Government & Policy

When Utah Legislator, Rep. Travis Seegmiller, found out that his 5 year old’s school-supplied-tablet was pre-programmed with educational databases that easily linked his child to XXX pornography and live links to pedophilia hook-up websites he was shocked! Seegmiller decided that his “top priority” as a public official was to keep Utah’s children safe from these international vendors who were “exploiting children.” 

HB 38 School Technology Amendments, a bill by Seegmiller, met with overwhelming bi-partisan support from Utah legislators. During the bill process republicans and democrats alike spoke out in favor of holding the resource vendors accountable for hurting children. The bill was pre-approved during fall interim. In the main session, HB 38 unanimously passed the House and passed the Senate with only four “nay” votes. (democrat senators Riebe, Mayne, Kitchen, and Davis)

During an interim committee meeting in November, former Rep. Eric Hutchings said that he’d like to see even “stronger action” taken against companies who expose children to pornography in such a sly way. He said that “if we found out that someone was putting poison in the school lunch we would hunt them down…and it would make international news.” He went on to say, “We have to stop saying shoots-a-dang when we find out children are viewing porn through school resources. It shouldn’t be tolerated for a second!”  

The bill requires the well-known, international, conglomerate, school digital resource providers like EBSCO, GALE, Cengage, Explora, Pro-Quest, Inspire, and others to be free from obscenities if provided to Utah school children. It also allows the state to back out of contracts with the database vendors if the vendors are found to not be in compliance with state obscenity laws. Additionally the bill requires the Utah Education and Telehealth Network [UETN] to provide proof of digital vendor compliance to the legislature each year. 

As part of the Utah bill presentation school personnel and parents shared numerous stories about children seeing pornography for the first time in the school database and teachers not knowing how to stop the content from reaching the children. Because this issue hit so close to home, Utah lawmakers were inundated with complaints and pleas for them to take action and keep Utah’s children safe. The Utah PTA was also strongly supportive of the bill. 

In the fall of 2018 Nicholeen Peck, president of WOW and a mother and of 4, found out from a friend that sex toys were being advertised to children in the school database called EBSCO. She couldn’t believe that would happen in Utah and started doing some searching herself. After typing very innocuous terms into the state EBSCO database collections and finding multiple images, videos, and articles promoting risky and illegal sexual behavior Peck contacted Senator Todd Weiler, known for his Utah resolution declaring pornography “a public health crisis.” Weiler verified Peck’s findings and said that action needed to be taken. 

KUTV News did a story on the problem, and the EBSCO database was immediately disabled across the state. The UETN told EBSCO that they needed to clean up the database or they would get out of their contract. For a few weeks the EBSCO database was disabled for school children via school portals. Utah’s State Librarian, Colleen Eggett, spoke openly against disabling the  EBSCO database and said that it was up to the parents to keep their children safe from the harmful content. 

Parents in multiple states have noticed that the library associations repeatedly defend EBSCO and GALE, big businesses, and don’t protect the children from explicit content. Why? Some reasons might be that the American Library Association [ALA] has its own code of ethics about viewing content. The ALA Library Bill of Rights says that people of any age should be able to see anything they want, and the ALA also sued the US government in 2001 because they didn’t want to comply with the Child Internet Protection Act [CIPA]. The ALA lost that law suit.

After a few weeks of EBSCO scrubbing and enabling their own filters, the Utah EBSCO databases were enabled again and pronounced “clean.” But Peck was not satisfied. She said, “I can see they have done some clean up, but still within 15 minutes I was able to find live links to Penthouse magazine, multiple graphic nude images, and an article about a 6th grader having sex with his drama teacher. They are not giving us what we are paying for.” 

The database vendors market themselves as “the safe way to search.” No one questions these claims because anything that is put into a database has to be put there on purpose. Peck says, “It’s a kind of locked box on the web that a person has to have a login to access. This is why internet filters are not able to filter databases.” 

After the EBSCO shut-down didn’t really solve the problem, and some of the previously removed explicit content started appearing in the GALE database as well, Peck, other concerned parents, and a group of legislators started taking other action to see if the problem could be solved without a bill. The state auditor and the state Attorney General’s office were shown the problem, and a legislative audit was requested. They were all shocked by the blatant exploitation of children, but none of them solved the problem. 

At this point, Peck and the group of concerned legislators, including Seegmiller, knew that they had to run a bill just like Idaho did. Idaho’s 2020 bill caused EBSCO to create special databases for Idaho that are in compliance with their obscenity laws. 

EBSCO and GALE are major suppliers of K-12 online research tools across the country/world. EBSCO alone sells its school products to over 55,000 schools nationwide, supplying millions of children with products that may contain pornography. Multiple other states are now following Idaho’s example and working on protective bills too. 

