The following is the video and transcription of a speech by Katherine Chua, a passionate mother at an East Auckland primary school, to the school board this week.

Transcription:

Thank you, Mellons Bay Board, for putting me on the agenda. Thank you to the school parents, wider community, and my church family who have come to hear me speak.  Father God, please let the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be acceptable to you.  Help me to love and do good to my neighbour, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

To the Board, I have come to speak to you today because I am deeply troubled by the new RSE curriculum, and I’d like to contextualise my concerns in a discussion of risk and by appealing to our school values.

I also realise the school has obligations to teach from this curriculum, as it is mandated by the MOE.  However, I would like to propose that together we find ways to contend with relationships and sexuality education in a way that is consistent with our school values, Respect, Responsibility and Resilience and in a way that is congruent with our community character.

There is risk to Mellon’s Bay students. 

The guidelines of the RSE seek to enable children to be free of the limits of biological sex, whether in name, pronouns, toilet usage, clothing or any other behaviours.  To change one’s name and pronouns is called social transition.  This is never a neutral act, but rather a powerful psychological technique that can make a child disassociate more strongly from their biology when forming their identity.  It can lead to permanent, life-altering interventions – including preventing puberty, using cross-sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen, removing healthy organs.

Evidence:

• p.8 “all schools need to allow their akonga freedom of expression in relation to their gender identities and sexual orientation, including the right to determine their own identity and name”
• p.19 “school rolls and records use each person’s name, gender and pronoun of choice” “all school forms allow for genders in addition to male or female”
• p.20 “language should recognise gender diversity” “akonga can access toilets and changing rooms that align with their gender identification”
• p.21 “labelling uniform items by gender is an exclusionary practice”
• p.36 “… change exclusionary practices such as lining up in girls’ and boys’ lines”
• p.31 “understand the difference between gender and sex”
• p.48 “Gender – an individual identity related to a continuum of masculinities and femininities. A person’s gender is not fixed or immutable.”  “Gender binary – the (incorrect) assumption that there are only two genders (girl/boy or man/woman).”)

This curriculum does not show respect for the child, and does not align with our school values. Children are unable to give informed consent, something this curriculum regards as foundational, as the frontal lobe of their brain, responsible for critical thinking and decision making, only matures at age 25.  They are not ready to face the foundational questions of their identity either.

Psychologists such as Erick Erickson put identity questions into the adolescent phase.  It is not respectful to force children to question aspects of themselves that they are not developmentally ready to question.

It is unkind to make a child doubt everything they know about themselves, even the skin they are in, when they are not developmentally ready to do this.

The RSE encourages us to shirk our responsibility in providing students with a safe growing environment, and so does not align with our school values.

The approach to prioritise gender over biology is not safe, and is inconsistent with safe practice in other areas.  If our child has anorexia, we encourage them to accept and affirm their body.  If our child is cutting themselves, we try to resolve the mental health issues driving this so they will no longer harm their body.  Why then if there are changeable, gender fluid feelings, would we affirm children to rely on these at the expense of their body, with harmful medicines and even future surgeries?

The “affirmation only” approach to gender dysphoria is a change from the prior “watchful waiting” approach, which saw most children resolve their dysphoric feelings by the end of puberty.

At Mellon’s Bay it is our responsibility to be a safe place for students to resolve their feelings.

It is cruel to ask young ones to carry the risk of these choices on their own small shoulders.

There is legal risk to the Board and school staff.

The Board must be careful not to expose itself to legal risk by encouraging gender dysphoric ideas to grow here. There is little protection for schools in expert voices, as the science is far from settled on the effects of gender affirming treatment.

There is a lack of long-term research on the effect of affirming therapies, including the effect of puberty blockers and hormones.

Students who may be encouraged to begin transition with school support may later come back and make a case that they were pressured to transition by these “supportive” methodologies.

New Zealand’s Conversion Therapy law could be used to make the case that students were effectively ‘converted’ by the lessons they were taught in school.

Is Mellon’s Bay’s Board ready to face such a challenge?

When experts in medical science and psychology disagree on how to approach dysphoric ideation, programmes like the RSE are ideological, not scientifically driven.  If schools impose an ideology here that hurts kids down the line, there is an ethical burden of responsibility on the Board.  It is responsible, and consistent with our values, to take a slower, precautionary approach, giving field experts more time to know what is good for children, with longitudinal data to support those views.

There is risk to Mellon’s Bay community. 

The Teaching Council’s Code of Responsibility requires a teacher to “respect the diversity … of all learners” (2.1 attached).

I am happy to have my children be part of a school where our family’s right to freedom of religion is respected.

