LifeSite | by Jonathan Van Maren | April 12, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) — For decades, progressives have been aggressively informing us that they are devout fans of “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” These words have taken on an almost totemic significance, with “diversity is our strength” becoming a mantra for Canadian lefties. I have my quibbles with these buzz-words—diversity is a description, not a value—but I have often found myself wishing, over the past few years, that those who brandish these terms actually believed in them.
What we have found as the LGBT movement achieved cultural dominance is that for progressives, “diversity” is where people look different, but think the same. Thus, Western nations (primarily Anglosphere countries) can take in enormous numbers of immigrants from developing countries, so long as the many children of these immigrants are poured into the funnel of the state education system and emerge with the same values as the post-Christian kids. In Canada, immigrant communities have protested the radical sex-ed of the state schools; in the U.K., it is mostly Muslims who are fighting back against indoctrination.
Anyone who wants a nauseating glimpse of what state schools have become merely needs to follow journalists like Christopher Rufo or Chaya Raichik (more famously known as “Libs of TikTok”). But for a perfect microcosm of how entitled, post-Christian educators feel about the indoctrination they’ve been tasked with, this video clip of a teacher reading his students the riot act at the Stationers’ Crown Woods Academy, a secondary school and sixth form in the Greenwich area near London, England, really encapsulates the attitude of educators towards diversity (of thought).
Schools have become Maoist indoctrination camps.
— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) April 1, 2023
“Let me make this very clear,” the teacher tells his students. “You don’t have a choice whether or not you learn about LGBT+ in this school. You don’t have a choice. It’s one of our values, and if you refuse to do it, that will be dealt with severely. Why would I not? Why would I care if anyone in this room wants to love somebody, whether it be a man or a woman? Why would I care if someone wants to say: ‘Do you know what? I don’t know if I’m more male or more female. I’m exploring.’ Why does that matter to me?”
It’s a good question, because it obviously matters to this man very, very much. He goes on: “It doesn’t hurt you, but it definitely hurts other people by the words you use. You don’t understand that this has an impact.” When he was in school, the teacher said, he’d been bullied by the girls, and he hasn’t forgotten it. “Why would anyone choose to say something that would hurt anyone else? Let me make this very clear: You don’t have a choice whether or not you learn about LGBT+ in this school. You don’t have a choice. It’s one of our values, a British value … and if you say something that’s derogatory or could hurt somebody else in this room, that is very serious, and it is as serious as if you were using racist language. Do not do it.”
“That’s the value,” the teacher concluded. “That’s the approach we take in this school. And if there are people sat here who don’t agree with what I’m saying, you need to go home and have a conversation with your parents. Say: ‘Why are my values so different to what Britain is? Why have I got this view? Where does it come from?’ The only thing you can be taken out of [class for] is sex education, and that is from your parents … Nobody in this room has done that. LGBTQ is not sex education. That is relationships. You do not have the authority or the ability to refuse to do it. I cannot tell you how much having people not recognize who I am and openly say that they don’t value who I am, because when you say ‘I don’t agree with LGBTQ people,’ you’re saying you don’t value me.”
It is clear, at this point, that the teacher is forcing a hostage audience of children to affirm his identity: “I’ve given a lot to this world,” he said. “I’ve adopted two children.”
“Why should I be judged based on who I choose to love? Whether you agree or not, don’t say something that’s going to make me or someone like me feel less human … Anyone got any questions?” Unsurprisingly, there are none.
That teacher’s tirade — and his tone is almost jarringly aggressive — is a good encapsulation of what public education looks like. There is not multiculturalism here — only a monoculture, flying the “Progress” flag, or “Pride” flag, or transgender flag. There is no choice. There is no diversity. There is no dissent. And if you come from a family with traditional values, this homosexual teacher wants you to go home and berate them and ask them why you’re different and then convert to his values, instead.
