Minister of Education: Ukrainian school should become gender neutral

Minister of Education Anna Novosad. Photo: from free sources

The head of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine Anna Novosad said that she would do everything possible to make the Ukrainian school a gender-neutral environment, reports “Interfax-Ukraine”.

“I don’t know when it will become like that,” the minister said. “But I will definitely do everything possible to make it so because I believe that the school should be built on equal opportunities and on teaching pupils this value. There is no doubt that in schools there should be no place for some archaic stereotypes and perceptions that were present there in the previous century but still appear in our society.”

According to Novosad, the anti-discrimination expertise of textbooks was the right step towards the development of this process.

“I started my work with confrontation in the situation with the course “Family Fundamentals,” she said. “Undoubtedly, experts must give a conclusion, but I also can read and do not want such dogmas to be imposed on children in schools. But this requires professional anti-discrimination expertise. In turn, I want to transfer it not only to the textbooks for which it is now used but also to other handbooks and training materials for which the ministry gives its visa.”

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches sent letters to the President and the Prime Minister of Ukraine, in which they called for the abolition of the anti-discrimination examination of textbooks and educational programs because of its ideological bias. In turn, the petition to the President of Ukraine on the ban on the use of the concept of “gender” in legislative acts gained the required 25 thousand votes for consideration.

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