Podcast: Sex education in UK schools – with Julie Maxwell from Lovewise

This article is part of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast series.

In this episode of Affinity Talks Gospel, we talk to community paediatrician Julie Maxwell about the importance of teaching children biblical views on marriage and how to make wise choices. We discuss how to handle Relationships and Sex Education in schools and safeguard kids in today’s culture.

Hosts Graham Nicholls and Lizzie Harewood welcome guest Julie Maxwell from Lovewise to the show. Together they speak about the importance of teaching children about marriage and making wise choices from a biblical perspective. We highlight Lovewise’s resources for promoting healthy relationships and advise parents to engage actively in teaching their children about God’s design for marriage. We also discussed challenges in navigating Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) guidance in schools, emphasising the need to protect children from harmful influences and instil biblical values amidst modern cultural pressures. The conversation concluded on the importance of prayer, a truth-centred narrative, and the proactive efforts we can make to support and safeguard children in today’s complex world.

Find out more about Lovewise on their website: lovewise.org.uk

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Topics addressed in this Podcast:

• Concerns about the lack of teaching on marriage in sex education
• Purpose of Lovewise
• Resources for parents and schools
• Challenges faced by teachers
• Importance of teaching biblical values
• Addressing harmful school materials
• Engaging with school systems
• Legal framework for schools
• Protecting children from harmful education
• Cultural influences on children
• Engaging with children’s reality
• Showing the better story grounded in God’s truth

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:10] Hi, I’m Lizzie Harewood and welcome to Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast.

Hello there and I’m Graham Nicholls and we are really pleased that we’ve got another special guest today and it’s Julie Maxwell from Lovewise and other things she’s involved with. Welcome, Julie.

Hello, good to be with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, anything that may be be of interest biographically?

[0:36] Okay, so I live in Hampshire. I am a community paediatrician, which means that I am a doctor and I look after children with various learning difficulties, ADHD, autism, language disorders, that kind of thing, and also sort of mental health problems.

I have three grown-up children I’ve been married for nearly 27 years to my husband Alistair 

Was going to ask a question about a paediatrician for a sec which is is a paediatrician any generic sort of children’s doctor or does a paediatrician always specialise in something paediatrician wise. Hence, a paediatrician is a doctor that looks after children so that could be anything from newborn babies all the way through to you know almost adults some but sometimes even to adolescents. Still, I specialised when I had my children so that I could work part time and stay near home. I specialised in community paediatrics which basically means that it’s been kind of a nine-to-five flexible job that I can easily fit around being doing part-time I’m being with my children and doing various stuff at church.

Although you mentioned ADHD and various other things.

[1:59] Presumably you in your job may have or still do see people who’ve got, I don’t know, broken legs or need ear grommets or loads of other conditions?

Yeah, I personally haven’t done that for about 20 years, but obviously colleagues do, yes, all sorts of illnesses, broken legs.

[2:19] You name it, they see it. Church-wise, what did you get into that found your way to Lovewise?

Because that’s your kind of connection with us is through Lovewise, really.

Yeah, so the way I got into Lovewise was about 13 or 14 years ago.

I was a school governor. So I was a school governor for about 15 years altogether.

[2:41] And I discovered as part of that what my children were going to be learning in sex education.

And as a result I was quite horrified about the graphic nature of some of the material but actually also almost more importantly than that the lack of teaching on marriage and in my job as a paediatrician what I see all the time is lots and lots of children whose difficulties are sometimes caused by sometimes made worse by family breakdown so I was quite kind of concerned to hear that they weren’t talking about marriage at all or not in a decent context, despite the fact that that’s what children needed.

So I kind of did a bit of research. I came across Lovewise, which was set up by two paediatricians for exactly those reasons.

So I was immediately drawn to it and used the material to teach my own children and then gradually started teaching it in other schools and getting more and more involved with love wives.

[3:47] So Julie this is quite interesting because you were mentioning earlier that your children are now grown up and obviously and we’ll get onto this in more detail a bit later obviously over recent years there’s been a bit of a furore in the press and online but also in parliament about the nature of sex education and materials but you’re saying that this has been going on some of these materials have been kind of embedded in the system for a lot longer.

