There used to be these books published for classrooms called "Opposing Viewpoints," and they included just those: if you picked up the one on the death penalty, you got all the different perspectives on that, and from people who *believed* what they were saying. It was not presented as, "Here's our argument (hint hint, the correct one) and here's some strawman version of what *those monsters* think." These books aren't published anymore, tellingly, and I feel like we're going to be working our way back to a place when they *could be* for many years to come. But it's a worthwhile struggle.
School as church is exactly what has happened. It’s gone too far. I enjoyed your interview with the teacher. I’m trying to engage with my child’s school now with friendly questions- as your interviewee recommended. On another note, I ran into a friend the other day who is a nyc public school teacher. She had tons of questions for me (as the mom of one such kid) bcs they had recently had a staff meeting regarding not telling parents when a kid changes names in school. I tried to explain how damaging that is to the parent child relationship. I’m hoping one person at a time will begin to understand more and the narrative regarding what is right will change.
As a retired Kindergarten teacher, who taught all of my students to operate in the learning environment of advanced academic teaching, especially science and math, I state that teachers are not psychiatrists and "gender dysphoria" (as testified by psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Levine, a former "affirmer" who found the diagnosis unstable) is a psychiatric illness. As a trans widow, who discovered my then husband's cross-dressing diaries (3 of them in one fell swoop in August of 1992) I state that IS a psychiatric illness and he was quite mentally ill, manipulative and deceitful. He put me in danger of STDs by his "true life test" behavior, which involved going to gay bars in Greenwich Village in female garb and pretending the gay men offering to by him a Blanc de Blanc didn't recognize him as male. A child at one of the schools I taught at, PS 107 in Park Slope, was famously profiled in the NY Times for "being transgender." I have it on good authority from colleagues still in service that he is now identifying as a boy, and the manipulation they witnessed by his parents was just that, manipulation.
I will be doing a deep dive into the behavioral analysis of cross-dressing, the multiple dopamine hits it involves, therefore is not in any way a "true life test." uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
As Exulansic (Isle of Ex Yt channel) said about her experience as "trans-masc" one time cross-dresser, "It's a distraction."
I have worked in education in both private and public schools for 25 years. There are other angles to this that need to be considered:
- There is a frequent refrain of “leave teaching to teachers.” But there is a serious problem in college of education programs where teachers in training are not taught the science of learning . Colleges of education and colleges of science - where the research or cognitive psychology and the science of learning happen - typically have little to no overlap and do not communicate with each other. Many teachers leave programs with very little instruction on *how* to teach a child how to read, the actual mechanics of teaching and learning, or how to support students with learning challenges. Talk to teachers - they are often very frustrated with this lack of preparation. It’s this lack of training in the cognitive sciences that results in stories like the widespread failure to teach children to read - see Emily Hanford’s excellent reporting on this and the podcast “Sold a Story.” If you want to see how gender ideology can take over a school, learn how “whole language” and “balanced literacy” took over schools, publishing houses, and colleges of education https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- The “social-emotional learning” and mental health programs schools are spending millions on are often not evidence based nor effective. See this study + read about the US military’s failed PTSD prevention program that was based on a program for kids that had no research support in Jesse Singal’s book The Quick Fix.
- We are expecting schools to do more and more within the confines of a short day and limited resources - they are to teach academics, teach “character development,” handle kids’ mental health and social-emotional learning, teach them sex education and be on the frontlines of preventing pregnancy and STDs, act as in loco parentis, and act as social workers. Then on top of this they’re also tasked with providing students with education in the arts, music, and PE and field trips. No matter what your opinion is of schools taking on one or another of these roles, it is impossible for schools to do all of them well.
- Finally, not only are we not helping children develop resilience, many of the current themes of social emotional learning programs combined with the online culture kids are steeped in encourage, enable, and reward behaviors and patterns of thinking that fuel anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation - all things that we are seeing on a steep rise in children and teens.
Yes, great article yet again! I am blessed (or lucky or whatever) to have found a private middle/high school for my D that does exactly what you describe: teach reading, writing, math and science (and teaches these subjects very well), and makes the kids grapple with societal and ethical problems, including bio ethical issues. The teachers almost all possess Master's degrees and PhDs, and none are teacher's college-educated. My D exclaims at least once a week how grateful she is for her school, especially after talking to her public school friends.