In Colorado, where the dirty database problem was first uncovered, Robin Paterson, head of Pornography Is Not Education partnered with the Thomas More Law Society to bring a lawsuit against EBSCO and the Colorado Library Consortium. There have been good results of these Colorado efforts. Paterson reports, “EBSCO and certain GALE products were previously discontinued by several, large school districts in Colorado because of pornographic content.” 

After years of research, Peck, Paterson, and countless other parents around the nation now know that EBSCO’s business model exploits children. EBSCO gets paid by magazines and other media sources and sites to have their content be part of the databases for children. Then states and school districts pay millions of dollars annually for their subscriptions to the databases. The EBSCO promotional materials promise content providers that their listings in the databases will “reach your target audience,” “increase web traffic,”  and “grow your subscriptions.” These claims sound like the content providers are advertising to children, not giving them school materials. 

Schools and states unknowingly paying databases to dish up pornography to children. Media vendors pay to advertise to children through the databases. Children are being sold as the “target audience.” And, everyone seems convinced that this whole process is education. This is a good old fashioned scandal.

George Soros’ Open Society is a major EBSCO funder. 

EBSCO has been named to the “Dirty Dozen List” by the National center on Sexual Exploitation. 

The WOW database team as well as parents and clinicians all over the state of Utah worked really hard for this victory for Utah’s children. WOW calls upon other states and countries to protect their children from sexual exploitation through databases too by enacting bills that put the children first; not big tech companies like EBSCO and GALE.

This piece about how British liberties are being systematically taken from families was contributed by British WOW members.

For the last few days, we in the UK have had a reprieve from the Great Brexit Betrayal, as our Parliament of Traitors has gone into recess, in order for our MPs to enjoy their party conference season: a time when politicians and their party members retire to the seaside, congratulate themselves on a job well done and scheme for the reopening of Parliament in a few weeks’ time. And, oh, hasn’t it given us some laughs? A cursory glance at Twitter will show just about anyone how hilarious it has been – how the country’s conservatives (with the notably small “c”) have chuckled at the Labour Party, in particular, and their folly. “What larks, Pip”, they giggle. “What larks!”

We have seen, for example, Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Minister, standing on a podium before her party delegates, addressing them all as “comrades” and regaling them all with tales of her youthful dalliances. With a wink and a nod reminiscent of Hattie Jacques in the old Carry On films, the venerable Ms. Thornberry told the packed room that, as she was lying with her head in a gutter following an accident, her life flashing before her eyes, she thought: “Blimey, that was fun … and it wasn’t running through fields of wheat, comrades!” The compliant BBC dutifully let the camera pan the room, showing how the audience laughed …Oooh, Matron! Saucy! All the while, conservative Twitter shook their heads and collectively smirked at her silliness. What larks!

Then there was the risible Diane Abbott, Shadow Home Secretary, butt of a thousand memes and alumnus, no doubt, of the same School of Mythical Economics as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, cheerfully informing a BBC reporter that, despite having sent her own child to a fee-paying school, she nevertheless supported the Labour Party’s proposals to “abolish” private schools and “integrate” their wealth into the State Education system…

… and it is here, I am afraid, that the laughs began to die down. Just a few short months ago, this suggestion was being floated by a handful of backbench MPs, whilst the country’s middle classes smiled and thought that such a thing could never, really, happen. Surely nobody could seriously believe that the long arm of the State would reach into the privately-owned property of independent schools and appropriate their wealth, to redistribute it as they see fit? No, certainly not. To remove parental choice from hardworking mothers and fathers who go without, in order to give their children the very best start they can afford? Never.

Yet, here we are. In Britain now, our Opposition Party openly states that it intends not only to prevent parents from choosing the best school for their child but, moreover, to repossess the finances of those schools (which are only slightly less constrained by The National Curriculum – something similar to the American Common Core) and redistribute them into State Education. Naturally, there is one, very notable exception: as pointed out by redoubtable journalist and conservative talking head, Katie Hopkins, this plan does not, of course, apply to the many taxpayer-funded Islamic schools which have sprung up across the nation in recent years. 

To each according to his needs, indeed.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-49798861

In this country, The National Curriculum “sets out the programmes of study and attainment targets for all subjects at all 4 key stages” and “all local-authority-maintained schools must teach these programmes of study.” https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum. There is no room for manoeuvre and all teachers must adhere to it. But what of its content? 

In December last year, we learned that, “in a victory for transgender rights campaigners”, a school in Brighton had begun teaching primary school children (ages four to eleven) that “boys can have periods too”. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/16/boys-can-have-periods-schoolchildren-taught-latest-victory-transgender/. 

In March, fiery stand-offs took place outside of a primary school in Birmingham, as Moslem parents removed their children from classes in protest at the “No Outsiders” sex education programme, which “they claimed promoted gay and transgender lifestyles” and told Moslem children that “Gay is OK.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/09/protests-against-lgbt-lessons-in-birmingham-primary-school-resume. 

