seeing it play out is kinda fascinating.
This is a great little example of why our education system is doing such a poor job generally of creating safe environments and teaching kids effectively. There is no accountability anywhere in the system, because the customers are kids and they have no voice, and the grown ups have very strong incentives to work nicely with each other and not have to actually confront problems. ERO and the ministry have such a high bar for doing anything, and in the mean time, its only the kids who suffer. To be clear though I don’t blame the individuals in the system (other than those folks at BC, they’re deranged as you say)- it’s the system itself that’s the problem, and a lack of political will to fix it.
I’d forgotten about the slight to your ethics! WTF, you’re an award winning journalist! ....on the podium with John Campbell. I like that ERO is telling the school that you enquired. Hope they said...’award winning investigative journalist DF was asking about the review’ and ‘maybe it’ll be his story in the awards next year’ Bring it on.
Just updated this article with a newsletter BC sent out - mostly screaming about Stuff.co.nz. who they *did* talk to.
Gosh life is funny.
As a comms person here is a blow by blow account of what happened when your email popped into the Ministry of Education inbox:
1) "Fuck"
2) Some poor schmuck on about $60k a year who probably reads Webworm calls his boss and forwards the email on with a suggested
3) "Fuck"
4) Boss asks schmuck to reach out to the Subject Matter Expert (SME) who has been dealing with BC and get the latest. Boss then fowards your email to their boss cc'ing in about 17 people
5) "Fuck" x 17
6) An email thread occurs where people higher up the chain say vague things.
7) Schmuck writes up a clean clear media response which actually answers your question. Saves it. Sends it as an attachment to his boss.
8) Boss edits the attachment and sends to the email chain of 17 people with the ❗️"important" notification turned on in Outlook.
9) Boss gets 23 different versions of the same doc back. Some are completely rewritten. Some have tracked changes. Some "fix" minor "errors" which are actually against the Ministry's style guide.
10) Boss tries to resolve all these changes into one document and after 47 minutes he decides to put the mess into Chat GPT and get it to rewrite the whole thing. Copy. Paste. Sends it back to the Dep Sec who the quotes will come from for approval.
11) Dep Sec rewrites the whole thing again, hits send, then immediately calls the schmuck, who in their head is like "Why are you calling me?" and dictates further changes to them despite them not having the email.
12) Schmuck calls the boss, passes on the changes.
13) "Fuck"
14) Boss makes changes, and sends response back to Schmuck to send to you.
15) Schmuck sees the bad grammar and mistakes, has a quiet chuckle to themself and then hits send.
16) Schmuck heads home and refreshes their personal inbox waiting for you to send out your next Webworm.
As usual this made me smile a lot. Your comments. Always very accurate.
Oh I get so grumpy when the church claims marriage is this exclusive thing created by God. Nope. Originally it was just a legal process, nothing to do with church, God etc. Just your standard sale and purchase agreement.
This is such great work. Keep the heat on, hopefully they’ll be forced to change.
I wish the education system was more progressive. It’s not just the religious schools that are stuck in the dark ages. My daughters school is only just giving their uniform a revamp to include shorts next year. I mean, come on. She currently bikes to school in a pencil skirt.
Maybe not having school uniforms is the one example of how America is more progressive than NZ 😂
One of the many reasons I was unpopular with my teachers (many years ago now) was that I suggested that school uniforms were instruments of fascism, and should be banned outright on that basis. I loved detention, though (to date myself even further) it was pretty far from The Breakfast Club.
I had a similar experience at school, where in a social studies class the teacher was discussing why Jews in concentration camps were all made to dress the same (stripping identity, control, etc). I was the one who raised my hand and pointed out the elephant in the room. To be fair to that teacher they did say they weren't a fan of school uniform, but of course it wasn't up to them. They certainly never pulled people up on little breaches like jewellery.
Sarah - the role of school uniforms in Aotearoa-New Zealand is a giant plus IMHO, as a student of limited means who went to 5 different schools in my time. The kids with well off parents wore the same uniform, and had to adhere to the same rules of uniform standard, as the kids with really poor parents (and the schools had an active 2nd hand market of good quality uniforms to recycle down at low cost). It was almost impossible to tell which was which, which is the whole point. It is even more valuable in these days of much more expensive & varied designer clothing & footwear where the disparity in access to such things would be much more pronounced, and less well off kids made to feel they are missing out OR be bullied for having tatty clothes etc.