However, the RSE challenges this right.

We would find it offensive and hurtful, if our children were stopped from manifesting our religious beliefs, whether being penalised for withdrawing from RSE content, being corrected for saying that God made us male and female, or being compelled to call a biological girl a boy.  There are other religions with similar sexual ethics represented at our school, and our school is also obligated to accommodate their human right to freedom of religion.

The Ministry of Education has a policy to enable a child to socially transition in secrecy, without parental knowledge.

In one North Island school, the programme “KAMAR” is used to ensure that home communications use the legal name of the child but internal school communications use their transitioned name.  One East Auckland family were devastated to find out by accident that their child had changed their name for a long time without being informed by their child or the school.

The Care of Children Act says that parents, not schools, have power (without limitation) to determine important matters affecting the child, including the child’s name and any changes to it, medical treatment, and the child’s culture, religious denomination and practice.

It is the right of parents and caregivers to be informed about their child’s transition, it is not the place of a school to judge their suitability.  Good education requires a trusting relationship between school and home, but this is undermined by secrecy.

It is the right of parents and guardians to decide the ethical foundations in a child’s life and this work should be respected, not fought by schools.

School communities tend to resist boards that do not respect this right.

I ask the Board whether it will uphold parents’ rights to determine all important matters affecting the child?  This includes asking permission from parents regarding name changes, medical treatment, and any educational materials or practices which are likely to offend.

My final concern is about the risk to women and girls. 

The RSE guidelines seek to redefine or change language, compromising the safety and resilience of our Mellon’s Bay girls.  It was evident from our hui with Mr Shawn Cooper that the word “woman” no longer meant “adult human female” but could also include biological males who self-identify as female.  When the word “woman” is separated from biology, women and girls who suffer relative biological weakness in relation to males can no longer be defined. Therefore, they can no longer logically be protected as a separate category in sporting and physical pursuits, for example.

How will the Board ensure that our children are aware of and will protect the natural biological vulnerabilities of girls and women, while maintaining their dignity and value?

Ironically, many support transgenderism because they think it will eliminate harmful and narrow gender stereotypes, such as those that restrict women.

However, when identity is decoupled from biology, it is the caricatures of gender stereotypes that remain.

This compromises student resilience, as it encourages individuals to mistrust their own diverse gender expression, and encourages them to fit in with the expected gender ‘standard’. For example, “My body is male but that means nothing.  I am kind and gentle, and I like to nurture others – therefore, I must really be a woman”.  Or “My body is female, but I love trucks, I am very active and like to play in the mud – therefore I must really be a boy in a girl’s body”.

Many of these gender stereotypes compromise a students’ sense of self-confidence, and their mental toughness, undermining their sense of belonging. Girls, particularly, are taught the offensive lesson that their femininity can be reduced to a costume.

Gender is a vague term.  It is more accurate not to use this and instead say “Children have a biological sex, and a wide variety of interests and personality traits.”  Liking dolls, trucks, or being disagreeable, does not make you into a man or woman.

How then should you respond to these risks? 

I would like to encourage the Board to communicate openly with parents about their child’s gender questions, despite the difficulty.

I encourage Mellons Bay Board and teachers to value biological realities, and teach our children to also value the marvel of their own bodies.

I call on you to live out your own values: to teach our students to respect their own biology, while respecting the role of parents as the first teachers, to take responsibility for our children by providing a safe environment where they can grow free of harmful ideologies which may hurt first, their growing psychology, and second, their physiology.

And finally, I call on you to invest in student resilience, showing our kids that they do not need to doubt what they have and are.  This will provide a strong psychological foundation from which they can spring back.

In closing: God says my gender diverse neighbour is precious – they are made in his image.  That means they need to be treated respectfully as they bear intrinsic, unchanging value and dignity.   But all of us are also imperfect and broken, none can say they are morally better than another. We have all chosen to shame and reject God, we all fall short of God’s glory and are under his judgment.

Still, there is hope for all of us – God could have left us in this broken state, but he came to restore us.  Jesus came to swap our shame with his honour, our sin with his righteousness, our brokenness with his restoration.  He did this by fully absorbing the wrath of God against sin on himself and declaring, “It is finished”.  Therefore, everybody is welcome to God, including everyone in this school community and everyone on this Board.

When we seek to redefine ourselves we are failing to see ourselves the way that God see us.

Instead we wonder what else could make us worthy? How else can we fit or belong? But Jesus has already answered that question.  He believes we are worth everything, worth giving up his reputation, comfort, and life in order to nurture, protect and rescue.

This is the vision of us I wish our kids could see.

This is how precious they are.

Thank you.