[4:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, when I first sort of started making some noises about it, there were not very many people making noises about it.

There were a few, and there were a few books which kind of traced kind of how we’d got to where we were in the whole sex education realm, even back then but I was quite frustrated that even a lot of my Christian friends thought I was making a fuss they kind of thought it wasn’t really a big problem and that they thought I was a bit mad for pulling my kids out of sex education at school and so that was very frustrating and so actually it’s great to see that it is now quite mainstream and so So the sort of the things that have been coming out, particularly in the kind of secular world, are exactly the things that I was kind of.

[5:09] Banging on about 13 years ago  but it seems to me it’s it’s the gender stuff that I think has tipped people over when parents started realizing what the children were being taught about gender they then started looking at some of the other stuff and realized that it wasn’t just the gender that was the problem there was a lot more stuff that that was really really inappropriate hope of it it’s probably worth saying I’m  probably a generationIcan’t be honest above you guys  or at least half a generation above one of you the  i’ve got adult children and um, who are well into adulthood uhIwas not going to say whenIwas having sex education at school and thenIhappened to do an apprenticeshipIleft school whenIwas 16 and  there was a weirdly sex education on this kind of engineering apprenticeshipIwasIwas on but even then which was a long time ago it would have been  late 70s early 80s there was nothing about morality it was entirely at that time it was mainly about contraception  and sexually transmitted diseases that was the focus but there was nothing about morality even then so this is a you know a long time ago  you know 40 years ago or something so so so in a sense the rot set in but as you say but particular  issues to do with sexual ethics have perhaps come to the.

[6:32] Fore. Just come back on the family so it doesn’t get lost.

Not your family, the family issue about teaching about the good of families.

I was really interested that there was an interview with Tony Sewell recently because he’s got a book coming out about it’s got a title, Something to Do with Black People Prospering or Black Success, I think it’s called, something like that.

And he makes the point, he has different solutions, but he makes the point that a lot of.

[6:58] Horror performance by afro-Caribbean or African families in England is to do with the breakdown of family and the lack of fathers his solution is to say we need to support single parents better as opposed to we need but it’s interesting that that is is is a very well established statistic about breakdown but yeah you mentioned family there’s obviously sexuality as well but the breakdown in family kind of comes back to my generation of being educated to say that there’s nothing really special about families yeah it’s interesting I think um.

[7:32] And I’m sure again Julie and I have quite a lot of crossover in our work and I’m sure we’ll come on to this but there is within the guidance on on relationships and sex education all children are are now required to be taught about the importance of marriage and of the family unit  and not just a family unitImean obviously we have to educate about different types of family but the importance of marriage is distinctly something that teachers should be should be teaching about for the benefit of family and societyIdon’t necessarily think that happens in practice no but it is there in black and white and unfortunately there’s a lot of other stuff that has has been interpreted in in different ways that  that has then snowballed and created a bit of a toxic environment for all kinds of ideologies what is the point of love wise before we then get on to a more general discussion about what’s happening what’s love wise for.

[8:37] Yeah so asIsaid love what it was set up by two paediatricians and and a head teacher as well our secondary head teacher so the purpose of love wise is to produce resources for schools, churches parents youth leaders on relationships marriage sex and also on sort of wise living generally so we often put it and put it in the context of making good choices it generally life so it’s not just focused on sex and relationships but just kind of as children grow up they have to to start making wise choices.

But what it is kind of helping to try and teach children is about sort of God’s design for marriage and also some of the statistics and things that back up that actually it’s not just that God says it’s good, but actually the statistics that we see in society, a bit like you were saying about Tony Sewell’s book, and I’ve just been reading Brad Wilcox’s book, Get Married, which, again, has lots of really, really interesting statistics about the privilege that being brought up in a married stable, that household brings.

And then we sort of look as well at the wisdom and the benefits of saving sex for marriage because obviously that…

[9:49] How you conduct your relationships prior to marriage and prior to kind of being an adult has a huge bearing on how successful your relationships are in the future.

So a lot of a lot of the sex education teaching now might talk about marriage, but it also makes no kind of judgments about how young people live their lives now.

So by the time they get to the age of wanting to get married,

[10:10] they might have had serial relationships, many of which might have been sexual as well.

