Category: Inclusion

young girl looking at a phone in the background and a child in the foreground looking down. Dark purple background

The RSE Curriculum Fails to Protect Our Children: Inclusion is Safety, and Exclusion is Betrayal

Posted on by vivsterNZ (she/her) in education, Inclusion, New Zealand Issues

I write about why the newly released draft Health and Physical Education curriculum, including its mandated framework for relationships and sexuality education (RSE), is a disheartening retreat from the realities of young people's lives in Aotearoa.

Photo of Vivian Chandra standing on a stage in front of a red curtain wearing a colourful Star Wars dress

Feminist Rage!

Posted on by vivsterNZ (she/her) in Feminism, Human Rights, Inclusion, New Zealand Issues

In March 2020, just before the end times, the pop-up Globe right here in Tāmaki Makaurau, played a farewell season, and one of the plays was called Emilia. Who was Emilia? She was a published poet, a mother, a teacher and a feminist, from 1569 to 1645! Emilia was five years younger than a dude y’all might know, Willy Shakespeare. She did live longer than him tho, by about 30 years. If you *do* know Shakespeare, you might know that there was a ‘dark lady’ in his Sonnets, an unacknowledged inspiration for his plays, and Lloyd Malcolm, the playwright of Emilia, says it might just be Emilia. This is the closing monologue with some wee Viv changes.