PETER WILLIAMS: Blurred Lines

An old song still has currency in class

It looked like a plea for help, a plea for someone, anyone, to do something about the content of Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) at Queenstown’s Wakatipu High School.

The email arrived from Rodney Hide, one time leader of the Act Party and before that an economics lecturer, now living a quiet life near Queenstown with his second wife and three children, the oldest of whom is a student at nearby Wakatipu High School.

I’ve known Rodney for nearly thirty years from his days as an MP when he was quite the raucous man after hours. But that was then. Now he’s a non-drinker, a committed Christian and wants his children to have as balanced and non-threatening an education as is possible in this strange world where male does not necessarily mean man or boy and Labour leaders cannot tell you what a woman is.

Rodney’s email included a link to a YouTube video and some correspondence with a teacher named David Moseley from the Health and Physical Education department at Wakatipu High School.

The email correspondence asked why a video for a song called “Blurred Boundaries” was played to a Year 9 RSE class. Rodney also included some of the song’s lyrics.

Fascinated – and appalled - by the lyrics quoted, I opened the link. Rodney, probably like most men in their late 60s, could not have been familiar with the infamous Robin Thicke hit song from 2013 actually called “Blurred Lines.”

Among criticism of the song are that “its existence is a huge injustice to women everywhere,” it is “tacky, terrible and derivative,” the lyrics are ”dunderheaded” and that Robin Thicke “scrapes the bottom with his single entendre come-ons.”

(It wasn’t even that original because two years after its release Thicke and co-writer Pharrell Williams had to pay royalties to Marvin Gaye’s estate and give him a posthumous credit because the song was so similar to Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.”)

If you weren’t there in 2013 or were more than happy to let this “anthem to rape culture” pass you by, here’s a wee taste.

Yeah, I had a bitch, but she ain’t bad as you

So hit me up when you pass through

I’ll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two

Rodney, as a concerned parent of one student at Wakatipu High School and with another daughter due to start there next year, wanted to know in what context the video of “Blurred Lines” was played to a Year 9 RSE class.

The reply from David Moseley said it was “a learning activity around gender stereotypes and consent in Year 9 RSE.”

That’s it. No explanation or expansion. What form did the teaching take beyond that? Was the Thicke-Williams behaviour as imaged in the video condoned or criticised?

But more importantly why do 13 year olds in Year 9 need to learn about consent? They’re three years below the age and hopefully much longer from some actual sexual experience. Why a discussion of gender stereotypes? Puberty should be a natural phenomenon, as uncomplicated and non confusing as possible.

Did the teaching around this video mention Thicke’s own circumstances: how he has to have supervised visits with his son, how he’s not allowed to have contact with his ex-wife and mother-in-law because of allegations of abuse towards them or how he was accused of groping the breasts of model Emily Ratajkowski during the filming of the video for “Blurred Lines.”

It may have been a hit song twelve years ago. It would have been an inappropriate teaching tool then. It still is now.

This isn’t Rodney’s first clash with the RSE curriculum at Wakatipu High School. Earlier this year he tried to bring to the attention of the school’s Board the content of “Navigating the Journey” for Year 9 students.

Among the pearls of wisdom in this teaching resource are that those under 16 may wish to have sex but it’s important that consent is given and contraception is used. As Rodney pointed out, it’s illegal for under 16 years olds to give consent.

Elsewhere in this resource is description of and instruction on vaginal, anal and oral sex. And so it goes.

Rodney wanted to tell the Board of this content but was told he couldn’t because, among other irrational reasoning, there was a 16 year old student rep on the Board and it would be inappropriate to discuss sex education in front of her – even though the subject was about what was being taught to 13 year olds!

I hope Rodney doesn’t relent on his questioning of the RSE programme at his local high school. Living where he does there is only one option for a state secondary education and with two more children to attend the school in years to come, his association with the place still has about a decade to run.

The cause he’s fighting is a worthy one. Children and pubescent teenagers should be allowed to develop naturally as they have for eternity. Sexual pleasure and sexual identity are matters you should be allowed to discover as a young adult, not as a 13 year old in your first year at high school.

Rodney’s been out of politics for nearly fifteen years. I suspect the only way for him to really attack this insidious sexual indoctrination of Wakatipu High School Year 9 students is to get back in the game and be part of the school’s Board.

But then he has every right to believe that he shouldn’t have to do that.

The lines of RSE teaching should not be blurred.

Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Subscribe to Peter William's Substack here