I should add that while it is a private school and is therefore not publically funded, it provides scholarships for those who can't afford the fees. And I honestly don't see why we can't replicate at least some aspects in the public school system, which probably spends a similar amount of money per child.
Even before I became aware of the gender cult I had written our school to say “Please trust that parents are teaching values. If a child is found to be bullying or anything untoward then please let the parents know, but assume we have morals”. There was the “ raising the non racist” kid parent seminar. While I didn’t think in our blue state Lib leaning needed it it was optional and maybe that was helpful for some. My beef was my kids not reading classics and having social justice be the subjects. The book choices are problematic. I’m thrilled when they listen to MLKjr “ I have a dream” but I was unhappy when my 10th grade girl had to read “ The bluest eyes” by Toni Morrison. The girl is sexually and physically abused by her father. It was not ok. This year at a different school another English teacher had the class watch a wildly violent film ostensibly about racism. My daughter and I both complained. The NY Times just recently did another piece about these terrible conservative parents banning books like “ the bluest eyes” The writers assumption was that it had something to do with race. No I do t want my kids exposed to violence and sexual abuse. And why does every book need send a message! Cant it just get them to enjoy reading and teach them to write! No. There has to be a mission!
What I often wonder is, now that organized religion has fallen out of favor, where will people go for spirituality and moral guidance?
I agree that public schools teaching gender identity as gospel is not the way to go.
But I'd argue it's only become possible to do that because of the fall of organized religion. If we can't come up with something good to fulfill our need for religion, how can we fight off "bad" religions like this?
Was just listening to selected comments from the recently-held Academic Freedom Conference at Stanford University (check it out at:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQy2zhWqTFZ5Thzz1tE8dhWWTRUTQzaIZ ), at which Jonathan Haidt repeated his question about what the "telos" (the ultimate object or aim) of a University is.
So, what's the telos of a public school, be it elementary, middle or high school?
Most of us reading this are citizens of societies that anthropologists label as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), so I'll bet most of us share a belief that all kids possess a set of basic human rights, that are universally due every human being, regardless of cultural or religious background. So of course, we want our kids to feel physically safe, and be treated fairly at the educational institutions to which we send them. But the *main* and most important reason our kids are there at all is to learn basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic . . . and maybe some basics on the role of a citizen in a democratic republic), and hopefully a basic set of "facts" that can orient them within the general cultural identity of "American." National identity is how countries typically have formed and persisted in history. And most particularly ours, because our social cohesion - since we're "a nation of immigrants" - is supposed to be less reliant on those "blood and soil"-type stories often bandied about in more ethnically homogeneous countries.
Thomas Sowell often points out that people's arguments tend to have more to do with different perceptions of what causes things to happen than with fundamental values, disagreements over what is "bad" and what is "good." (from Sowell's Conflict of Visions: "Both constrained and unconstrained visions are fundamentally and essentially visions of causation. Only derivatively do they involve clashes of moral principles or different hierarchies of social values." If you're unfamiliar with the terms "constrained" and "unconstrained," a quick and dirty way to think of them is as short-hand for the conservative's tendency not to want to change even flawed traditions, for fear of unintended consequences, versus the progressive's desire to break down established norms and reform everything and everyone in order to achieve utopia. Sowell's observations are more nuanced than that in his book, of course.)
In other words, nobody on any side of a policy disagreement really wants kids to suffer. But there are just gigantic differences of opinion on the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything; and 99.999% of the people who staff a typical public school are nowhere near qualified to address the metaphysical. The fact that too many have gotten distracted by the conceit that it is their place to try means that too many public schools provide more confusion and mental angst than actual education. It is pretty damned hard to be antifragile in the modern world if you are innumerate and you don't know how to read.
This is developmentally so dicey. Kids need adults to reality-test against GNC is very easy to support. "He likes dresses. So what. It's fine." Trans is a made up reality that cannot be *shared*, it can only be agreed with. That's fascistic. If you use preferred pronouns on one kid, you gaslight the whole class.
There used to be these books published for classrooms called "Opposing Viewpoints," and they included just those: if you picked up the one on the death penalty, you got all the different perspectives on that, and from people who *believed* what they were saying. It was not presented as, "Here's our argument (hint hint, the correct one) and here's some strawman version of what *those monsters* think." These books aren't published anymore, tellingly, and I feel like we're going to be working our way back to a place when they *could be* for many years to come. But it's a worthwhile struggle.
