…and shame on the three Progressive, woke Justices who are implying that it is.
24-297 Mahmoud v. Taylor (06/27/2025), just handed down by the Supreme Court, should have been an easy 9-0 decision. Sadly, the three female radicals on the Court (I once had high hopes for Justice Kagan, who’s not, you know, an idiot like the other two, but she clearly has been brain-washed with Clorox or something, so the tally was 6-3) opposed the holding that families choosing not to have their children exposed to pro-gay, bi-, trans, etc propaganda in their public school classes have a right to do so. (At least the majority didn’t say parents have an obligation to do so, which would have been my position.)
The decision declared illegal a Maryland school board’s decision to deny opt-outs for religious students during such scintillating in-class readings as “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” a story about a child’s gay uncle marrying a man, and “Pride Puppy,” an alphabet primer about a dog who gets lost at a gay pride parade. Incredibly, the lower court and Court of Appeals had sided with the school against a group of Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents who argued that the school board’s lack of an opt-out policy breached their right to exercise their religion under the First Amendment.
“The Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote for the conservative majority. “[F]or many people of faith across the country, there are few religious acts more important than the religious education of their children…In the absence of an injunction, the parents will continue to be put to a choice: either risk their child’s exposure to burdensome instruction, or pay substantial sums for alternative educational services.”
To read the hysterical dissent from the three knee-jerk progressives, SCOTUS just returned to the bad old days of Tennessee v. Scopes (1925), when a state made it illegal to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution because it contradicted the Bible (as Clarence Darrow showed by making a monkey out of William Jennings Bryan on the witness stand, Darwin didn’t and doesn’t).
“Today’s ruling threatens the very essence of public education,” wrote Sotomayor. (No, it doesn’t. For one thing, non-scholarly books about where men stick their weenies are not “education,” but propaganda.) Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined in Sonja’s predicable idiocy. I hope they are just being collegial because they feel sorry for her.
“The Court, in effect, constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators,” the Wise Latina opined. When administrators make educational decisions based on woke social engineering rather than the legitimate education needs of children, parents should, indeed must, have veto power, but somebody please tell Sotamayor that the case didn’t involve an assertion of veto power, but the power of parents to say, sorry, our family and its beliefs are inconsistent with with the non-educational knowledge and skills you are trying force on my kids.
“That decision guts our free exercise precedent and strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society,” Sotomayor added, still in her fatuous mode. “Exposure to new ideas has always been a vital part of that project, until now.”
If you believe that Pride conformity is one of those new ideas that it’s crucial children learn in school, go to the back of the class and out on a cone-shaped hat labeled “Woke.” Sex-related practices, options, deviations and society’s response to them might be a curriculum option after the students have mastered the important stuff, and since our students are not learning to read, write, calculate and think in recent years, the issue should be moot.
I’ve been thinking about the Scopes case a lot lately, so the kind of language Sotamayor used in her hyperbole struck a metaphorical chord.Next week I’ll be presenting “Icon Ethics 2025: Darrow’s Career, Conflicts and Contradictions on Trial” for the D.C. Bar, a three hour ethics CLE program based on my one-man show about Clarence Darrow and my collaboration with historian Ed Larson, “The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow.” Darrow, as the fictional drama “Inherit the Wind” recounts, furiously challenged Tennessee’s anti-Darwin law, as he should have (he was hired to defend Scopes by the ACLU when it was dedicated to the First Amendment). But that law banned teaching evolution in the schools, and most important of all, “The Origin of the Species” is science, not propaganda, and definitely not indoctrination.
Here’s part of Darrow’s opening argument in that case, where he argues that striking down the Tennessee law really is destructive to human progress, learning and thought. The three left-wingers on the Court think “The Origin of the Species,” one of the most important books of the past 300 years at least, is matched in importance by “Pride Puppy.”
