The Tim­ing

With The Roe v Wade over­turn, there is a rip­ple ef­fect world­wide. Dif­fer­ent el­e­ments of so­ci­ety are re­spond­ing based up­on their val­ue sys­tems and what they hold near and dear to their hearts.

We, in T&T need to pause and re­flect on what mat­ters most to us at the end of the day. We have just come out of a se­ri­ous pan­dem­ic that has rocked our coun­try in many as­pects, but par­ents have clear­ly seen the ef­fects on our chil­dren who have suf­fered in si­lence over 24 months and now have to deal with the fall­out. The nar­ra­tive of chang­ing our Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem is para­mount, so we, as par­ents must join in the con­ver­sa­tion to en­sure that our voic­es and pres­ence are part of the ed­u­ca­tion of our chil­dren. We have al­ways been the first Ed­u­ca­tors of Our Chil­dren. Planned Par­ent­hood has its arms in many ar­eas in­clud­ing Com­pre­hen­sive Sex Ed­u­ca­tion (CSE), if T and T is look­ing at chang­ing our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, wouldn’t now be the best time to be present and get in­volved?

The Strat­e­gy - The frog in boil­ing wa­ter

Many fam­i­lies look all over the world and won­der how did change take place so quick­ly. Is it be­cause we pur­pose­ful­ly chose the wrong path, or were we guid­ed there in­ad­ver­tent­ly? All par­ents and fam­i­lies want what is best for our chil­dren, so when pro­pos­als and poli­cies are put for­ward that seem to be in sync with our val­ue sys­tems, we do not op­pose them, be­cause the in­tend­ed out­come seems to be in our favour. What if the words used in these doc­u­ments have more than one mean­ing, what if there are dif­fer­ent in­ter­pre­ta­tions to the phras­es used, and coun­tries all over the world have bought in­to these poli­cies on­ly to dis­cov­er the in­ter­pre­ta­tion “af­ter the fact”. Could that ac­count for the overnight changes that oc­cur in some coun­tries in terms of de­crim­i­nal­iz­ing cer­tain laws and le­gal­iz­ing oth­ers. Did we lis­ten care­ful­ly to the words from the launch of Planned Par­ent­hood – Af­ter the ini­tial few com­ments - they al­so plan to pro­mote the sex­u­al­i­ty agen­da and trans­form the gen­der norms. What does that re­al­ly mean? Abor­tion provider, Con­tra­cep­tion provider, provider of ‘Gen­der tran­si­tion’ ser­vices to mi­nors – All with­out parental knowl­edge and con­sent.

There are many av­enues to speak to our chil­dren with­out our knowl­edge, there is the in­ter­net and so­cial me­dia, but the one right be­low our noses is our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. There is a pro­gram called Heath and Fam­i­ly Life Ed­u­ca­tion – ask your chil­dren about it, ask to see the books. This pro­gram is ac­tu­al­ly be­ing re­viewed to be more dam­ag­ing as one of the four com­po­nents is be­ing used to in­tro­duce Com­pre­hen­sive Sex Ed­u­ca­tion. All of the ideas to pro­mote the sex­u­al­i­ty agen­da and trans­form gen­der norms are in­clud­ed from as ear­ly as first year in­fants. As the sec­ondary lev­el is reached, the ideas of look­ing for and speak­ing to al­ter­na­tive sup­port for ac­cess­ing con­tra­cep­tion, abor­tion and gen­der ide­ol­o­gy con­fu­sion in­stead of par­ents is clear­ly ad­vised. This is not what we, as par­ents of our fam­i­lies want for our chil­dren, we need to stand.

The An­swer

I am not sure many par­ents re­al­ize our pow­er. I will state two in­stances in Trinidad that we par­ents have ef­fect­ed change by stand­ing. Many years ago the HPV vac­cine came in­to Trinidad. It did not take the usu­al path of go­ing through our Health­care sys­tem, rather, the Health­care body ap­proached our schools di­rect­ly. Sim­ply in­di­cat­ing their pres­ence and pur­pose and in­form­ing the stu­dents and staff that the vac­cine would be pro­vid­ed by the end of the week, pri­mar­i­ly for stan­dard 5 girls and con­sent forms were sent home. Some par­ents sim­ply signed the form up­on their daugh­ters’ re­quest, or in­sis­tence. Many oth­ers, how­ev­er, de­mand­ed fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, and to be in­clud­ed in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. This feed­back was chan­nelled back and Ed­u­ca­tion bod­ies met with the Health care rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the ini­tia­tive was moved to our Com­mu­ni­ty Health Cen­tres, where they right­ful­ly be­longed, where par­ents can now use their free­dom to choose and not be co­erced in­to mak­ing un­in­formed de­ci­sions on what is best for their chil­dren.

An­oth­er, more con­tro­ver­sial stance would be the covid vac­cine that many par­ents stood, as their un­vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren were not al­lowed to en­ter schools for three weeks, but even­tu­al­ly all were al­lowed back at school, claim­ing their free­dom to make de­ci­sions that they be­lieve is in the best in­ter­est of their chil­dren.

Both of those ex­am­ples were re­lat­ed to the au­ton­o­my of the body, we are now speak­ing about the au­ton­o­my of our chil­dren’s in­tel­lect, minds and hearts. Which has greater val­ue?

Our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is not up for grabs to the high­est bid­der. We, as par­ents, need to ed­u­cate our­selves to en­sure our chil­dren re­ceive the ed­u­ca­tion we want them to have that re­lates to our whole­some val­ue sys­tems, and is in their best in­ter­est in form­ing all as­pects of the hu­man per­son. That means Op­ti­mal Health de­vel­op­ment, where there is the fo­cus on de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man per­son from all as­pects, phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, spir­i­tu­al/in­tel­lec­tu­al though liv­ing out the virtues, in cre­at­ing new habits. An un­der­ly­ing phi­los­o­phy of these pro­grams is to pro­mote the truth on Hu­man Be­ings, Free­dom and Hu­man dig­ni­ty, as the un­der­stand­ing of sex­u­al­i­ty and sex­u­al iden­ti­ty is based up­on the uni­ty of the body and spir­it of the hu­man per­son.

This is the an­swer to coun­ter­act CSE from planned par­ent­hood on our doorsteps. This is the so­lu­tion that will al­low par­ents to stand.

To­nia Good­ing

An Op­ti­mal Health Ad­vo­cate and Con­cerned Par­ent