Australian mayor apologizes after council youth worker tells ‘white, male & Christian’ students they are ‘oppressors’
The incident allegedly took place at Parkdale Secondary College in a beachside suburb of Melbourne, Australia, last week, but was first reported by the Sunday Herald on Sunday.
The paper reported that the Kingston Youth Services worker was giving a presentation about “privilege, pronouns and “intersectionality”’ to year-11 students last Wednesday. As part of the presentation, the unnamed female worker told teens who considered themselves to be “male,” “white” and “Christian” to stand up and then chastised them for being the well-off class, reportedly labeling them as “oppressors.”
The students were apparently taken aback by the identity-based diatribe, telling the Herald that they felt “ashamed” and “shocked” by the spectacle. One said that the students were reluctant to confront the narrative out of fear they would be labeled “homophobic” by the worker, who was also reportedly advocating LGBTQI+ rights.
Parents of the children also failed to appreciate the teaching method and the agenda to which it was attached, with one parent telling the paper that he believes the school “is not the place to indoctrinate kids with divisive ideas” that prioritize a skin color over character.
Following the outrage, the school principal condemned the incident, expressing his “disappointment” with the way the lesson was conducted. However, he signaled that the school was familiar with the content of the presentation, noting that the administration “discussed” with the speaker its content and the delivery, but claimed the school was left in the dark about the name-and-shame interaction.
The uproar soon spilled over beyond the school walls, and saw the
mayor of Kingston, a city to which the suburb belongs, apologize for the
incident, promising an “investigation into this as a matter of urgency.”
A Califorina elementary school was rocked by a scandal in January after it was reported that young children were instructed to create “identity maps” and were told that they live in a “white, middle-class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian, English speaker” dominant culture where “those with privilege have power over others.”
More recently, a Virginia school came under fire after a teacher was filmed berating a student for refusing to acknowledge racial differences.
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