Here’s Clarence:
“…Along comes somebody who says “we have got to believe it as I believe it. It is a crime to know more than I know.” And they publish a law to inhibit learning. This law says that it shall be a criminal offense to teach in the public schools any account of the origin of man that is in conflict with the divine account in the Bible. It makes the Bible the yardstick to measure every man’s intellect, to measure every man’s intelligence and to measure every man’s learning. Are your mathematics good? Turn to Elijah 1:2. Is your philosophy good? See II Samuel 3. Is your astronomy good? See Genesis 2:7. Is your chemistry good? See – well, chemistry, see Deuteronomy 3:6, or anything that tells about brimstone. Every bit of knowledge that the mind has must be submitted to a religious test. It is a travesty upon language, it is a travesty upon justice, it is a travesty upon the constitution to say that any citizen of Tennessee can be deprived of his rights by a legislative body in the face of the constitution.
Of course, I used to hear when I was a boy you could lead a horse to water, but you could not make him drink water. I could lead a man to water, but I could not make him drink, either. And you can close your eyes and you won’t see, cannot see, refuse to open your eyes – stick your fingers in your ears and you cannot hear – if you want to. But your life and my life and the life of every American citizen depends after all upon the tolerance and forbearance of his fellow man. If men are not tolerant, if men cannot respect each other’s opinions, if men cannot live and let live, then no man’s life is safe, no man’s life is safe.
Here is a country made up of Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotch, German, Europeans, Asiatics, Africans, men of every sort and men of every creed and men of every scientific belief. Who is going to begin this sorting out and say, “I shall measure you; I know you are a fool, or worse; I know and I have read a creed telling what I know and I will make people go to Heaven even if they don’t want to go with me. I will make them do it.” Where is the man that is wise enough to do this?
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private school, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it from the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding! Always they are feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until, with flying banners and beating drums, we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted torches to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”
Ethics Alarms 
A friend of mine wrote a novella reimagining the Scopes Trial as related to trans-rights: https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Heart-Modern-Day-Re-Imagining-Scopes-ebook/dp/B0CC634V4Q/
He’s clearly on the conservative side of the issue, but brings up some interesting points.
In the meantime, I’m going to ask him for next week’s lottery numbers.
Sorry, but Clarence is completely wrong. He said “men.” “Men” does not include women and transwomen and transspeciesists. He needs to get with the program.
jvb
Hmm well the author has a good point in here: that parents’ option to have their children OPT OUT of some school activities covering what they consider to be objectionable topics is NOT the same as a BAN on teaching topics that do not align well with a particular set of religious beliefs. A nice clear way to line up these two would be to highlight the difference between banning the teaching of evolution and allowing parents to opt their children out of biology classes (in which evolution will almost invariably come up, it being a foundational theory for modern biology). I am left wondering if the author would be cool with this sort of opt out. If yes, his position is consistent. If not, I’d be interested in his reasoning re why not.
Rather then getting right to what I consider to be an important point (important because central to the legal decision that is at least ostensibly the topic of this post), I had to wade through what I assume constitutes a performative display of ideological purity (of some sort?) and left wondering how a puppy being lost at a pride parade (didn’t read the children’s book, and perhaps the author of this post didn’t either?) has to do with “where men stick their weenies,” in any way that would not be absolutely analogous with a puppy being lost at a (heterosexual) wedding?
NOTE: This is the first post I’ve read on this blog (Alex recommended it — thanks Alex!), guess I’ll need to look further to see whether (and in what ways) it may or may not be typical.
Yes, Holly, I would have sided with Fundamentalist parents in Dayton if they wanted to have their children allowed to opt out of the evolution lesson. I suspect Darrow would have too….as he would have advocated parents exempting their kids from listening to Bible teaching in schools. which was very common, or school prayers, until Murray v. Curlett (1963).
Thank you for your response and I agree with your position on this (and your supposition of the position Darrow would have taken).