So it’s sort of putting it all in into that kind of context, giving statistics, but also giving guidance about how they can make good choices, really, all from a sort of biblical perspective, but with practical outworkings and statistics to go behind it as well.

So who are these resources  intended for Julie are they for families for parents to be used within the home  or are they intended for use in wider context so so we have a variety of different things so we have we have some books called growing up god’s way for for boys and girls which are sort of pink and blue books maybe kind of gender stereotypical suppose but  but But that’s kind of what they are.

[11:04] And those books are designed for parents to share with their pre pubertal children or children going through puberty.

So from sort of eight, nine, something like that to share them with their children.

So that goes through puberty, growing up, what marriages, how babies are made in a very kind of gentle way with some nice sort of line drawings, cartoon type drawings, all from a very biblical perspective.

And then the child can have that book on their bookcase.

So my kids had them on their bookcase for a long time. I’ve got some very dog-eared versions of it.

So those are really good for parents.

[11:40] And we also have a sort of a PowerPoint type presentation that can be used by parents with their children.

Actually, what I use that for is I do that with a group of 10 and 11 year olds at our church every year.

So I sort of offer it as a sort of two-hour session and it goes through similar material to the Growing Up God’s Way books which I then encourage the parents to buy so the parents talk about it with the children at home as well and then we also have a book for parents called Challenges to Living God’s Way which is sort of for older teenagers 14 to 18 which looks at some of the tricky topics they have to deal with homosexuality, pornography, masturbation, and cohabiting, various things like that.

[12:25] So those are some of the things we have for parents.

We also have resources for schools. So we have a number of online resources, which schools can access for free.

So there’s one called Relationships Matter, which is for primary schools, which covers the relationships curriculum.

And then there’s several…

[12:43] Secondary school material so marriage sex and living wisely which looks at what marriage is why you might like to think about saving sex marriage and then a very popular one called pornography dangers and decisions which is goes through some of the potential harms of pornography to hopefully enable young people to make good decisions going forward  and then andIthink what I’m hoping to do is is to kind of have some more maybe more versatile resources on our website sites so that people can pick and choose a little bit sort of videos bible studies articles  so we also have a website called lovewise online which is for teenagers which has lots and lots of short articles that we update on a you know monthly or a couple of week every couple of weeks put a new article on that might be a you know there was one about the barbie movie there was one about valentine’s day and singleness one about new year making good fresh start things things like marriage.

So there’s lots of stuff that we try and produce to help people.

That sounds really good. By the way, one of the founders started life here in my hometown in Hayworth’s Heath, one of the paediatricians you mentioned.

So her dad was an elder in a church locally.

[14:02] We’ve used the material locally in schools, and my kids have actually used the material with their kids. And it’s a little bit excruciating at times with various questions, but really found it helpful. So it’s great material.

My question would be, how do you get it out there? Because it sounds really good.

And I’m thinking this is like the kind of Christian stonewall in terms of.

[14:26] In terms of the the sort of you know resources they’re producing obviously they do other campaigning as well but you know it’s how you get out there I’m sorry just to kind of context it a bit more my  my daughter and daughter-in-law were started going to library recently with they’ve got kids who are preschool and so you know great idea let’s go to rhyme time and everything elseIi think they found probably one in four books had a particular sexuality agenda  and And they were they were with outrage kind of sending us photos of them on the kind of family WhatsApp.

That’s a pretty strong force to try and contend with by saying, well, here’s some other materials you could have in the library.

So how are you getting it out there? Obviously, you haven’t got the funding of Stonewall yet.

No, not likely to is the reality.

[15:17] Word of mouth. I Mean our books are available so 10 of those good book company amazon you know all the all the usual outlets sell them so the the books are what sell really really well  and they also sell really well in the states and a number of our books have also been translated into various different languages as well which is which is exciting so think and think there are lots lots of people who probably have got the growing up God’s way books, but don’t actually realise that they come from love wise.

So often when I talk about love wise, I’ll say, Oh yeah, the growing up God’s way was, Oh yes, I’ve got those.

So people don’t necessarily realise that we have got other stuff because a lot of, some of our other resources are only available from our website.

