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Jessica Valenti Made the Case for School Choice
Second grade. This is happening a second-grade classroom somewhere:
https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/987403603953487872
Valenti is a “feminist author” and lives in Brooklyn. Let me guess: Park Slope.
A few other commentators had similar reactions, about Valenti making the case not only for homeschooling but religious schools as well. Inez Feltscher-Stepman accurately pointed out that the Valenti post was ultimately just an advertisement for school choice activism:
If you're conservative and #schoolchoice is not at the top of your agenda, you're a fool. This is what the public schools are teaching your children. @MattWalshBlog https://t.co/OSxPgGix3r
— Inez Stepman (@InezFeltscher) April 23, 2018
The option to homeschool or send kids to religious schools isn’t open to many Americans; let alone most of them. For one of the most important decisions parents can make — who educates their children and how — it’s taken out of our hands and is left up to geography and how much individual teachers have decided to prioritize indoctrination over education.
Why is it that children need to learn the sexual orientations and leanings of the adults in their lives? How is this relevant for a seven-year-old and what subject matter could this material possibly fall under?
I wrote recently about the turn sexual education has taken towards indoctrination in gender and sexual identity issues. The focus is no longer teen pregnancies and STDs, but instead on sexuality and gender identification, as defined by far-left activists looking to create a new base of activists. After a decade of criticizing conservatives about how ineffective abstinence-only education is, these curriculums devote the vast majority of their focus on sexuality and gender, not actual sex and its ramifications.
For second graders, what might this focus mean for students and what may have been pushed off of the curriculum in its stead? For children around the age of seven, there is little that they need to know about sex and sexuality; they’re still spending the majority of their time avoiding the opposite sex, for fear of cooties (and developmentally, rightfully so). What is concerning about this indoctrination of a sexual nature of children this age isn’t just exposing them to grown-up ideas regarding sex (which is also extraordinarily problematic) but the potential that sexual education developmentally appropriate for that age range is being scaled back to make time for this gobbledygook, as it has been for older children already.
Children that age need to have clear ideas about body parts without jumbled ideas of sex and gender confusing them. They need to know the names of their sexual organs and what their basic functions are. They need to know this not only to be able to accurately describe an injury or issue to a parent or medical professional, they also need to be able to understand what might be sexual abuse.
Shamefully, it seems some in the teaching profession believe that it’s their job to teach our kids the “right” ideas regarding sexuality and gender. Valenti’s tweet is a reminder that parents should have the choice to decide whose job it is to educate our children and to make sure that those doing so believe their primary job is education, not indoctrination.
Published in Education
Rodin,
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to ask how one can say there is marriage anymore? Two people could always sign a contract controlling the distribution of property between them and the right to make medical choices for each other etc. However, it wasn’t considered a marriage contract.
Regards,
Jim
Fair enough, @jamesgawron.
You said it passed no where by popular vote. That is false as a matter of fact. With the way polls were trending it was only a matter of time before even more states legalized SSM democratically. That would have been my preference – I did not agree with Obergefell.
To be fair, it should be pointed out that SSM was defeated on a number of occasions prior to the states that you mentioned. However the judiciary stepped in to keep the ball rolling until a few states “came around.”
I will not defend the judicial imposition of SSM.
I would say that they don’t need your blood.
There’s scarce few benefits to marriage anymore. If you have kids, your paycheck will be garnished regardless. If you’re married you lose half your retirement accounts.
We’d be fired for teaching the truth instead of the leftist-mandated curriculum . . .
That’s what tenure is for.
Polls, like so many other things in life, trend until they stop trending. The idea that one should base this society’s concept of something so sacred & fundamental as marriage on a trend is what is wrong at the very heart of this. If we are unable to grasp fundamental truths and just chase trends then democracy will die from this disease of shallowness. The Obergefel decision appears to have been thrown together in haste. Little thought was given to the absurdly vague language. Under it, one assumes that one could marry a dining room table if love was involved.
Regards,
Jim
I was thinking along the lines of food stamps. We all want kids to have access to food. We don’t force those who need food assistance to shop at government groceries. We simply give them the purchasing power to buy at private groceries. If government ran most of the groceries in this county, like they do schools, only the rich would have access to many of the foods that are relatively inexpensive and we take for granted. Private groceries, driven by competition are much better than government groceries would be. The same applies to schools. Private groceries are also regulated, but they government doesn’t run them. That is the difference.
You’ve shifted the goalposts. I decline to move further down the field with you.
“The option to homeschool or send kids to religious schools isn’t open to many Americans; let alone most of them. For one of the most important decisions parents can make — who educates their children and how — it’s taken out of our hands and is left up to geography and how much individual teachers have decided to prioritize indoctrination over education.”
First, I think actually that most Americans could homeschool. They choose not to. (In many cases they are bombarded by voices telling them that they can’t, for a host of reasons.) That choice is perfectly defensible, of course–but I can’t see why most parents couldn’t homeschool if they wanted to. Private school is another issue, of course; for most Americans, it really is prohibitively expensive.