School as church is exactly what has happened. It’s gone too far. I enjoyed your interview with the teacher. I’m trying to engage with my child’s school now with friendly questions- as your interviewee recommended. On another note, I ran into a friend the other day who is a nyc public school teacher. She had tons of questions for me (as the mom of one such kid) bcs they had recently had a staff meeting regarding not telling parents when a kid changes names in school. I tried to explain how damaging that is to the parent child relationship. I’m hoping one person at a time will begin to understand more and the narrative regarding what is right will change.
Keep writing Lisa!
As a retired Kindergarten teacher, who taught all of my students to operate in the learning environment of advanced academic teaching, especially science and math, I state that teachers are not psychiatrists and "gender dysphoria" (as testified by psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Levine, a former "affirmer" who found the diagnosis unstable) is a psychiatric illness. As a trans widow, who discovered my then husband's cross-dressing diaries (3 of them in one fell swoop in August of 1992) I state that IS a psychiatric illness and he was quite mentally ill, manipulative and deceitful. He put me in danger of STDs by his "true life test" behavior, which involved going to gay bars in Greenwich Village in female garb and pretending the gay men offering to by him a Blanc de Blanc didn't recognize him as male. A child at one of the schools I taught at, PS 107 in Park Slope, was famously profiled in the NY Times for "being transgender." I have it on good authority from colleagues still in service that he is now identifying as a boy, and the manipulation they witnessed by his parents was just that, manipulation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/nyregion/family-of-boy-who-wears-dresses-sues-education-department.html
I will be doing a deep dive into the behavioral analysis of cross-dressing, the multiple dopamine hits it involves, therefore is not in any way a "true life test." uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
As Exulansic (Isle of Ex Yt channel) said about her experience as "trans-masc" one time cross-dresser, "It's a distraction."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ERBzqDzaA&t=27s
I have worked in education in both private and public schools for 25 years. There are other angles to this that need to be considered:
- There is a frequent refrain of “leave teaching to teachers.” But there is a serious problem in college of education programs where teachers in training are not taught the science of learning . Colleges of education and colleges of science - where the research or cognitive psychology and the science of learning happen - typically have little to no overlap and do not communicate with each other. Many teachers leave programs with very little instruction on *how* to teach a child how to read, the actual mechanics of teaching and learning, or how to support students with learning challenges. Talk to teachers - they are often very frustrated with this lack of preparation. It’s this lack of training in the cognitive sciences that results in stories like the widespread failure to teach children to read - see Emily Hanford’s excellent reporting on this and the podcast “Sold a Story.” If you want to see how gender ideology can take over a school, learn how “whole language” and “balanced literacy” took over schools, publishing houses, and colleges of education https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- The “social-emotional learning” and mental health programs schools are spending millions on are often not evidence based nor effective. See this study + read about the US military’s failed PTSD prevention program that was based on a program for kids that had no research support in Jesse Singal’s book The Quick Fix.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mobile.twitter.com/DrJackAndrews/status/1548925718746189824__;!!JZyed81S!hKsxD2eeNWJXqXBm4GnjWeMOoYoNTmbCJ0xCUoKpmBUM02VfQGvX0h5vNfzzy4CJO_5PYMfNvttyYvazi5BDT1TW$
- We are expecting schools to do more and more within the confines of a short day and limited resources - they are to teach academics, teach “character development,” handle kids’ mental health and social-emotional learning, teach them sex education and be on the frontlines of preventing pregnancy and STDs, act as in loco parentis, and act as social workers. Then on top of this they’re also tasked with providing students with education in the arts, music, and PE and field trips. No matter what your opinion is of schools taking on one or another of these roles, it is impossible for schools to do all of them well.
- Finally, not only are we not helping children develop resilience, many of the current themes of social emotional learning programs combined with the online culture kids are steeped in encourage, enable, and reward behaviors and patterns of thinking that fuel anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation - all things that we are seeing on a steep rise in children and teens.