[16:04] So, yeah, I mean, we, you know, it’s, It’s a matter of getting out there, but also not attracting the sort of the wrong kind of interest, I suppose, because what we don’t want is for people to be saying our stuff is terrible, which, you know, I think so.

It wouldn’t be.

[16:28] It’s not that easy to kind of promote it necessarily to the right people who would be interested in it, if that makes sense.

Hmm I’m interested Julie about  how schools respond when you bring know that you will often or maybe perhaps slightly less frequently now you’re going to schools and you’ll give presentations a bit like  all the outside agencies that would come in and deliver deliver  sessions on you know sexuality or  safe sex etc that have been  published recently would come and bring their own sort of ideologies and many schools have been you know completely a favour this how do they respond to you as an explicitly christian organisation teaching about the importance of of marriage about the nature of marriage its importance for family new life and  you know potentially giving  pointing towards saving sex for that kind of relationship yeah it it it is tricky and so going back before covid or you know a few just a bit before that at one point I was going into about six six local schools in my local area.

[17:50] I’m now down to one for various reasons. So some of that is just post-COVID and also post some of the ferrari about outside agencies.

So I think schools are just more wary of outside agencies than they probably were in the past.

But also, I was in a number of schools where Church of England schools, where they then decided that teaching about marriage from a biblical perspective was not OK.

And so therefore I wasn’t allowed back into those schools, which is interesting.

So the one school I still go into regularly is Catholic school, where it’s completely acceptable to give a biblical version of talking about marriage, saving sex for marriage.

Other schools that is harder I mean interestingly I mean I’ve never had negative reactions from pupils so pupils whether it be primary schools where I go in to teach about puberty marriage, how babies are made or secondary school pupils where you’re talking about what marriage is, what might be the benefits of saving sex for marriage.

[19:03] They’re very willing to discuss it. They kind of come out with their thoughts and also talking about pornography as well.

They can usually give me all the potential dangers of pornography.

They can tell me the answers. And again, talking about marriage and saving sex for marriage, again, they can give me all the the positives and all the negatives.

I often don’t even need to say it.

Sometimes it’s the teachers because it’s an uncomfortable message for them sometimes because they might be living lives that are different to that.

[19:36] I remember having a conversation with some parents one year and they said, we’re single parents.

We don’t want our children to feel bad about having single And I said, of course, we’re not going to do that.

And then they both said, but we really want our children to have a different experience.

[19:56] We really want our children to get married and have successful marriages.

They weren’t Christians.  so you know we need to kind of get past the sort of being afraid to upset the grown-ups, because you know and that we’re not protecting the children because we’re too afraid to upset the grown-ups  and we need to get back to protecting the children don’t we really in so many ways not just not just in the areas of sexualityIthinkIthink you’re right I think that’s a narrative that has kind of been overtaken by, yeah, other competing rights.

And often I think it’s the uncomfortableness of adults that seems to get in the way of actually thinking what might be the best for a child or to safeguard a child.

[20:42] Absolutely, Julie. Yeah. Yeah. How can people access the materials?

Obviously, they can buy the books. You mentioned where we can get the books.

But other than that what’s your website you mentioned a particular website was that a youth geared one and you have another one as it were yeah so we have our main website which is which is lovewise I’m sure we can make sure the  website address is available with so that’s our main website so all of our resources are you can you can buy them on from the website directly the one for youth is called lovewise online and that is just a website with lots and lots of articles all kind of you know you can search for whatever article you want we’re on social media as well  instagram twitter facebook  not tiktok yet.

[21:34] Right. And, yeah, I mean, just to say my experience here locally is the same of being shut out of some schools that we were allowed into.

But it’s not always explicit, is it? It’s not always kind of, we don’t like Christians and Christians. Sometimes it is just mysterious.

You’re no longer invited back in. You think, well, nothing’s changing the curriculum.

I wonder who’s fulfilling that part.

So it’s a challenge, but we keep going and we keep praying and looking for openings.

 just broadening it out a little bit sorry Lizzie did you want to say something different no I was going to also  seek to broaden it out a little bit because, obviously Julie andIwe meet reasonably regularly to discuss things like this and I was just wondering if Julie could give our listeners perhaps parents or grandparents or even teachers a bit of an overview of what’s going on with some of the  the materials that are in schools or have been in schools that have garnered so much attention and what the government has been doing about that and how as christians we can pray and act  in response to to those things.

