Members of the Combined List (AS) political party have turned to the Saeima Praesidium with a request to demand explanations from Minister of Education and Science Anda Čakša as to how materials Sexual education – question and answers ended up approved for use in schools, as LETA was told by the party’s representative Mudrīte Grundule.
According to AS member Česlavs Batņa,
it is unacceptable for children aged nine to ten years to be provided with information “they are neither mentally nor emotionally prepared to process”. This includes the topic of genders.
Although the introduction in the study materials in question mention that it was created to help teachers to implement the planned results to be achieved by the student in the study content related to sexual education specified in the Cabinet of Ministers regulations, the party found that the regulations in question do not list any specific achievable results mentioned in the study material in question.
Cabinet of Ministers regulations regarding education standards do not mention teaching terms like “gender, trans, cis, gender quads, non-binary identity, gender identity” and others to minors.
AS deputies believe this study material is also in conflict with international normative documents on the right of parents to choose what educational content they choose for their children.
Members of the party also want Čakša to list costs and provide names of the people who prepared these study material.
LETA previously reported that study material published by VISC on sexual and reproductive health was taken off the lesson planning e-environment after a scandal.
Parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Education and Science Silvija Reinberga reports that the ministry has ordered VISC to coordinate study materials with the sector and NGOs representing parents.
As the minister noted on social media, the study material was created without compliance with good management and were therefore taken out of the lesson planning e-environment.
She said these topics have to be discussed with residents, because only knowledge creates understanding.
VISC published information on their website that the centre and its exports are preparing explanations as to how teachers use various methodological aids to help answer questions asked by children and teenagers about sexual and reproductive health.
In response to the publicly reported information and concerns, VISC reports that the format of the study material and content in question is not intended to be demonstrated in front of the entire class.
The information in it is not planned to be shown in full to children in 4th grade.
The study material in question is a recommendation teachers can use if a need for it appears. Teachers always have the option to choose which study materials to use in class and which explanations to provide if children ask questions about health-related topics, VISC explains.
Study materials of this kind are not mandatory, and teachers are not obligated to use them.
There was an enormous backlash in the media about the statement from the director of the Centre for Adolescent and Youth Psychotherapy Nils Sakss Konstantinovs that many parents are shocked by the study materials for primary school children that tell them about
“genderless people”, “fluid gender” and “being born in the wrong body”,
He said it is a discussion about how children are influenced and made.
And influencing children’s idea about them allegedly being born in the wrong body is no laughing matter.
He adds that this idea later takes the shape of extremely serious and irreversible interference with the body on a hormonal and surgical level.
These changes create psychologically traumatised young people with deformed bodies and genitals, as well as psychologically traumatised people who did not find happiness promised to them by doctors and activists.
This is clear from experience of European countries and the US, where more and more young people sue doctors that performed such changes on their bodies when they were still children. This is clear in studies that failed to prove any benefits from such gender corrections, adds Nils Sakss Konstantinovs.
He notes countries that have been openly liberal in such areas, such as Sweden and Norway, have completely ceased puberty-blocking practices among minors.
“Latvian, on the other hand, is behind global trends by about ten years. We are now on the path to opening the door to this clearly harmful, ethically highly questionable and outright pseudoscientific medical practice,” says the director of the Centre for Adolescent and Youth Psychotherapy.
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