And yeah - some things (like trousers & shorts for girls) can be out of touch & stupid, but doesn't negate the benefits overall. Of course, rich parents can send their kids to "better" schools, but they still have to wear uniforms as far as I am aware ...
Seems to be common in our secondary school, although a lot of primary (particularly low decide primaries) seem to be moving to uniforms
At the core of BC's policy regarding LGBTQI+ is an unwavering belief that one is not "born that way" but is groomed or conditioned by the environment to be "deviant". Grooming is very topical these days and all the garbage coming out of the US regarding LGBTQI+ must be quite validating for them. From that standpoint they are sure that they can pray away the gay and convert the deviant individual even if secular and political positions say otherwise... because GOD. And BIBLE. So, as your coverage has clearly shown, they can change what's written on paper but that doesn't change their beliefs or practices.
How might ERO or even the MoE possibly be able to uncover conversion practices in a community that is so thoroughly mindfucked? Experience leads me to doubt the MoE will do anything of substance, particularly in an election year. ERO will put out a report that accentuates the positives and glosses over the serious issues with vague encouragements to review policies. In the meantime any students there who are grappling with a growing sense of self and identity that doesn't fit the deeply entrenched narrative will be feeling the fires of hell rapidly approaching.
You are totally right. Their beliefs are "not born that way" and that's the end of it. Outdated, ignorant, ridiculous views.
That is what underpins all of this. It's what I experienced there, and it's what kids will be experiencing there now.
If the ERO was talking to me about this shit when I was 15? No way I would say a goddamn thing.
So dumb.
Anyway - the Ministry of Education and ERO are new to me, and so far - imo - they kinda suck. Just my kneejerk reaction.
Not particularly professional take from me - but eh, honesty is how these Webworm comments work.
I will keep on it.
In my not so recent past I’ve worked in comms for several govt depts including MoE - and the bullshit that simmers away in these organisations makes me want to eat my own vomit. The wrong things are taken so seriously- the hierarchy, the Minister, and the head of the Ministry- it’s all very “yesMinister” (reference to old BBC comedy about English politics). Some of the Comms people believe their own bullshit and stay in their roles for ever. Others get real jobs. Again thank you for the insightful reporting David.
Yup, keep on it David. For the sake of the kids, LGBTQI+ and otherwise. Your take on the MoE ain't wrong, sad to say. It's a big, messy, bureaucratic dinosaur full of well meaning but mostly out of touch people. I know a handful of awesome folk there who are frequently frustrated at the tightly woven red tape that holds together an inefficient and disconnected mashup of microsystems.
The fact that BC believes LBGTQI+ people exist because of “deviant behavior,” rather than being born with an orientation is very telling and incredibly disturbing. They want to “save” people, but not because they care about them: it’s to perpetuate the ugly grooming lie that’s spreading like a virus. They only care about their image, not helping or supporting people who need help.
So do they think gays are like Dementors or werewolves? One "grooms" someone and then that new gay becomes the next groomer? How utterly insane are humans. People aye.
Apparently. 🙄
100%
Thank you.
Figure it's worth keeping on. It's mad how 11 months have passed. It didn't seem that long in my own head.
This is what happens as we get older, David. Have to suck that one up, sadly.
Time becomes much scarier the more that is behind us!
The irony of an email reply from the ERO requiring a [sic]
Education, huh.
I LOVE the name "Webworm", but it could have been called "Dog With a Bone"! Thanks for living up to your journalism award standards & following up on these things. Too many times in this media saturated world of crises (real & imagined), something is brought into the light of day but allowed to sink out of sight because journalists go chasing the next bright shiny story.
BC will only change over time if their practices become unacceptable to the community that they draw their students from, and in many cases I would suspect parents coming into the system now would not be aware of some of this, so the more publicity the better.
Webworm: Dog With A Bone
(that is what the movie will be called)
As an analyst that works primarily with evaluators (in the US), I totally get their response. The worst part about being an external evaluator is that you can scream until you're blue in the face but unless there are actual levers in place (eg consequences), all you're really doing is writing a report that can be summed up with 'the students desperately need your help - won't you please listen?'. Sometimes publishing the report publicly helps guilt them into changing, but honestly your old school sounds so totally arrogant that I don't even know if public pressure would make a dent.
I hope your Ministry has those levers outside of just dismantling the whole school.
You’re doing God’s work, David x