[22:45] Yes, I mean, I think it’s all kind of come to a bit more of a kind of general attention, I think, hasn’t it?

So there were two reports which came out. Was it last year? I lose track of time.

Was it last year? Yes. So Miriam Kate’s report.

[22:59] The new social covenant report. Yes, that was called, yeah, something about schools.

And then there was a sleep at the wheel, which was Lottie Moore’s report on particularly on kind of gender.

And those two reports are worth a look at if you can bear it because it gives you a good idea of some of the really awful stuff that is in schools and often I think unbeknown to parents so parents often even when they’re asked what material is going to be they’re not always allowed to see it or not always shown it beforehand so I.

[23:34] Think you know it’s it is really good that it has kind of of come to public knowledge and so there is a currently a review undergoing as far as which was we were supposed to have had sort of an update of the RSE guidance by now  and that hasn’t occurred which presumably is because they can’t agree uhIimagine it seems to be how things work but I mean before christmas we had the draft guidance on gender  and gender questioning in schools which I think is is being quite a key thing which helps us kind of to think about how to address gender which you might think has nothing to do with this but it you know it’s all very much part and parcel of the same thing because you know if you’re teaching a sex education you have to be able to teach about biological  sex and between men and women  and you know and how that plays out for relationships and how how babies are made so I think we need to really pray particularly for MPs like Miriam Cates, Nick Fletcher.

[24:37] Who are speaking out about some of the really harmful stuff in schools.

[24:43] Without wanting to sensationalise, Julie, because I often get people that aren’t in the know saying things like, but this isn’t really happening, or it’s not really as bad as you think.

Even Christians who perhaps, you know, aren’t really, you know, or perhaps their experience with their children’s school hasn’t been particularly worrying.

[25:07] What could you tell us about what is happening? Yeah, I think people are worried that the stuff that gets in the newspapers, so the stuff that, I mean, an example was the dice, the proud trust dice, where they sort of made two dice, dices, dice, whatever you say, and on each side of the dice had a body part or object or something.

And the idea was that the teenagers threw the dice and then whichever two things turned up, they talked about what you might be able to do sexually between those two things I mean there are plenty of even more horrific things than that that are being talked about in schools but that I think is a very you know but there are lots of schools using that stuff and you know I get people I’m sure you do as well Lizzie parents and teachers coming to me all of the time saying my school is using this my school is using this my child came home saying this so you know what is in the news is not just sensational even even if it might be in the daily mail and you might I think, well, do I believe that? It is true. It is true.

And I’ve had lots of parents coming to me saying that. And I think also I think it’s just plenty of parents.

This stuff is going on in their kids’ schools, but they don’t know about it.

[26:21] Your kids don’t always tell you what they’ve been taught at school.

But when you have children coming home saying, you know, we got told today that we could choose whether a boy or a girl, you know, am I going to turn into a boy tomorrow, mummy?

[26:33] You know, it’s that kind of thing. Then you find out what they’ve been taught when they come home.

In terms of the engagement with that.

So let’s assume it’s bad from what you’ve said.

[26:47] What’s the best way church leaders and christian parents and grandparents and aunties and uncles can engage with that bad situation soImeanIthinkIthink there’s two two ways one is to try and do what you can in schools which is howIgot started on this and didn’t get very far  so you know is to ask questions you know ask what’s being taught ask what books are in the libraryIthink that’s a crucial thing so like you were saying Graham about books in in the public library you know these books are in primary school libraries secondary soImean some horrific stuff in school libraries yeah  so so ask what books are in the libraries ask what they’re being taught ask to view the material so there’s you know various  programs for for pshe rse that you know have some good stuff in them but also some awful stuff which some schools might not use but you know ask  find out what is being taught ask those questions not in a not in a negative way not in a combative way just in an interested way and then if you find out concerning stuff then you can work out what to deal with it but start off being supportive just being interested you know no school can be annoyed at you hopefully for not being interested  soIthink it’s that tack.

[28:04] The other tap is to be protecting our children. So as Christian parents, grandparents, youth leaders, church leaders, we need to be absolutely convinced that God’s ways are good.