“Rather then getting right to what I consider to be an important point (important because central to the legal decision that is at least ostensibly the topic of this post), I had to wade through what I assume constitutes a performative display of ideological purity (of some sort?) and left wondering how a puppy being lost at a pride parade (didn’t read the children’s book, and perhaps the author of this post didn’t either?) has to do with “where men stick their weenies,” in any way that would not be absolutely analogous with a puppy being lost at a (heterosexual) wedding?”
Bad reasoning in an otherwise admirable debut. Do I really have to explain to you why a book extolling and promoting “Pride parades” is substantially about “where men stick their weenies”? Somebody help Holly out. (And there are no “heterosexual parades.”) And poo on your snide “ideological purity.” You want consistency (integrity), I’ll provide it: there is no justification, at all, for the nation, its schools or its organizations celebrating particular sexual practices and orientations (Or races, Or genders, OR nations of origin and ancestry). None.Longtime position, and ideology has nothing to do with it. For all you know, I’m a black-identifying cross-dressing, non-binary, fluid-sexual libertarian. And proud of it.
Ethics, Baby!.
Your consistency pledge: “I’ll provide it: there is no justification, at all, for the nation, its schools or its organizations celebrating particular sexual practices and orientations”
Taking this at face value, this would presumably include any celebration or endorsement of heterosexual orientation, correct? No stories in which identifiably gendered sets of parents appear (including one man and one woman), which could be viewed as an endorsement of “sexual practices and orientations”
Note: I believe it is true of all of us that our blind spots (the things we simply don’t see) are shaped by the context that seems most familiar to us.
it is not the job of public schools to take positions on sex and intimate relationships. That’s a topic to be reserved for families, just like current politics.
I have even taken the position that an unmarried teacher who is pregnant should not teach elementary school. She is a walking, talking promotion of unwed motherhood, and as an authority figure and role model, that is inappropriate.
Yeah, I get where you are coming from. People wearing wedding bands could also be viewed as “walking, talking” promotions of marriage, so also inappropriate in a setting that is (according to you) supposed to be explicitly neutral on matters of sex and intimate relationships, right? Don’t want people flagrantly “flaunting” emblems of marriage! Children might get ideas from that….
I call that a “reverse slippery slope” argument. Wearing a wedding ring, I’m pretty sure, has no influence on any third party and certainly not students of a teacher except in outlier situations. A pregnant teacher, however, whom the students know is not married is, again, a walking advertisement for unwed motherhood. If you want to argue that the increasing acceptability and practice of THAT isn’t a social malady with horrific consequences, particularly in the black community, bring it on: It’s a loser.
Hmm, so are ALL people walking advertisements for themselves? Is a disturbingly thin person a “walking advertisement” for anorexia? Or are they potentially a “walking cautionary tale” for eating disorders? Is a person who speaks two languages a “walking advertisement” for multilingualism? Or perhaps a “cautionary tale” signaling a threat to the dominance of English? (Maybe only true if one of their languages is Spanish? French or Finnish not so threatening?) More broadly, does the difference between a “walking advertisement” and a “cautionary tale” depend pretty much entirely on the judgment made by an observer, in this case, your judgment that pregnancy is a negative (even, somehow, “unethical” state for people who are not currently married)?
Hmm, what if the hypothesized person who is teaching elementary school while pregnant has been paid by our favorite billionaire to carry one of his burgeoning brood of children, in other words, it’s a visible side effect of an entrepreneurial side job for our elementary teacher (timed, ideally, so that she will give birth during summer break).
RE your view of “a social malady with horrific consequences” an international view might help instruct us on the associated disasters. We could look to Iceland, for example, where 69% of births in 2019 were outside of marriage, or France (62% in 2020) or Chile (75% in 2019). What horrific consequences would you expect these countries to have in common? Name a few and I’ll see what I can find re the incidence of these proposed sequelae and report back.
[Source for birth statistics: worldpopulationreview.com]
In general, I don’t value cross-culture comparisons. The U.S. is unique, and our black population is especially unique…and vulnerable.
Ah okay. So this blog is about ethics as applied to people in the U.S., not elsewhere. “Situational ethics”, right? For one national context only. Got it. Your blog, your rules.
