Recently the Telegraph reported that school children are being taught that Joan of Arc was “non-binary“.
The anachronism is contained in the Who We Are anthology which is published by Collins for use in English lessons at school. It is aimed at 11-14 year olds. The relevant part reads: “Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.”
The term comes from gender ideology. If as a man/woman you don’t feel entirely manly/womanly then you are non-binary. This leads some girls to believe there is a right way to be a girl – and they are not it. Some of these girls end up on a pathway to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and irreversible harm.
The Joan of Arc story is an example of how the teaching of gender ideology in schools has escaped out of the ‘Relationship, Sex and Health Education’ curriculum where it started and into the mainstream. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive” – it’s an illustration of Sir Walter Scott’s aphorism, contained in ‘Marmion’, and which school children would be better off learning; deception unleashed is hard to control.
The story also illustrates how it is not just a small number of LGBTQIA cranks who foist harmful pseudoscience upon school children. Collins is part of HarperCollins, considered one of the ‘Big Five’ English language publishers. It has a 200 year-old reputation to protect, but it has come to pass that it openly promotes gender ideology to school children.
Collins sells a three book series for use with children in Key Stage 3 (ages 11 to 14) and covering all of the PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic) and RSHE (Relationship, Sex, and Health Education) curriculums. Encapsulating the PSHE and RSHE requirements of successive governments, the series is a fascinating read. The best of the Western canon, the wisdom of the ages, it is not.
Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” When we decided that our state schools should not teach our children the 2,000 year old exploration of the human condition that is contained in the Christian canon it left us with books like Collins’s Your Choice, Books One, Two and Three. The title does not bode well. The series’ starting point is identity politics; Unit 1 is entitled You and your identity.
The extracts below show how the spread of gender ideology has resulted in even our reputable publishers undermining their reputations for rigour and integrity.
This is confusing nonsense – targeted at 11 year-olds:
Read More: Indoctrination of Schoolchildren with Gender Ideology Goes Mainstream