So God’s ways for marriage, sexuality, gender, et cetera, are good.

So we need to believe it ourselves that it’s good. We need to live it, demonstrate good friendships, good relationships, good marriages.

We need to strengthen our own marriages.  you know we need to welcome single parents to you know if we’ve got stable marriages welcome single parents and their children so that they can experience stable marriages  we need to live it and then we need to teach it so from a young age we need to be teaching you know correct biology correct  terminology you know age appropriate obviously  but teaching about marriage teaching teaching biblically.

[29:00] And then as they get older, kind of, you know, addressing the difficult issues that come up and, you know, using the opportunities, making sure we know what else kids are being exposed to.

So that might mean watching films and reading books that you probably might not want to watch or read so that you know what kids are being bombarded with.

And then, of course, the social media and curating what children, I mean, that’s another big thing that’s kind of of coming out in the press at the moment is the idea of trying to ban mobile phones and ban  you know social media but for young for young children so it’s not just  parents and grandparents that  you work with obviously you you also create resources for schools andIwonder if I’m allowed to monopolise on this opportunity here as well because obviously obviously in my role at the association of christian teachers we talk to to many teachers.

[30:00] Who perhaps don’t feel that they have that that liberty to kind of raise their head above the parapet and  and what would you I mean I’m actually now just going to ask you to recommend they get in touch with the association of christian teachers but what What else can teachers do if they feel that they are being tasked with teaching something that’s unscientific or really ask questions of their conscience, their Christian understanding of marriage, of gender, of sexuality?

I mean, I think it is really tough, isn’t it? It is really, really tough.

[30:41] But I think even teachers can start off with questioning because my experience is that some of this stuff, once the schools are questioned, it transpires. They haven’t really thought it through.

[30:54] And that somewhere along the line, somebody’s just thought, oh, this looks like a good programme of work, and they’ve just gone with it and they haven’t thought through. True.

And so I think just stopping them and kind of saying, just think about what you’re teaching here.

You know, I think sometimes that can be enough.

You know, unless you’ve got a real activist teacher in the school, that’s a different kettle of fish.

But I think, you know, there are a significant number of schools where they’re

[31:26] just teaching some of this stuff because they’re young.

They haven’t got their own children they haven’t thought it through or they are older and and kind of just think this is how society is now and and just haven’t thought through the implications for children of teaching this stuff and of not teaching about marriage and stable relationships and saving sex for marriage  between your two organisations association of christian teachers which is love-wise, there are some materials that might help school governors as well as teachers about what the legal framework should be.

I would imagine if I went to a governor’s meeting tomorrow, I’ve got a theological background but I don’t actually know off the top of my head.

[32:14] are the obligations of schools in terms of what Lizzie said earlier about marriage and so on needing to be included so presumably there’s briefing documents on your website so if people get hold of you that that would help in that those contexts so at act we seek to  compile, lots of really helpful documents some you know some are very for use in schools and for example love wise resources and we also have a section on our website that is all to do with  um, uh, the, the kind of statutory frameworks.

And I would say that people like Christian, the Christian Institute have provided the most helpful resources there that give you the explanation of the framework and explain where, um, your roles and responsibilities, um, uh, fit into that and where perhaps you’re allowed to push and, you know, express a desire for the more freedom of your conscience and so yeah we we provide quite helpful signposts to those.

[33:15] Aggregator of lots of absolutely I say why replicate something if something better is already in existence soIjust have time yeah yeah yeahIi was going to say yeah christian institute also christian concern as well also have you know so  yeah john denning at christian institute steve beagle at christian concern were both really helpful  very knowledgeable people of the legal stuff and like you say Lizzie you know we we do what we do and and if people have already done stuff we just point them in the right direction just to broaden it out again a little bit or just to finish off the protect pointIi love the idea of really simple headings  thatIcan sort of write down and remember ask and protect but under the protect one Iheard the modeling and the teaching and understanding what’s going on and so on you didn’t say much about protect in the sense of exclude pull them out of a film pull them away from a device pull them out of teaching do we do we need to protect sometimes by just not letting children go somewhere be somewhere learn something, Yeah, yes, I think so. I think from the perspective of schools, I think that is very, very difficult.