For the U.S., I’m guessing that one reason you may be a fan of children having married parents is because children born to married parents tend to have better outcomes. This has been demonstrated in multiple studies. HOWEVER, this association is a correlation, and some recent work has pointed out the hazards of assuming causation from correlation.
For example, the involvement of two parents in a child’s life may be a more important factor than their marital status. Here’s a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that compared outcomes for children born to married parents versus cohabiting parents:
“the researchers pose the question: ‘Does this evidence [NOTED ABOVE] prove that marriage causes improvements in relationship stability and child development?’
They conclude that it doesn’t, because once all other differences apart from marital status are accounted for, the link between marital status and relationship stability or child development is substantially reduced or even eliminated. For example, there is little difference if you compare cohabitating and married parents who have very similar home environments, levels of education and ethnic background.
“What horrific consequences would you expect these countries to have in common?”
Curious; there any difference between “outside of marriage” and “single-parenthood“?
PWS
Okay I think the distinction you are focusing on here is perhaps whether a child is raised by a parent living alone without a partner versus raised by two parents living together, regardless of parent marital status at birth? I’m just dipping into this literature, but found an interesting study suggesting that the biggest (negative) impact on parental involvement (which is proposed as the direct antecedent to child academic outcomes in this case) is for the case they call “post-birth biological single” (mother is living with father–married or not–when child is born but BECOMES single–living separately from dad–after child is born, whether through divorce, separation, or widowhood). So the DISRUPTION is important — and (I’m guessing) that disruption both affects the child directly (loss of time with father) and indirectly (via impacts of the transition on mother).
“Results indicated that post-birth biological single parents were less involved with children’s school lives than families with two biological parents, either married or cohabiting, after accounting for numerous control variables. Thus, levels of parental involvement only differed once we consider a resource argument (a single parent has fewer resources to devote to the kinds of activities we call parental involvement) and its confluence with a transition. Simply being exposed to a transition, or simply residing with a stable single parent, did not reduce access to social resources in the form of parental involvement.” [Stable single parent was single, not living with dad when child was born, and remained single after child was born.] I think links are allowed…
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/12/229
I’m having trouble reconciling this with your other point. By having a policy of not having unmarried pregnant teachers teaching elementary school, the school is taking a position on sex and intimate relationships; they’re just hiding it. Just because it happens to be a defensible position doesn’t mean they’re not actively censoring what students see of their otherwise publicly professional teachers. With a bit of extra effort, the school could try to defend a policy not to allow fat teachers to teach elementary school using similar reasoning.
What I’m getting at here is that by its function, a school is where children learn things. Heck, children will learn wherever they are. For even the most reasonable and uncontroversial thing you could want a child to learn in school, there will be some faction of people who don’t want their children to learn it. We can’t use “this is political” as a metric for what to allow in school because we’d have to toss out everything. (Even math–remember how math is racist?)
We also can’t use “indoctrination” as a metric for what to allow in school because indoctrination is more a function of how something is taught than what is taught. If a student is encouraged not to question what they learn, that’s indoctrination even if what they learn happens to be true. If they are taught to question it, then I would argue that it’s not indoctrination even if it happens to be a contemporary political agenda. (It still should not be promoted in schools, but it’s not indoctrination.)
At some point, we really do have to decide as a society and as communities what we want students to learn in schools. I aim to help with that project.
Simple answer: part of a schools socialization mission is to discourage uncontroversially destructive conduct. Arguing for a pregnant teacher is like arguing for a drunk teacher. I assume you agree there’s no controversy over whether that’s bad conduct to model and encourage. You can only get away with unmarried parenthood if you are wealthy and have a great support network. Poor kinds don’t. Teens don’t. A disproportionate number of blacks don’t.