Yes, great article yet again! I am blessed (or lucky or whatever) to have found a private middle/high school for my D that does exactly what you describe: teach reading, writing, math and science (and teaches these subjects very well), and makes the kids grapple with societal and ethical problems, including bio ethical issues. The teachers almost all possess Master's degrees and PhDs, and none are teacher's college-educated. My D exclaims at least once a week how grateful she is for her school, especially after talking to her public school friends.
I should add that while it is a private school and is therefore not publically funded, it provides scholarships for those who can't afford the fees. And I honestly don't see why we can't replicate at least some aspects in the public school system, which probably spends a similar amount of money per child.
Edit: "exclaims", not "explains"
Another good essay!!
Even before I became aware of the gender cult I had written our school to say “Please trust that parents are teaching values. If a child is found to be bullying or anything untoward then please let the parents know, but assume we have morals”. There was the “ raising the non racist” kid parent seminar. While I didn’t think in our blue state Lib leaning needed it it was optional and maybe that was helpful for some. My beef was my kids not reading classics and having social justice be the subjects. The book choices are problematic. I’m thrilled when they listen to MLKjr “ I have a dream” but I was unhappy when my 10th grade girl had to read “ The bluest eyes” by Toni Morrison. The girl is sexually and physically abused by her father. It was not ok. This year at a different school another English teacher had the class watch a wildly violent film ostensibly about racism. My daughter and I both complained. The NY Times just recently did another piece about these terrible conservative parents banning books like “ the bluest eyes” The writers assumption was that it had something to do with race. No I do t want my kids exposed to violence and sexual abuse. And why does every book need send a message! Cant it just get them to enjoy reading and teach them to write! No. There has to be a mission!
What I often wonder is, now that organized religion has fallen out of favor, where will people go for spirituality and moral guidance?
I agree that public schools teaching gender identity as gospel is not the way to go.
But I'd argue it's only become possible to do that because of the fall of organized religion. If we can't come up with something good to fulfill our need for religion, how can we fight off "bad" religions like this?
Was just listening to selected comments from the recently-held Academic Freedom Conference at Stanford University (check it out at:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQy2zhWqTFZ5Thzz1tE8dhWWTRUTQzaIZ ), at which Jonathan Haidt repeated his question about what the "telos" (the ultimate object or aim) of a University is.
So, what's the telos of a public school, be it elementary, middle or high school?
Most of us reading this are citizens of societies that anthropologists label as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), so I'll bet most of us share a belief that all kids possess a set of basic human rights, that are universally due every human being, regardless of cultural or religious background. So of course, we want our kids to feel physically safe, and be treated fairly at the educational institutions to which we send them. But the *main* and most important reason our kids are there at all is to learn basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic . . . and maybe some basics on the role of a citizen in a democratic republic), and hopefully a basic set of "facts" that can orient them within the general cultural identity of "American." National identity is how countries typically have formed and persisted in history. And most particularly ours, because our social cohesion - since we're "a nation of immigrants" - is supposed to be less reliant on those "blood and soil"-type stories often bandied about in more ethnically homogeneous countries.
Thomas Sowell often points out that people's arguments tend to have more to do with different perceptions of what causes things to happen than with fundamental values, disagreements over what is "bad" and what is "good." (from Sowell's Conflict of Visions: "Both constrained and unconstrained visions are fundamentally and essentially visions of causation. Only derivatively do they involve clashes of moral principles or different hierarchies of social values." If you're unfamiliar with the terms "constrained" and "unconstrained," a quick and dirty way to think of them is as short-hand for the conservative's tendency not to want to change even flawed traditions, for fear of unintended consequences, versus the progressive's desire to break down established norms and reform everything and everyone in order to achieve utopia. Sowell's observations are more nuanced than that in his book, of course.)
In other words, nobody on any side of a policy disagreement really wants kids to suffer. But there are just gigantic differences of opinion on the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything; and 99.999% of the people who staff a typical public school are nowhere near qualified to address the metaphysical. The fact that too many have gotten distracted by the conceit that it is their place to try means that too many public schools provide more confusion and mental angst than actual education. It is pretty damned hard to be antifragile in the modern world if you are innumerate and you don't know how to read.
This is developmentally so dicey. Kids need adults to reality-test against GNC is very easy to support. "He likes dresses. So what. It's fine." Trans is a made up reality that cannot be *shared*, it can only be agreed with. That's fascistic. If you use preferred pronouns on one kid, you gaslight the whole class.