NOW I don’t know about you, but my school days were a heady mix of Peter Rabbit, Penguin bars, hopscotch and playing Third Sheep in the nativity.
The classroom today is a very different beast.
Forget Ps and Qs, youngsters are being told girls have penises.
Racist, sexist, fattest Roald Dahl is gone — in his place the dogma that men can get pregnant, willy-nilly.
And biology — photosynthesis, osmosis or the dissecting of a dead frog — is out.
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Now it’s sex ed with bondage, sadomasochism and domination topping the agenda.
A new poll shows one in ten school-children want to change gender — or have already done so — while almost a third are being taught that women can have willies.
The report by think tank Civitas also showed 20 per cent of youngsters were being told blokes can get up the duff while, perhaps even more alarmingly, almost a quarter had been taught about BDSM.
Quite why someone studying The Tempest also needs to know about gimp masks and ball gags is beyond me.
We know that our hard-working, Guardian-lapping teachers are liberals at heart.
But there’s liberal . . . and then there’s brainwashing.
On the gender front, almost every kid — myself included — goes through a phase of wanting to be the opposite sex, or gender cosplaying.
Aged six, one day I’d be tottering around in my mum’s high heels and a feather boa; the next, calling myself James and driving around in an imaginary Formula One racing car (I was an eccentric child).
The James phase lasted quite a while, and in today’s world — as I’ve written here before — I’d be given hormone blockers, and excitedly Googling phalloplasty. Thank God I wasn’t, and didn’t.
To caveat, then, much of this poll needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt.
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Kids have experimented with gender since time immemorial. To be in such a rush today to quantify it, label it and analyse is, in many cases, unnecessary scaremongering.
But over on TikTok, the young person’s encyclopedia, a raft of videos are going viral showing parents declaring their babies “gender neutral”.
Terrifying.
Men are men, women are women.
Why is this so hard to accept? Why must I be a “they”?
Why must I be confronted with someone’s’ chosen pronouns at the bottom of an email signature?
Why is what someone has between their legs being rammed, metaphorically speaking, down our throats?
Parents have a right to know exactly what their children are being taught in sex education lessons.
The Department of Education must start issuing clearer guidelines and ensuring kids, teachers and parents are singing from roughly similar hymn sheets.
Unquestionably, right now, many of our schools are preaching from a crippling and contradictory woke agenda.
In the same poll, four tenths of 16 to 18-year-olds said they had learnt young men were a “problem in society” and that Britain was a “structurally racist country”.
In other words, the next generation is being taught to feel nothing but shame.
Shame at their ancestors, shame of their country and shame of their very being.
Many of our teachers preach on social media about #bekind.
On what planet is this healthy — or kind?
ON Sunday night my friend and I went to a relatively trendy – and predictably expensive – restaurant in Richmond, South West London.
The bread basket cost £4.50, and the cheapest (small) glass of wine came in a tenner. But hey, it was a treat.
A treat, that is, until a visit to the “gender neutral” loos, where I was greeted by the toilet seat up, and smelly man-wee all over the floor.
Now, I’m all for progression, but this literally takes the p***.
Someone, anyone, make it stop.
Wadd a way for Hannah to shine at Eurovision
AGED 48, a star is born.
I’ve been wanging on for months and months about the brilliance of Hannah Waddingham and now, finally, everyone recognises it thanks to her show-stealing antics at Eurovision.
The Emmy-winning Ted Lasso actress is already huge Stateside and, until recently, has largely plied her trade on stage.
Above all else, though, it’s refreshing to see a woman two years shy of 50 being celebrated by all demographics – and on the cusp of global superstardom.
Good things happen to talented people.
Janice in appy ending
CONGRATULATIONS to Myleene Klass, winner of South African-filmed I’m A Celebrity.
But the real winner, really, was Janice Dickinson.
The former model apparently quit the contestants’ WhatsApp group following a string of off-air bust-ups.
In today’s digitised age, WhatsApp is increasingly becoming the most passive-aggressive tool in our collective armoury.
Last week a friend ruthlessly removed me from a group WhatsApp holiday chat because I hadn’t committed to going in time, while “Fred Bloggs has left the chat” is today’s equivalent of a punch in the face.
Brutal.
Kevin a true hero
A MORE poignant, heart-breaking yet strangely life-affirming photograph it will be harder to find.
Images of former rugby league player Rob Burrow, brutally and cruelly struck down by motor neurone disease, being carried over the marathon finish line by his ex-team-mate, Kevin Sinfield, are as haunting as they are beautiful.
Three years on from his diagnosis, Kevin – who pushed Rob the 26.2 miles in his wheelchair – has raised more than £8million for MND charities.
His gentle kiss on Rob’s temple is the embodiment of true friendship and human spirit.
Mel has maid it
TWENTY-five years after we last hosted it, the UK was back at the helm of Eurovision: An opportunity to showcase to the world our industry, tech genius and sympathy with Ukraine.
Enter Mel Giedroyc, churning butter.
Brilliant.