I do suspect the book with the Pride parade might be sanitized a bit. The author likely wanted to convey the significance of a marginalized group celebrating their freedoms and standing up for their civil rights. It’d be along the lines of a book about a dog getting lost at a women’s suffrage march in the 1910s, or at the 1963 March on Washington. Such books would explain to children how much work people had to do to change not just how they were treated by the law, but what sort of treatment was considered normal and expected.
That said, if a group doesn’t keep their parades appropriate for all ages, that puts the author in a bit of a bind. I haven’t read the book, but I’d very much like to trust that since it’s aimed at children, it has child-appropriate themes.
I would prefer that society help children acclimate to a “normal” that involves treating people respectfully and without prejudice, and I think children’s books are a good way to help with that.
One thing I’m very much concerned about is parents who don’t want their children exposed to media and culture that leads them to see other people as equals, worthy of the same respect and rights, because the parents want to instill in their children the habits of treating other people with contempt and bias. I think society has a vested interest in making it more difficult for parents to stunt their children’s ethical senses of fairness and compassion. That said, whether we trust agents of society not to introduce their own agendas is also critically important.
I’m reasonably certain that there are child abuse laws prohibiting parents from withholding education in general from their children, but helping humans figure out what does and does not constitute required education is my next giant project, after helping humans learn from each other and collaborate on constructive solutions.
For now, I recommend the schools just make sure that students aren’t bullying each other, whether or not their parents allowed them to read the book about the gender/sexual/romantic nonconforming people.
it’d be along the lines of a book about a dog getting lost at a women’s suffrage march in the 1910s, or at the 1963 March on Washington.
And both of those books would also be political advocacy, therefore propaganda, attempted indoctrination, and thus inappropriate. As would “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in the 1850s.
I think we’re going to need to start drawing some lines around political indoctrination. I assume that just teaching history isn’t inherently indoctrination, so at a certain age children can learn about the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Is it okay for public libraries to carry books like that, if not school libraries?
At what point does a political question become settled enough that we’re allowed to teach it to children? I’m assuming showing people of color with equal rights as other citizens isn’t something we’d consider indoctrination in schools, so when did we cross that line?
I’m actually inclined to agree that we don’t want to make a habit of presenting perspectives on history to children as if they are the correct perspectives, no matter how ethically obviously may be in hindsight. That said, when you are supplying children with works of realistic fiction, the settings of those works will influence what they considered normal.
If you don’t like a book about a same-sex wedding, fine. What about a book that just depicts such a wedding incidentally? What about a book that has a same sex couple? What about a book that depicts characters who are probably a same-sex couple, but it never says? What happens if we replace the phrase “same sex” with “interracial”? Is that political indoctrination now?
I think this is the flip side of the “everything is politics, and you have to cater to me because I’m offended by this normal thing that you said” stance that we often hear liberals being criticized for. The depiction of the existence of a same-sex couple is apparently a microaggression against some types of conservatives, just like phrases like “meritocracy” and “grandfather clause” are considered microaggressions by some liberal populations. I wonder if Aesop’s fables are also political indoctrination, like the ant and the grasshopper?
I also think the word “indoctrination” is getting cheapened here. Instead of referring to actual dogmatic brainwashing, it sounds like it refers to “being exposed to ideas that a person might not like.” In my opinion, a culture does not need to fear its children being exposed to ideas unless those ideas are better and more ethical than the culture’s own ideas. If a culture has good ideas, they can explain and demonstrate why those ideas are better, even to children. If the culture has bad ideas, they won’t be able to explain why those ideas are better than the ideas their kids learn about in school.
In other words, I think if you try to draw a hard boundary around what can be taught in public schools using the words “political indoctrination” and make that boundary encompass a depiction of a same-sex marriage, it’s going to encompass so many things we take for granted that we might as well just not teach anything in public schools except math and physics. Or was that your point?
I think there was a misunderstanding about the opening of the post. Someone who knows you will know that you don’t do performative displays and are unconcerned with ideological purity (insofar as ideology is independent of ethics). However, taking shots at figures you’ve previously passed judgment on leads people to the reasonable assumption that your judgment of their current activities is biased and therefore not worth reading. It makes your writing very much resemble lower-quality essays from people who happen to draw the same conclusions as you do, but for less well-considered reasons.
