Since the utter corruption and lack of trustworthiness of journalists was the topic of today’s first post, it’s only fair to re-visit the other contender for America’s most corrupt alleged profession, educators. Deciding which of the two now virtually full-time Leftist indoctrination groups is more unethical makes an ethicist sound like Faye Dunaway being slapped by Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown”: “She’s my daughter!” <slap!> “She’s my sister!” <slap!>My daughter!” <slap!>“My sister!”
What sparked this sudden epiphany from the school board member (in the JeffCo Public Schools district in Jefferson County,Colorado) was this revelation: Teachers have been giving students surveys about their “gender identity,” because they believe that this is more important than, say, teaching them to add, write, and think. There are several parent lawsuits regarding the practice, so the Colorado affiliate of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, instructed its members to destroy any evidence of having given students a gender identity survey
An email from Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA) to teachers read, “if you do a questionnaire, please make it a paper and pencil activity – any digital records are more permanent and may be requested under federal law.” The union also advised teachers to “make your notations about students and not hold on to the documents.”
After all, nobody wants parents to know what their children are being pushed into against their parents wishes, and letting law enforcement authorities know might even be worse. Federal and state law forbid mandatory surveys asking about kids’ “protected information,” and any voluntary surveys must include parental notice and consent.
CBS reported at its local affiliate,
“The leadership actually provided an avenue to get around the law and basically saying it was OK,” says [Jefferson County] school board member Susan Miller. [Parent Denice] Crawford says it also put teachers relationship with parents at risk. “I don’t feel I can trust the teachers,” she said. “This is not political. It’s just they’re breaking the law,” she said.
Pssst! Denice, you gullible fool—of course it’s political. More:
Crawford, who has three kids in the school district, says she was encouraged when the district sent an email to all employees before the school year started reminding them state and federal law prohibits mandatory surveys that ask kids about protected information and even voluntary surveys, it said, are illegal unless parents can opt out.
When her son came home with a survey asking about his gender identity she was more than surprised. “Deceived, lied to, taken advantage of,” she said.
Again: how could she possibly be surprised? Meanwhile, when asked about the union’s effort to deceive parents and encourage sexual orientation indoctrination by its members, the union’s president Brooke Williams engaged in deflection and misdirection, saying:
“By allowing students an optional avenue to share their preferred pronouns while maintaining student privacy, we can better ensure that students feel safe, respected, and validated,” Williams said in a statement. “Transgender and gender nonconforming students have the right to discuss and express their gender identity and expression openly and to decide when, with whom, and how much to share private information.”
The NEA is a core constituency of the Democratic Party, and this smug endorsement of betrayal by those entrusted with the nation’s children is what Americans are accepting, aiding and abetting when they vote a member of that party into power today.
Ethics Alarms 
Who or what is driving this obsession with juvenile “gender identity?” Are all teachers transgender? The ones in control of the schools and the unions? Are they gay and lesbian and therefore fellow travelers with transgender people? Is this activity the kind of thing people were trying to prevent when gay and lesbian and transgender people weren’t openly permitted to teach or be in the military or various governmental branches? Were people who were anti-homosexuality (aka bigots) right to warn about keeping “these people” out of various endeavors?
Also, the advice to destroy any incriminating evidence reminds me of what is doubtless happening in college admissions offices this fall. Administrators will be doing the same discriminatory things, but will just disguise what they’re doing and say, “Oh, we’re not doing that anymore.” Baloney. They’ll just get craftier. There will need to be many more suits brought. These zealots don’t give up.
They have been conditioned.
They have learned you do not ask questions.
Asking questions equals hate and genocide.
The speed with which society has capitulated to the newest civil rights issue is evidence that they are no longer looking at the issue critically.
That’s the takeaway here.
It’s not that they are obsessed with gender identity; it is just that they no longer resistant to the next new issue.
-Jut
Just so weird. And unexpected.
I taught high school students for 20 years, a second career for me, and up through the time I retired from that 14 years ago, I never encountered this kind of thinking, that parents must be kept in the dark when it comes to a dramatic life-changing situation for their child. As OB asks [I paraphrase], ‘What the hell is it with gender ID anyway?’
It was true when I was teaching and it is true now that teachers have a special role in helping kids through those many difficult years of growing up. Are there things a kid might tell a teacher that they wouldn’t tell their parents? Yes, of course. Are there parents who would react in a way not in the best interests of the child? Yes, or course. And, responsible teachers have to know the difference, when to tell the kid that, ‘This is something I cannot keep in confidence; I have to discuss it with your parent(s)’, or, alternatively, “This is something that you will have to think about very seriously, maybe do some reading, maybe talk to a guidance counselor, maybe meet with the school psychologist’, and so on.
Wise teachers will set out some boundaries even before they tell the kids that ‘You can always come to me, and I will try to be helpful’.
There are times when the dividing line is blurry. But, for me, at least, when it comes to a strong desire to undergo a gender change, it is crystal clear that the parent(s) must be involved. To intentionally keep them out of the picture is a betrayal of everything public education stands for. There is much more to teaching than readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic, but keeping parents in the dark is just flat out wrong.
Comment of the Day.
I was in college when college administrations consciously abandoned the idea of the college being in loco parentis. Current elementary and secondary teachers and administrators seem to be taking in loco parentis to irrational extremes. They want to be in the place of parents when parents are still around. Absolutely bizarre.
I’ll bet you were hoping for an example of good parenting. Kind of a shame y’all ran Chris off, or he ran himself off, whichever it was. He certainly could contribute to this post, as he did to others.
But, parenting.
Saturday morning, early, we’re loading the van with rifles and associated gear for a shooting match at another school [yes, we had a rifle marksmanship team in a public school], and here comes mom and dad and one unhappy child, about 15 years old. Dad says, ‘R’ did not do all the school work she was supposed to do, and, we think she should not go on this trip, but, we do not want to hurt the team in its competition. So, if you really need her on the team, she can go. Mom is nodding agreement, with Dad, I think.
She would have been competing on our JV team. The kids all had been told, repeatedly, school work comes first.
But, to have parents like that. Sad that they are few and far between, and sadder still that there are teachers who don’t want the interest and involvement of parents in the education of their kids.
A number of things drove me out of high school teaching. Certainly, the inability to provide a decent life for our children weighed heavily in my decision to stop teaching and go to law school. But there were two things that were really important factors: one, obnoxious parents were a major problem, and two, with rare exception, the general unpleasantness of my faculty fellows. I dare you to find anywhere more demoralizing than a high school faculty lounge.
“[Parent Denice] Crawford says it also put teachers relationship with parents at risk. “I don’t feel I can trust the teachers,” she said. “This is not political. It’s just they’re breaking the law,” she said.
Pssst! Denice, you gullible fool—of course it’s political.”
I think the point she’s making is that her mistrust of the teachers isn’t political. It’s gotten to the point where when “good Democrats” are making points those icky Republicans would normally make it has become common to see mitigating language before the point. “I’m not like those people, but [they’re breaking the law and keeping information from me].
Yup. Excellent point.