Second, I don’t really think that it’s a question of geography at all–at least, not the issue we’re discussing here. So for example, I went to high school in one of the “best” school districts in the country: Fairfax County, VA. Undoubtedly the curriculum featured more “solid” academics than an impoverished district in, say, Arkansas. (Sorry, Arkansas.) And perhaps that plays in a little bit to your issue: what academics have been offloaded to make room for social engineering? But I really do think that the bigger problem is that social engineering is endemic to the public education project. And that’s true no matter where your live. It’s why I’m such a proponent of stepping off the public ed tilt-a-whirl and doing something else. That pesky “nonsense” that we’re scoffing at? It’s baked into the cake, folks.
“Most” is a bit optimistic. Have you been to the DMV? :)
I never dreamed I would allow my child in a public school, but my wife is deaf and is sorely unable and unwilling to teach her for feeling inadequate. I agree. Deaf children are often shoved through school .. . . you know what, I’ll just stop there because I don’t wish to offend on this topic. Regardless, my wife can’t teach my daughter and I have to work. I can’t afford private schools, most of which are religious anyway and almost all have more than their share of kids who are kicked out of public schools.
So, I have to ensure my daughter gets unindoctrinated on certain issues. Yes, dear, I don’t care what your teacher says, there’s nothing wrong with fried food. No, daughter, I don’t care what your teacher says, Pluto is still a planet. I don’t care what your teacher says, . . . and on and on.
Maybe not. Schools are funded by a discrete tax on property. It might be possible to demand those monies go straight to a locally-controlled account.
The teachers and administrators responsible for this should be arrested. And charged with whatever offense someone who is found walking up to kids on the street and trying to talk to them about their sexual feelings would be charged with.
Twenty years ago gay marriage itself was a “slippery slope” argument that only nut jobs thought was coming.
Ten years ago you would have been called crazy if you said some day there would be a cake maker standing before the Supreme Court to defend his right to simply say, “I don’t want to participate in that.”
Now the State of California wants to redefine “fraud” to include any attempt to convince a transgender man that cutting off his franks and beans does not make him a woman.
Don’t tell me there’s no slippery slope.
Good luck getting it if you’re teaching wrongthink.
Not a believer in tenure. It makes sense logically and philosophically, but in practice, it provides immunity for terrible people to say terrible things under the guise of academics . . .
If I’m not mistaken, doesn’t New Jersey have a law against therapists converting homosexuals back to normal (term “normal” intentionally used)?
That is an interesting point.
Exactly what evidence is there that what these teachers are teaching is a legal subject for an adult to broach with a minor?
Parents are “free to advise their children that they disagree…?“
That’s big of them. I suppose left wing parents are equally free to teach their kids that George Washington is not the father of our country and that 2 + 2 does not equal 4 in all cases…
I hate what these people are doing to our kids and country. Bastards.
Western Chauvinist (View Comment):
I just know you were dying to put “effing” bastards . . .
The memo really gets to the heart of things. The premise is simple. If you do not believe in these gender identity definitions and therefore do not wish to have your children indoctrinated with them, your children will be forced without your approval. As Jordan Peterson has stated repeatedly, “Pull your kids out of school!”
I think this memo is telling you why Jordan isn’t kidding. What I would add is that a class action suit needs to be filed immediately against the State of California. They are discriminating against the majority of people who do not believe in this and are forcing them out of the public school system. Any form of lawfare counter-harassment is justified to stop this abuse. Just as EJ commented earlier, this is no longer a slippery slope but a moral cliff. Allowing the public school system to be co-opted against the parents & children which it was designed to serve is unacceptable. The public employee union backed teachers plus the administration heavy staff full of career ideologues has left the interests of parents & children in the dust. They follow their ideologue masters who lead them to ever greater salary/benefit deals.
The barbarians aren’t just at the gate but over the walls.
Regards,
Jim
They have our children Preschool-14. They are running or manipulating nearly everything.
I would point out, though, that the memo is an opinion by the Board of Education’s pet lawyer and does not itself have the force of law.
Yet.
TBA,
Some people keep boa constrictors for pets. They deserve to be squeezed. Leave the rest of us out of it.
Regards,
Jim
Bethany, this whole sexual indoctrination is so outrageous and offensive–well, I’m sputtering here to react! How can we do this to kids? What is the matter with these people? And yet I see no way to stop them. Do you? I’m recommending get them out of the schools, too–anywhere but the public schools.
It does, however, represent the likely position that will be taken should anyone dare to defy the PTB at school.
I’m not a fan of the constitutional concept of substantive due process (conservatives generally are not), but this seems a perfect place to use it to challenge the underlying statute.
Liberal judges (i.e., California) love substantive due process. It would be interesting to see if they love it here.
The typical age of a second-grader is between seven and eight.
For the sake of discussion, what age (if any) would be appropriate for exposure (for lack of a better word) to the information on Valenti’s chart?
BTW, aren’t lesbians “gay”? I’m running behind here–or maybe, as was pointed out, just confused.