It doesn’t help when you use loaded terms as generalizations, such as “propaganda”. I have no doubt that there is some propaganda (as I understand the term) in our schools, and children’s books can be dangerous forms of propaganda. However, what constitutes “propaganda” can vary depending on which lessons people believe are harmful and whether children are merely shown a perspective or encouraged to adopt it as unquestionable truth. There are some lessons that fall under “basic morality” that people often do want children to learn without question until they are old enough to question it: don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t use violence… Is that propaganda?
I would not classify a book depicting a same-sex wedding as propaganda, any more than I’d classify a book depicting a mixed-sex wedding as propaganda, but I do realize that people who disagree about what should be considered “normal” may have a different opinion. That said, I’m curious why you would classify it as propaganda. I know you consider mixed-sex weddings in general to be family-friendly, and I don’t recall you having anything against same-sex weddings (aside from the ones that deliberately antagonize religious confectioners and other wedding vendors). Do you have any concerns about “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding”?
Normal is the majority. Being a member of a majority is a benefit in most cases. Encouraging children to take a path that makes them a minority as adults is not what the public school mission is to do; public school exist to educate AND to socialize, and socialization means to create skill and attitudes that are as compatible with society as possible. Thus I regard this statement “I would not classify a book depicting a same-sex wedding as propaganda, any more than I’d classify a book depicting a mixed-sex wedding as propaganda” as naive as well as untrue. The majority values in society are presumed to be normal and beneficial. Glamorizing or extolling minority values is the job for activists, not public schools.
Sure I have concerns about “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding.” What’s it doing in a school curriculum? Either encouraging a non-standard practice and lifestyle or denigrating it is propaganda.
Okay, I think I see your point. I had not considered the angle that because children have not developed feelings of sexual attraction, a message they might take away from the book is “cool, I can marry my best friend!” That could create some confusion around the purpose of marriage that we might want to avoid so that we don’t have to untangle it sooner or later.
My main concern is that at a certain point we do want children to know that same sex marriage is just a normal thing people do, and if they find that they do want to spend the rest of their life with someone of the same sex, then that is fine. Or should schools just not have children’s books about marriage at all? What sort of subjects could be allowed in schools?
We might want to reflect on what the actual purpose of marriage is. I would argue that in addition to providing certain benefits for those who want to have or adopt children, it is good to have benefits for people who want to be life partners and take care of each other. I assume that’s why people can marry and remain married after childbearing age.
For general clarification, I’m the Alex who invited Holly, as well as some other people who will check out the blog some time in the next few days.
Thanks for joining us, Holly!
“Today’s ruling threatens the very essence of public education. The Court, in effect, constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators. That decision guts our free exercise precedent and strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society. Exposure to new ideas has always been a vital part of that project, until now.”
There’s nothing fatuous or idiotic about anything she’s said. That’s the Marxist idea of what “education” should do in a very lucid nutshell. Education is intended to turn kids into good little Commies. “Viva la Revolucion! Er, the project.”
This is classic “It takes a village” stuff. The state, not parents, are supposed to educate children. The state, and not the family, is foremost. The family is to be destroyed. Very dangerous rhetoric and shocking she’d unleash it in an opinion. Her slip is showing.
Hi Bill, I’m trying to discern your own position on education based on your comments. Is your position that all children should be home schooled? Or at least schooled by other family members? That sending children to a “state” school (public school, presumably) is destroying families? How? By exposing them to a world outside their families? I went to a variety of schools as a child (some public, some private) and I don’t think this had any negative effects on my family… quite the contrary.
It’s not hard. Schools should teach students basic skills. How to read, how to write (with a pencil and later how to write a coherent essay), basic mathematics and science, some history and civics. All without indoctrination. How to think, not what to think.
