“Parents should never have to learn about what their 12-year-old child is being taught on the front page of the newspaper.”
So says Victorian opposition education spokesman Nick Wakeling, in yet another extraordinary beat-up of queer kids in The Australian by Natasha Bita (who we are beginning to think might have been bullied by a thuggish gang of queer teenagers in high school).
We agree, Nick. You should not be reading about a school curriculum to combat domestic violence in the newspaper — because it is not news.
And Natasha, here are some other things that are not news (and the Oz keeps writing under a red majuscule “EXCLUSIVE”): there are gay kids in the world. They go to school. They go to camp. They grow up and get jobs. And people who are not bullies and bigots opine that these kids should probably not be beaten up. Even in newsprint.
And Natasha would say, …they’re not humans, wouldn’t she?
If “opposition education spokesman Nick Wakeling” is only learning what’s in the curriculum by what’s on the front page of the Australian, then I humbly propose that he has quite comprehensively demonstrated his utter incompetence in that role.
I would say parents who take so little interest in their child’s education they don’t know what they’re being taught until they read it in the paper are much the same.
Limited News.
Even they are too dumb or lazy to have ascertained the curriculum otherwise, is it too much to expect that most parents talk to their own, y’know, kids? Occasionally?