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:

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
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  1. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Bob W (View Comment):

    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.

    I wonder how that would fly in court. Someone needs to test it.

    • #61
  2. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    TBA (View Comment):

    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?

    I would say it depends on what’s being taught.  A case could be made that it’s just plain unnecessary, age aside.

     

    • #62
  3. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    James Gawron (View Comment):
    They are discriminating against the majority of people who do not believe in this and are forcing them out of the public school system.

    But is it really as majority?  I mean, the peeps in Cal vote Demo, and they have to know Democrats foster this kind of crap teaching . . .

    • #63
  4. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Bethany Mandel: 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 really interesting to me about six- and seven-year-olds is their fascination with child development. I observed this myself with my own kids, but I also read about a child development study that looked at the same thing and reached the same conclusion I had.

    These are the two years when children suddenly are curious about how they got to where they are–walking and talking and running and so on. “Where did I come from?” For some reason, just as most children learn to tell time very easily at seven years old but not at six, this is a special time in a child’s life where child development starting with infancy fascinates them.

    Wouldn’t it make the most sense then to take advantage of this natural wonder and create a first- and second-grade curriculum that taught a little bit about this. So many of them have baby brothers and sisters at home that the lessons will be very real to them. And it’s also easy for teachers to find babies and toddlers to bring into the classroom to show the kids what these young humans can do.

    Coming at this from another direction for a second: it has been demonstrated in a few studies that when pediatricians spend time with new mothers teaching them about their babies and toddlers, the effort is rewarded with better parenting and more constructive parenting that leans more on praise and rewards for good behavior than on punishment for bad behavior.

    Back to my original point: if we want to teach children to avoid sex later in life, wouldn’t be great to lay a foundation when they are in elementary school, a foundation based on teaching them the wonders of early child development? It would have the peripheral benefit of opening their eyes to the joys of getting to know people too.

    When my third child came along, six years after my second and eight years after my first, I had a Brownie troop, and I was very active as a volunteer in our elementary schools. The kids loved having my infant son around. They were fascinated by how he was growing and what he could do.

    That’s why this whole thing just came together for me in my head one day. Let’s work with this wonder that six- and seven-year-olds have with babies and toddlers. Let’s go with it and let them learn all about it.

    I see nothing but good results coming from doing so.

    • #64
  5. Pony Convertible Inactive
    Pony Convertible
    @PonyConvertible

    Layla (View Comment):

    But I really do think that the bigger problem is that social engineering is endemic to the public education project

    Please, don’t call it social engineering. Engineering is based on science, math, and logic. What you call social engineering is not. 

    • #65
  6. Bob W Member
    Bob W
    @WBob

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):

    Bob W (View Comment):

    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.

    I wonder how that would fly in court. Someone needs to test it.

    Either that, or sexual predators who like to talk to kids on street corners about their sexuality should use this school program as a defense. It’s definitely not a disninterested sex ed curriculum. It’s designed to get them to question their own sexuality and to think about it the way the adults who are presenting this to them are suggesting. 

    • #66
  7. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    TBA (View Comment):

    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?

    Well, I suppose after they’ve learned their Math up through Geometry and Statistics, after they’ve studied American and European history and have read Herodotus, Cicero, and Homer, after they’ve learned to recite one of Hamlet’s soliloquies and how to diagram a complex sentence… then we can have a discussion about human sexuality.

    Nah, just kidding. I can’t think of a scenario in which the topic is safe in the hands of the lefty-liberals in public education. Can you?

    In what way does this crap lend itself to excellence in education? How does it serve the interests of our kids and society? It doesn’t. It only serves the post-modern neo-Marxist agenda. 

    Public education delenda est. 

    • #67
  8. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Stad (View Comment):

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Annefy (View Comment):

    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.

    I just know you were dying to put “effing” bastards . . .

    I have a reputation to uphold. Thanks for filling in for me. ;-)

    • #68
  9. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    TBA (View Comment):

    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. 

    But it is a threat to anyone who wants to be the first parent to challenge them.  Yank your kid from sex ed, and we’ll take you to court . . . maybe even take your child.

    • #69
  10. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Stad (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    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.

    But it is a threat to anyone who wants to be the first parent to challenge them. Yank your kid from sex ed, and we’ll take you to court . . . maybe even take your child.

    If California ever closes its borders, it will be to keep Californians in. 

    • #70
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