Poland’s government has made a controversial school “health education” programme compulsory, despite widespread parental boycotts and criticism that it smuggles in explicit sex education.
The subject will be mandatory from the new school year, underscoring the government’s readiness to press ahead despite widespread opposition.
Attempting to head off renewed criticism, Education Minister Barbara Nowacka said this week that the sex education element would be “optional” and “probably about one tenth of the entire subject.”
However, Przemysław Czarnek, a senior Law and Justice (PiS) figure, said the move showed Donald Tusk’s government was effectively saying: “We’re coming for your children.”
Czarnek also sought to link the programme to a paedophilia scandal in Lower Silesia.
Poland’s Catholic Church has previously described the subject—set to replace “education for family life” classes—as “anti-family” and “gender destabilising,” warning it could “morally corrupt children.” It also argues the curriculum encourages sex outside marriage, undermines motherhood, and promotes gender ideology over biological sex.
Journalist Marek Skalski said on Wednesday it was “typical” that while “most parents and children didn’t want to hear about this depraving of Polish youth,” the left would still “introduce compulsion.”
Writer Bartosz Bocheńczak remarked that “normally, pilot programmes that fail get scrapped—but not in Tusk’s Poland.”
The programme will be compulsory from fourth grade in primary schools and for two years in secondary schools.
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
