LOOP News – Minister of Education for Grenada David Andrew has made it clear that there are no plans to introduce any LGBTQ curriculum in schools nor or there any plans to change any laws or any curriculum in schools.
Andrew made a statement on the issue after rumours began circulating online about alleged changes to the Health and Family Life Education (HLFE) Curriculum.
The Education minister during a Senate sitting this week said: “Within the last few weeks there has been a lot of chatter about the government allegedly having a plan to introduce an LGBTQ curriculum in schools from September.
I struggle to understand that for a number of reasons because I don’t understand what an LGBTQ curriculum is… so I struggled to even conceptualise what was being thought when people saying the minister is hiding… calling out the minister.
I want to put it on record, I want to make it categorically clear that the Ministry of Education… the government, we have no plan to change the curriculum neither to introduce any… well I don’t even know what the LGBTQ curriculum is….
(I’m struggling with that)… but we have no plan to introduce any such curriculum and there is no plan to change the law contrary to what is being bandied about and that the HLFE curriculum that is currently in use is the HLFE curriculum that has been adopted since 2009. That’s the same one being used and there’s no plan to change it.”
The Education Minister said the confusion that has been created probably out of mischief, probably surrounds a document which is an international technical guidance on sexuality education and focuses on comprehensive sexuality education.
Andrew said it is a document that was first published in 2009 which Grenada signed onto in 2018 under the former administration.
The Education minister revealed teachers and guidance counsellors were trained in 2019 about the international guidance document (not part of the curriculum) which when read, one would realise it needs to be tailored to suit the culture and values of the various international communities that you might choose to use or guide to. He said there is no exception for Grenada.
If anything has to be used from the document (which is a guidance or reference, not a curriculum) then it has to be adapted and be within values within the cultural norms of society to which it is applied.
“What’s the fear… what’s the worry,” said the Education Minister.
He went on to add: “I want to assure every parent at home… I want to assure every school teacher…every guardian… any concerned Grenadian citizen, that under this government’s watch, we are committed to the values of the Grenadian people… there is no plan to change the curriculum to introduce sexuality education or to introduce a new LGBTQ curriculum or anything of that sort and we remain committed to the values of the Grenadian people.”
However, the education minister left this message before ending his response on the matter:“I want to say we have an aversion to sexuality that we need to look at because that’s where the scare is coming from… because all those things are right around us…in the news, in the cartoons, in the advertisements, they are everywhere.
If we pretend they don’t exist and put our heads in the sand like ostriches, and pretend it does not exist around us and tell education to shut up and tell the church to shut up… who informs our children about the right values… who informs them about how to make the right choices?”
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