Recently, a friend and home-schooling parent drew my attention to a Key Stage 2 reading comprehension assignment which she had discovered in the National Curriculum English handbook. Focusing on the children’s story Bill’s New Frock by Anne Fine, the tasks are designed to “make children aware of gender inequality” and ask them to “imagine waking to discover that they are a different gender.”  All very worthy, I am sure you will agree.

The same Labour Party that wishes to remove parents’ choices when it comes to independent schools has also put forward proposals to “make climate change a core part of the curriculum” addressing “the ecological and social impact of climate change.” Irrespective of the controversy that there is no conclusive scientific evidence that manmade climate change actually exists, children are, under these proposals, to be taught its effects as undisputed fact, in order to prepare them for the “human impacts” (read “immigration”, “increased governmental control” and “higher taxation”) which will inevitably ensue, turning our youth into anxious, Children of the Corn clones of the terrifyingly totalitarian  and pitifully exploited Greta Thunberg. https://www.tes.com/news/make-climate-change-core-part-curriculum-labour-says 

Even more worryingly, those who question the received wisdom of manmade climate change could soon be facing legal sanctions, as was debated on 17^th September on BBC Radio 2’s daily phone-in programme, The Jeremy Vine Show. At present, of course, this is only a discussion but as my earlier examples illustrate, discussion has its way of intruding into policy … and policy has a way of becoming Law.

From Cradle to Grave

The purpose of this article, however, is not solely to discuss the tenets of The National Curriculum in depth, although I may write another on this topic at a later date. Rather, as the title suggests, its intention is to explore the ways in which the long arm of the State increasingly invades the private family lives of citizens. Which leads me to a few more suggestions which have recently come to light.

Some years ago, I visited the Museum of East Germany in Berlin and saw an exhibition of the Communist Party’s pledge concerning State governance “from the cradle to the grave.” Under the guise of promoting equality for mothers, babies were taken into State-run childcare at a few months old, in order that both parents could quickly return to work. They then stayed in government facilities until the end of their formal education, ensuring, of course, that their indoctrination could be absolute and that they would not encounter dissenting opinions which opposed those of the Communist Party. It should come as a surprise to absolutely no-one, then, that similar ideas are now being discussed in Britain, where debates are taking place regarding longer school days, increased childcare, shorter school holidays and the free provision of breakfast, lunch and dinner – all at the taxpayer’s expense and all designed to ensure that parents’ working days are uninterrupted and that their children’s daily care is provided by professionals, rather than their own loving family. Why run the risk of allowing parents to promote dissenting opinions, when the State can raise a child so much better? Similarly, the Media’s insidious drip-feeding of anti-home-schooling programmes and articles which imply that only dangerous cranks and oddballs would remove their children from the school system, just as the practice is becoming more popular, can be seen as part of the same process: “trust us”, says the State, “we know what is best for your family”. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/home-schooling-department-education-damian-hinds-radicailation-illegal-schools-offrolling-a8849841.html

“Surely this is enough?” I hear you cry. “Surely there can be no more? Surely it will suffice, at least for now, to propose the removal of parents’ school choices, to indoctrinate their children with uncorroborated pseudoscience, to propose the care of their children from morning to night and to demonise those who opt-out of the educational system?” Well, not quite – because the socialist Scottish National Party went one step further still and put forth a proposal to allocate a “named person” for every child in Scotland, to monitor family life, provide a point of contact outside of the home and to ensure that no child is being exposed to ideas or practices which dissent from the ideological aims of the Scottish Government. Mercifully, the plan has been revoked – at least for the time being – as parents argued that it amounted to nothing more than a “Snoopers’ Charter”, terrifyingly reminiscent of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four – but the proposal was made and, as we have already seen, proposals do have a tendency to wend their ways into legislation … eventually. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35752756

Be Warned

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, firstly, I am giving you a warning. 

To my American friends: we in the UK have become so accustomed to Government interference that many people now passively accept this growing encroachment upon our private lives; that which seemed impossible just a few short years ago is now being openly discussed at party political conferences and proposed as legislation. Whilst all of this may sound outlandish to you now, please bear in mind that it did once to us, too – but the gradual drip-feeding of these notions has already begun in the USA, where States like California have shoehorned the LGBT agenda into the school curriculum and proposed making ethnic studies mandatory. 

Secondly, to my fellow Britons: this has to stop. There is no end to the incursions which the State will make upon our family lives – no proposal will be too extreme, no interference too great. The long march through the institutions began many years ago – it will not cease; it knows no bounds. If we do not wrest back control of our family lives now – right now – it will be too late. As the silent majority of the country sit back and shake their heads, tittering at the folly of the likes of Abbott and Thornbury, they miss the vital point: the conservatives are losing, the Right is losing … unless we fight for our children now, we will very soon have lost. The hand is hovering over the cradle: don’t let it rule the world.