So when my kids were this age, sex education was, you know, very defined lessons.

[34:36] In primary school, it would be one or two lessons at the end of the summer term in year six.

And then, you know, secondary school, they would have kind of relationships day or whatever. So it was very defined.

It was relatively easy to pull them out. And as I discovered, lots of other parents did the same.

And I felt personally that as a Christian, you know, people said to me, oh, they’ll feel different. They’ll feel awkward.

Well, as Christians, we’re supposed to be different. We need to be teaching our children to be different.

However, the situation now is that this stuff is, you know, relationships, education. You cannot withdraw your child from.

[35:13] And most of this stuff happens in relationships, education, not sex education.

I mean, what even is sex education? Actually, you know, it’s a very tiny,

[35:24] tiny bit because most of this is biology or relationships education, actually.

So and also the other issue is that, you know, some a lot of this stuff is throughout the curriculum. So there’s lots of stuff you can see online about embedding this stuff.

So you’ve got English lessons that will be about, you know, a gay person or, you know, maths lessons that will be about, you know, I don’t know, somebody who was transgender, you know, and a famous mathematician or, you know. So it’s being kind of put throughout the curriculum.

So it’s really, really hard. So, you know, increasing numbers of people are actually electing to home educate, which is always an option.

[36:12] But I think certainly at home, we can be careful what our children, what films they watch. We can put limits on social media and or, you know, stop them from, you know, going on it at all.

But, you know, filters on devices.

[36:27] There are all sorts of things we can do. But I think often as parents, we can be afraid to upset our children.

So I think we need to get back to being parents and parenting our children.

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And I also think that as Christian parents, we have this great privilege that we can redress and tell our children the truth, that we can seek to undo faulty teaching and where we can, we can protect them.

My concern is for those children that don’t have that level of protection.

Protection and although I think there is a place for withdrawing I think there’s also a place that the Christians need to be I don’t mean get involved in a culture war but I do mean they need to use the democratic means they have to try and protect a generation of young people who are getting fed lies and ultimately lies that will damage absolutely so I think you know become school governors if your children are at school become a school governor and then then you can, you know, have some influence.

And, you know, yeah, I think we just need to do what we can for society as well as for our own children.

Yeah, I mean, if I got what I wanted when my kids were 10, 11, I’d have left it there and I would have sorted my kids’ school out for the time being.

But, you know, I wouldn’t have found Lovewise and done all the things that I’ve got involved in.

Do you ever, Lizzie, think about home educating your children when they get to secondary age?

[37:56] Would I? Yes. Just out of interest.

Is that a tricky question? I probably wouldn’t want to in that I don’t necessarily think for my children that would be the best thing. However, I would have to reassess.

I’d have to reassess what was going on in school at that point.

I’d probably try other strategies first. I’d probably do my very best to engage positively with the school if I felt there was a particular reason that I’d want to take them out.

[38:32] However, I would never discount it, but it certainly wouldn’t be my natural inclination.

I’m a supporter of mainstream education in general, and I think where possible, you need to do all you can to get in there and work within the system.

You also need those that are the dissenters and that will work outside the system.

Them yeah and I feel very strongly that I am called my husband who I made become a school governor and yeah I believe that we’ve we’ve got that role at the moment and at some point if I had to I would reassess but I would do my very best to to work from the inside first yeah sorry to spring that question on you no it’s all right I wouldn’t be able to teach a math lesson so that would probably discount for that reason.

[39:23] My impression, talking to quite a lot of people, is that it’s more on the agenda than it ever was for most of my time in Christian ministry.

It was a very sort of marginalised specialist thing that some families did, and they were a little bit unusual.

And now, although not many people in, say, our church and also other churches are doing it, loads more people are talking about it and saying, I’m really tempted.

I just can’t logistically manage it. But if I could, I would.

[39:53] So that, you know, it’s a significant change. I think it’s become more common, not just among Christians as well.

I think, you know, with all of the sort of the RSE stuff and I think COVID, where kids were forced to be kind of effectively home educated for that time.

I think there are a lot of parents who’ve just kind of thought, well, actually, do you know what, I’m just going to do this myself.

Yeah, sometimes easier at a practical level, sometimes, because you don’t have to get them to school and be accountable for being there at certain hours.

