AUCCRO warns Ministry of Education that introducing gender ideology at school is unacceptable

The All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations calls on the Minister of Education and Science to replace the illegal anti-discriminatory examination of textbooks with another one, which will not be ideologically biased.

The AUCCRO made this appeal to the Minister Lilia Hrynevich on Thursday, June 14, according to the Institute of Religious Freedom.

“The All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations sees its civil duty to draw your attention to the inadmissibility of introduction into the school education of the so-called gender ideology that is different from the concept of equality of rights of women and men, as well as conducting other social experiments harmful for the younger generation with the help of anti-discrimination expertise textbooks and educational programs,” the letter reads.

AUCCRO notes that the methodology guidelines for experts on the implementation of anti-discrimination expertise, recommended by the Institute of Pedagogy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and prepared with the support of Heinrich Böll Foundation, contain the concept of “gender”, which contradicts the legislation of Ukraine.

When conducting an anti-discrimination examination of textbooks, the experts are advised to understand under the concept of “gender” “a self-contained characteristics of man not determined by biological sex, constructed by culture and society” that covers not only women and men, but also dozens of gender varieties. This terminology does not comply with Ukrainian legislation, as it significantly differs from the concept of “gender equality”, which is defined by law as the equality of rights exclusively between women and men.

“The issue is the introduction of the concept of ‘gender’, which is absent in the legislation of Ukraine, which is different from the concept of sex, as confirmed by the observations of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations both for anti-discrimination examination of textbooks and educational programs, and to the Istanbul Convention, which propose to legalize such an approach,” warns the Council of Churches.

AUCCRO also states that anti-discrimination examination of textbooks and educational programs is carried out on the basis of departmental acts of the Ministry of Education and Science, but is not stipulated by law. Instead, Article 21 of the Law of Ukraine “On Ensuring Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men” refers only to “the examination of educational programs, textbooks and teaching aids for educational institutions on the compliance of the principle of equal rights and opportunities for women and men, prevention and counteraction to violence on gender grounds.” It is such an examination of textbooks that the Council of Churches calls the MES to conduct instead of an illegal anti-discrimination review.

The Council of Churches stresses that Ukrainian society cannot tolerate the degradation of a full- family, paternity and maternity based on findings of the anti-discrimination examination, which recommends to use the word “relatives” instead of the word "parents" in textbooks. According to such a logic, any mention of the family and parents may disappear from the textbooks, considering that not all children in Ukraine are educated in the family and not all children have parents because they are orphans.

“These sad facts should not deprive the new Ukrainian educational element of the educational component by showing children ideals, universal values ​​and positive examples that they should strive for in their own adult life - a full family, the spouses as a woman and a man, responsible fatherhood, etc.," AUCCRO stresses.

In addition, according to the Council of the Churches, the desire to create in children a false image (imitating the Communists) that the state and the church are so much separated from each other that they allegedly cannot cooperate as social institutions seems to be strange, while the church, while at the same time, the Scriptures lose their role as a moral, educational and spiritual reference point. Such practice can already be observed in the recommendations of the anti-discrimination expertise, which proposes to delete temples from the list of institutions of cultural property, which should be regularly visited.

“The ideological one-sidedness and bias of anti-discrimination examination of textbooks and educational programs violates the principles of educational reform enshrined in Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On Education” and Article 11 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which stipulate the scientific nature of education and respect for the cultural values ​​of the Ukrainian people, its historical and cultural heritage and traditions,” says the Council of Churches.

There are all reasons to believe that the general characteristics of anti-discrimination expertise and the content of relevant guidance material substantially affects the ideological orientation of Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is involved in financing the organization of this expertise, AUCCRO notes.

The Council of Churches also calls on the Ministry of Education and Science to develop and approve a set of measures for the implementation of educational disciplines of the spiritual and moral directions in the educational process as the basis for the formation of the individual and the grounds for national patriotic education, which is envisioned by the Decree of the President of Ukraine dated October 13, 2015, No. 580/2015 “On the Strategy of National-Patriotic Education of Children and Youth for 2016-2020”.

The Council of Churches submitted similar proposals to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, in view of the fact that the previous comments to the anti-discrimination examination of textbooks, expressed in the letter to the Ministry of Education and Science in March this year, were not adequately accepted by the Ministry.

The Ministry of Education and Science has already reported that starting from 2016 the Ministry of Education and Science will introduce new standards for textbooks. In particular, to correct the tasks that have signs of gender discrimination. “The verification is carried out by the project group for gender expertise of textbooks and normative documents, working with the support of the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Ukraine,” the MES noted.