Concern about book
Sir, — On criteria which would include tea-drinkers as normal, the forms of behaviour named by A. J. and A. A. O’Sullivan (“The Press,” March 2) are normal, according to social science researchers and medical bodies, among them the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. Could we ask if the Concerned Parents Association members consider themselves corrupt and unfit parents, having read the disputed book? While supporting the association’s guidelines expected from the Education Department, we understand that the department (like us) believes that a balanced and non-prosely-Itising approach should prevail. This is in direct opposition to the C.P.A.’s stance, which would ban all opinions differing from its own. Education consists of presenting, wisely, to a child the full range of human experience so that he or she can match choice to potential. For the C.P.A. it seems to consist of indoctrination into totalitarian Christianity. — Yours, etc., M. S. WAGHORNE. Secretary-Treasurer, Campaign for Homosexual Equality. March 2, 1977.
[The chairman of the Concerned Parents’ Association (Mr P. C. Clements), replies: “The association does not seek to impose upon other people’s children materials and philosophies repugnant to them. We send our children to school to be given instruction in knowledge. facts, and skills. It is not the school’s place to manipulate a child’s social, inter-personal, moral, and political attitudes. There is a considerable area within the range of human experience which is entirely unsuitable for classroom study. Parents need to inform themselves of what is being put before their children in schools and, as they are responsible at law for their children, they should have the final say in regard to what their children are taught, especially regarding such illegal activities as homosexuality. Parents could reasonably expect that the Department of Education and schools would positively uphold the laws of the land, and not undermine the upbringing that parents are giving their children.”! [This correspondence is now closed.—Editor.]
Concern about book
Press, 11 March 1977, Page 12
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