There’s a scene in the first series of The West Wing (possibly the greatest show to come out of America ever) where presidential adviser Sam Seaborn (played by the impossibly handsome Rob Lowe) says: “Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes.”
He might have been talking about the American system but the same can be said of schools in the UK. Any gay man of a certain age – and I’m not telling you mine – will tell you how little he was taught about sex; not to mention same-sex relationships.
And it’s that lack of knowledge that leads to ignorance. And that ignorance can lead to hate and bullying – feel free to engage your Yoda voice if you say this out loud.
Seriously, though, jump forward a number of years and things have improved, but not enough. Certainly not enough for children’s author and illustrator Olly Pike.
A Stonewall school report, released in 2017, revealed that LGBTQ bullying is the most common form of bullying. With the help of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, a Stonewall study, that surveyed 3,700 lesbian, gay, bi and trans pupils, shows that although anti-LGBT bullying and language has fallen since 2012, almost 50 per cent of queer youngsters still face this horrendous form of discrimination.
Worse still, on average, more than four in every 10 young trans people have tried to take their own life.
So, Olly’s ongoing mission is to teach youngsters about LGBTQ rights and he plans to ensure a copy of his latest book, Kenny Lives with Erica and Martina, is in every primary school in the UK – there are close to 21,000 of them!
The Attitude Magazine Foundation didn’t think Olly could do that all on his own and stepped in to help. Originally, the foundation funded 50 sets of books – including Olly’s back catalogue of five other titles – to be sent to 50 institutions nominated by Attitude readers.
But publisher Darren Styles OBE proudly revealed in a recent interview that that number has now grown to 150 schools.
Driven by the way he and other LGBTQ people have been treated in public, Olly’s pre-Covid plan was to have the books in place by September 2020 when new relationship and sex education would be a mandatory part of the curriculum..
“I remember holding hands with a guy I was dating – I must have been 25 – and getting abuse. We were in Soho of all places. It just made no sense,” Olly says.
“Then I started to think about it more: maybe no one taught these lads that it’s OK to be gay. That encounter was one of the reasons I decided to write my books.
“Growing up in Rayleigh, Essex, in the shadow of Section 28, I spent a lot of my childhood ‘correcting’ myself, trying not to give away my true identity.
“It still affects me today. I become anxious sometimes and, if I’m leaving the house, I’ll check if I’m wearing something that will reveal my sexual orientation.
“I’m jealous of people, mostly those younger than me, who don’t care, who don’t think about that. But If I had been educated about LGBTQ issues, if we were treated fairly, equally and with more respect earlier on, my — and other queer people’s — mental health would be so much better.”
Former West End star Olly also runs Pop’n’Olly, offering fun, informative and equality-focused educational resources online for children, parent, carers and teachers.
He adds: “The most hate I’ve received has been online. There was a period, two years ago, where I was targeted by a load of hate channels. They decided to make videos about me, saying I was brainwashing children.
“Suddenly, as an adult, I was being bullied by thousands of people. They weren’t just calling me gay. They were calling me a paedophile. It was horrendous. It really affected me and made me question whether I should be educating children about LGBTQ issues.”
However, Olly has been buoyed by the reaction of children to his books. “A kid came up to me once,” he says, “a nine-year-old boy who’d read my Cinderella-esque fairytale, Jamie, and said: ‘Thank you for writing this. My name’s Jamie and I’m also trans. This book is about me’. His parents were happy, too, to have a book for their son.”
Olly was also drawn into the controversy surrounding the protests at Parkfield Primary School in Birmingham, after it started its No Outsiders programme that teaches tolerance of difference – drawing condemnation from people claiming their children were being encouraged to be gay. Yeh, we know!
“I met Andrew Moffat, the assistant head teacher who’s at the centre of [the] controversy, after he started using my books and YouTube videos as part of his No Outsiders programme. Then he invited me to see how his LGBTQ-inclusive lessons worked, and also helped me develop my own education workshops.
“I tested them out at the school and the children were awesome. They were so respectful and completely got it [but] someone has come in and spread misinformation about LGBTQ education, inciting fear.”
Olly adds: “I want to get a copy of my book into every primary school in the UK so that they have at least one LGBTQ resource. It’s an ambitious goal but The Attitude Magazine Foundation is doing its bit to help.