Skills over subject matter. How to ask good questions, and skills for finding satisfactory answers. Absolutely agree on this. “How to think, not what to think.” Yes!! The most powerful intellectual skill one can help people develop. I didn’t learn this in elementary school, but I DID learn this in high school. From the perspective of people who are deeply devoted to a particular ideology or religious dogma or point of view, this is the most dangerous skill, as well.
I have a severe objection to what is being taught in the classrooms today. I believe the first priority of public schools is to teach children reading, writing, math, and science. Secondarily a thorough exposure to history and civics is necessary for an ordered society. Exposure to the arts, trades and physical education should round out a child’s education focus.
Subject matter should always be age appropriate. You don’t teach Calculus, sociology or the US Constitution to first graders. Teaching first graders LGBTQ+ etc. lifestyle choices to first graders could be considered sexual grooming in some circles. Educators today have strayed away from this core charter forcing acceptance of DEI dogma and indoctrination of the nation’s youth in social justice crusades. Our youth and our nation have suffered consequently. It is the job of parents to shape the moral fiber of their children, not the state!
Daily, there is a limited amount of time for teachers to educate our youth. Time spent on social justice and DEI training takes away from other subjects. If educators were doing a stellar job in teaching our youth core competencies, spending time on DEI subjects might be more tolerable. Sadly, they are not. A review of reading proficiency statistics from 1992 to 2022 shows that over two-thirds of our youth are below grade level.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cnb/reading-performance?tid=4
Somehow, three decades of this abysmal performance is tolerated by educators, politicians, and the media. In my view, the most critical skills children need to master are the communication skills of reading and writing. Failure to master communication skills contributes to failure in all other courses. Failure in reading comprehension contributes to the manipulation, indoctrination, and perversion of ideas of our youth and adults alike. The failure of our educators to educate should be a moral outrage. This failure is a national disgrace. Instead, we burden our courts with the perversion of the role of education in our society. We as a people need to demand better from our educators and elected officials.
Comment below from the linked Sowell talk which many have been saying for years.
“A dumbed down society is easier to control or overthrow. That’s the ultimate goal.”
It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s true.
Sowell EXPOSES Why American Education Is a Global MOCKERY | Thomas Sowell Today
Tom P,
Your response is spot on. Thanks!
The court’s ruling concerns a school system’s efforts to normalize LGBTQ+ behaviors and lifestyles. The court cowardly couched its decision solely on free exercise of religious grounds. While that is one valid argument, the more pertinent argument is that LGBTQ+ behaviors are bad for the species. Carried to the extreme, if everyone practiced LGBTQ+ behaviors, humans would become extinct in one generation. The preservation of the species via reproduction is the primary goal of all species. This position is no different than economists’ view of saving. While saving may be beneficial for an individual, when carried to the extreme, massive savings by everyone in an economy would collapse the economy.
Rather than mainstreaming deviant behaviors, schools should extol the virtue of acceptance of alternative viewpoints. They should stress that attacking others, either physically or verbally, is unacceptable in a civil society. Schools should teach acceptance of alternative viewpoints, provided those viewpoints or actions do not harm others. Harm does not include just making someone feel uncomfortable or unreasonably unsafe. Extolling behaviors that contribute to society and tolerance of other viewpoints should be part of a school’s curriculum.
A significant percentage of births in the US (~40%) and abroad occur outside of wedlock today. This phenomenon is generally detrimental to society, the single parent, and the children of a single-parent household. Statistically, this lifestyle leads to poverty, increased crime, and poor performance in schools. It puts an unfair burden on taxpayers to provide support services to compensate for someone’s personal choices.
Jack’s assertion that a pregnant, unwed teacher should not be allowed to teach while pregnant is a very valid position. Children learn by modeling the behaviors they are exposed to. A child who grows up in a bigoted household will most likely become a bigot. Given the negative outcomes of single parenthood, schools should not model that behavior in the classroom.
Thanks for making that point; I should have made it myself. I don’t think SCOTUS should have narrowed the issue to Freedom of Religion.
Great work from Tom P.