Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Arch­bish­op Charles Ja­son Gor­don says he is mon­i­tor­ing the up­ward trend for in­clu­sion of LGBTQI+ con­tent in the school cur­ricu­lum in re­cent times, par­tic­u­lar­ly from in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies.

How­ev­er, he is as­sur­ing par­ents/guardians that for now, their chil­dren are pro­tect­ed from such ma­te­r­i­al by the Con­cor­dat, which is the con­trac­tu­al agree­ment be­tween the de­nom­i­na­tion­al bod­ies and the Gov­ern­ment.

Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on the pro­gramme Shep­herd’s Cor­ner, host­ed by Dea­con Derek Wal­cott on Trin­i­ty TV on Thurs­day evening, Arch­bish­op Gor­don not­ed that the Con­cor­dat—an agree­ment made over half a cen­tu­ry ago—re­mains an im­por­tant bar­ri­er to cur­ricu­lum changes.

“As long as the Con­cor­dat stands, these things can­not be taught of­fi­cial­ly in our schools. No book, or text, or cur­ricu­lum can be in­tro­duced in­to a de­nom­i­na­tion­al school with­out the con­sent of that de­nom­i­na­tion, so we might ac­tu­al­ly be very im­por­tant for the Gov­ern­ment, who has been block­ing this thing lo­cal­ly, but when it comes with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, it’s go­ing to cre­ate a dif­fi­cult space,” the Arch­bish­op said.

In point­ing to the po­ten­tial dan­gers of for­eign in­flu­ence, Arch­bish­op Gor­don ref­er­enced a ques­tion­naire ad­min­is­tered by an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion quizzing chil­dren about their sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der iden­ti­ty in Bar­ba­dos last Oc­to­ber. He said it was “an ex­treme­ly in­tru­sive ques­tion­naire about gen­der flu­id­i­ty, mas­tur­ba­tion, and oth­er ar­eas of sex ed­u­ca­tion, re­sult­ing in ma­jor back­lash.”

The Arch­bish­op said he had been un­able to find any ev­i­dence to sug­gest any such texts were cur­rent­ly be­ing used in schools, but al­so took so­lace in Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly’s state­ment deny­ing that there was any such plan in the works.

How­ev­er, he still cau­tioned those in au­thor­i­ty to be vig­i­lant.

“If some­body has a book that was used in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in a class­room or a ques­tion­naire in­tro­duced to a child that’s in­ap­pro­pri­ate, please send it in,” he urged par­ents/guardians.

Ac­cord­ing to the Arch­bish­op, new tech­nol­o­gy has al­so led to what he de­scribed as the “hid­den cur­ricu­lum.”

He added, how­ev­er, that de­nom­i­na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion was in per­il and steps were need­ed to pre­serve it. “Gov­ern­ment needs to de­cide what it wants, if it wants an un­nec­es­sary fight with the boards, so be it. This is a fight I am pre­pared to fight with all oth­er de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards.”

He al­so al­lud­ed to the trou­bling times on the hori­zon re­gard­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of sex ed­u­ca­tion in the school cur­ricu­lum.

“The USA, the Unit­ed Na­tions and oth­ers are putting pres­sure on Cari­com to in­tro­duce com­pre­hen­sive sex ed­u­ca­tion. This will teach your child that his or her bi­o­log­i­cal sex is not giv­en; that each one could choose to iden­ti­fy as he or she likes.”

The Arch­bish­op’s dis­cus­sion on the pro­gramme came on the heels of po­lar­is­ing con­ver­sa­tions in the pub­lic do­main ear­li­er this week, stem­ming from ru­moured plans to in­tro­duce such an agen­da in the school sys­tem, af­ter im­ages of books which fea­ture sto­ries of les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al, trans­gen­der, and in­ter­sex (LGBTQI+) char­ac­ters sur­faced on so­cial me­dia.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly on Wednes­day de­nied there was any such plan or that there will be any changes to the book­list or cur­ricu­lum for the 2023/2024 aca­d­e­m­ic year.

Arch­bish­op Gor­don al­so stressed that to move the na­tion for­ward to 21st cen­tu­ry ed­u­ca­tion, there was a need for part­ner­ship be­tween the Gov­ern­ment, the de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards and par­ents.

How­ev­er, he said Gov­ern­ment is yet to en­gage in con­ver­sa­tions on the plans and propo­si­tions aimed at strength­en­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

The Arch­bish­op al­so con­tend­ed that there were so­lu­tions to the is­sue that the Con­cor­dat on­ly al­lows for the se­lec­tion of 20 per cent of stu­dents from the SEA list.

“If the Gov­ern­ment se­lect­ed 15 sec­ondary schools in all parts of the na­tion and called them col­leges and con­vents and spent the mon­ey to raise their stan­dards to pres­tige schools, the prob­lem will be solved or on its way to be solved,” he said.