And you can work it around your work and all those things.

[40:24] But they’re not really good reasons. No.

That’s how it goes. Just kind of broadly as we draw things to a close.

[40:31] The influences on children and I guess the Ask and Protect covers all of those as well.

But, yeah, anything that you’re observing in terms of cultural influences on children outside of education?

Oh, gosh. I mean, that’s a huge question, isn’t it?

ImeanIthink the the whole kind of cultural thing in society is is is tricky for children isn’t it so you know this whole identity thing you know kind of wanting to you know children be told that they need to be themselves and that they can be whoever they want to be which kind of contradict each other to a certain extent  you know and so it’s quite huge that’s big big pressure on children and young people isn’t it sort of trying to find themselves and to be their best selves and and and kind of thinking that if life is tough that somehow they’re not being their best selves soIthink and that obviously plays into the whole kind of sexuality and gender thing as well but you know because that is the sort of identity that often they you know kind of pick on  soIthink you know andIthink they the whole social media thing isIwas saying this to somebody the other day you know when when we when us three go on social media we see certain things and the three of us probably see very similar things on social media our kids will go on the same social media and they will see completely different things.

[41:58] Yeah it’s almost like kind of alternate realities as it were in that they are seeing almost like a completely different reality I mean I don’t know if you’ve watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix.

And that’s because I think that kind of shows it really quite well that, you know, the whole algorithm thing.

[42:17] That when it feels like we’re talking a different language to our children, it is because we really, really are, because they are kind of seeing a whole different reality.

And I think that’s what we need to be aware of. And we need to be kind of working

[42:31] out how we engage with that and how we speak into that.

Because otherwise we’re sort of talking at cross purposes all the time because we’re talking about what we know as fact.

They kind of have a whole different raft of what they think is fact.

Fact and unless we know what they’re thinking and what they’re being told is fact we can’t then, argue it argues the wrong word but you know if they they kind of throw some kind of statistic or some kind of fact at us and we’re like oh right okay is that true but if we know that it’s not true and we’re able to say well actually you know have you thought about this then you know that enables us to engage with it rather than just kind of thinking oh my goodness is that just something thing I don’t know.

And it might be, or it might just be that it’s not really actually true.

[43:21] Yeah it’s about how not just children but young adults consume news has changed dramatically,  and talking to millennials as well actually about how they consume news is quite different to how I did and do and here’s a fun thing with some of my grandchildren now I’m encouraging them to go on computer games first with my children I was encouraging them not to go on on computer games because rather they went on computer games than went on social media so you know there are some ben I’m obviously not I’m not encouraging them to go on computer games for hours and become totally antisocial but I’m I’m very relaxed about them because actually I think in terms of brain development and so forth a limited amount of computer gaming is actually very helpful whereas social media I think is known to be damaging I want to have to To be concerned about who they’re playing with. Absolutely.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I am, and my children who have children are concerned.

And there’s certain online game things that they won’t let them go on, even though the games seemed completely innocent.

There’s a number of platforms which are used for grooming and all sorts of things.

Yeah. Where the games are not violent or sexually explicit or anything, but they’re quite tame.

But the forums that go with them are not good. So parents absolutely need to be discerning about that.

[44:44] Um, positively, uh, we do have a better story, uh, in terms of who we are and how we live.

Uh, we do have prayer and we have God, uh, on the throne that we can pray to.

[45:00] Um, so I want people to kind of end if they, if they’ve made their way all to the end of this, they’re not too depressed about all these, all these wars going on because we’ve got a better story and because God’s in charge.

There can be little victories, but there can be overall victories.

And I love what you said, Lizzie, about…

 not being complacent but being confident that we can probably deal with our own children reasonably well as parents but it’s it’s the love for other children which is partly why we engage it’s not just to protect in the sense of trying to kind of put a fence around our own children and stop them anything bad coming in and feeling all right about it but we’re it’s actually a loving thing to engage carefully but sometimes to confront things that are happening, Yeah. Yeah.

Good. Well, we’ll end on a note of agreement. Thank you very much, but particularly to you, Julie. Yeah. You’re welcome.

[45:56] Music.

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[46:37] Music.