Recently the Telegraph reported that school children are being taught that Joan of Arc was “non-binary“.
The anachronism is contained in the Who We Are anthology which is published by Collins for use in English lessons at school. It is aimed at 11-14 year olds. The relevant part reads: “Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.”
The term comes from gender ideology. If as a man/woman you don’t feel entirely manly/womanly then you are non-binary. This leads some girls to believe there is a right way to be a girl – and they are not it. Some of these girls end up on a pathway to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and irreversible harm.
The Joan of Arc story is an example of how the teaching of gender ideology in schools has escaped out of the ‘Relationship, Sex and Health Education’ curriculum where it started and into the mainstream. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive” – it’s an illustration of Sir Walter Scott’s aphorism, contained in ‘Marmion’, and which school children would be better off learning; deception unleashed is hard to control.
The story also illustrates how it is not just a small number of LGBTQIA cranks who foist harmful pseudoscience upon school children. Collins is part of HarperCollins, considered one of the ‘Big Five’ English language publishers. It has a 200 year-old reputation to protect, but it has come to pass that it openly promotes gender ideology to school children.
Collins sells a three book series for use with children in Key Stage 3 (ages 11 to 14) and covering all of the PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic) and RSHE (Relationship, Sex, and Health Education) curriculums. Encapsulating the PSHE and RSHE requirements of successive governments, the series is a fascinating read. The best of the Western canon, the wisdom of the ages, it is not.
Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” When we decided that our state schools should not teach our children the 2,000 year old exploration of the human condition that is contained in the Christian canon it left us with books like Collins’s Your Choice, Books One, Two and Three. The title does not bode well. The series’ starting point is identity politics; Unit 1 is entitled You and your identity.
The extracts below show how the spread of gender ideology has resulted in even our reputable publishers undermining their reputations for rigour and integrity.
This is confusing nonsense – targeted at 11 year-olds:
This is the discombobulating crankery of about two parents being normalised:
The suggestion below that a child’s gender should “feel right” is pernicious. Gender ideology and its idea that we all have an inner gender identity encourages children down a pathway of introspection. Abigail Shrier in her book Bad Therapy explains how damaging this is; rumination and inner-state fixation are markers for depression. Consider the alternative starting point of Jesus’s instruction “to love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbour as yourself”. Which of these, an outward focus towards others, or inner reflection about your identity, encourages greater curiosity, a more enquiring mind, a more outward focus and generous spirit?
The normalisation of gender ideology crosses into other RSHE subjects – this section below is on “Exploring your sexuality”. How did the human race cope before RSHE? Note the anti-parent push here too.
Here, elementary science is undermined as being a myth. What are children meant to make of this? Who benefits from our confusing them in this way?
Here children are taught that ‘trans women are women’. How did such arrant nonsense make its way into a school textbook published by a mainstream publisher of 200 years standing? Why did no-one in the entire Collins hierarchy say no?
Collins Your Choice Book Two has a two page spread on “Caring for your feet and back”. It has six pages on alcohol use. But it introduces children to gender surgeries and hormone treatment without a note about their high risk and irreversible consequences:
Finally, here is Collins lecturing kids about how to support friends who buy into this pseudoscience.
The complicity of Collins in this promotion of harmful gender gobbledegook illustrates what a serious problem we have. Science and reason are bedrocks of our society. So is the role of the adult to speak the truth and pass on our shared accumulated wisdom to our children. But via gender ideology we are undermining science, defying reason and lying to children. Gender ideology has exposed our human fallibility.
Campaigners against gender ideology being taught to school children have focused their efforts on calling for updated RSHE guidance as well as greater parental visibility of the curriculum. But the Collins books are publicly available, entirely visible and full of gender ideology. And the Joan of Arc material is from an English textbook. We have a wider problem.
For decades we have had a culture where parents have generally trusted schools and the school curriculum. We have dropped children off at the school gate and arrived back at pick-up.
But now those days of trusting negligence are surely over. Instead we need a culture that takes a far greater interest in what we are teaching our children at school. We currently see more reviews and greater public discussion about the new Snow White movie than we do about the books being used to teach our children. If we do read about the school curriculum it is usually only via exposés, for example, the ‘Joan of Arc is non-binary’ story.
Part of the solution needs to involve normalising all of us taking a much greater interest in what we are teaching our children, the cultural legacy we are passing on. We should regularly be reviewing school materials, assigning star ratings, creating public discussion and engagement.
From me, Collins’s Your Choice Books One, Two, and Three gets a bad review and zero stars.
Caroline Ffiske is a Director of Conservatives for Women. Find her on X.
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