{"id":195649,"date":"2022-04-12T21:06:31","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T19:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=195649"},"modified":"2022-04-12T21:06:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T19:06:34","slug":"the-ruckus-over-classroom-genderism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=195649","title":{"rendered":"The Ruckus Over Classroom Genderism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The best overview I\u2019ve seen comes from a veteran teacher in California. Peter Laffin writes in American Thinker\u00a0The Truly Remarkable Thing about Florida\u2019s Anti-Grooming Law.\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is difficult to remain objective over the Florida education fracas.<\/strong> So much of the episode fires up the amygdala. The innocence of children. The rights of parents. The sovereignty of individual identity. The never-ending scandal of humans and sex. To feign \u201eneutrality\u201c in this conflict is a sort of moral suicide. If none of this matters, what possibly could?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone who taught school in progressive enclaves for 14 years,<\/strong> I can attest that there are many good people who oppose this law for fear<\/strong> that it will diminish the humanity of loved ones and reverse the tide of social progress. Although I do not believe that this law will have that effect, I respect the sincerity of those who do.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, it remains urgent to speak the truth plainly and oppose the ever-intensifying spread of radical social theory being taught to ever-younger students.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instances of ideological excess in American classrooms<\/strong> are well chronicled and widespread<\/strong>. We have seen enough to know that the time to act has long since passed. The Florida anti-grooming law is a necessary tool<\/strong> to blunt this advance, even though it seems conspicuously tame upon closer inspection. Its most controversial aspect, from which the clever but disingenuous \u201edon\u2019t say gay\u201c moniker was derived, would have been uncontroversial in any other era:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201eClassroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.\u201c<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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The key term for those still attempting to comprehend this law is \u201einstruction.\u201c<\/strong> The target is not the casual reference, but rather the systematic instruction of academic gender theory to prepubescent children.<\/strong> For instance, it has become common for teachers to utilize resources like \u201eThe Genderbread Person\u201c in SEL (social-emotional learning)<\/strong> curricula, as well as other ideologically tinged materials that do not reflect settled science, let alone objective reality.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Further, such instruction materials necessarily force teachers to operate beyond their professional depth and predetermined range of responsibility.<\/strong> Teachers are not psychologists. This was pointedly demonstrated by a mother who spoke at a PTA meeting in Spreckles, California after her daughter\u2019s teacher<\/strong> admitted to stalking her online in order to recruit her into an LGBTQA+ club.<\/strong> \u201eDo you have a doctorate in psychiatry that I don\u2019t know about?\u201c she asked. Also, teachers are not paid by taxpayers to be activists involved in recruiting 5- to 8-year-olds into political causes.<\/strong> Too many teachers have departed the realm of education and entered into the realm of indoctrination, and often with a creepy, messianic air.<\/strong> As such, they must be reined in.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Florida law prohibits teachers from formally instructing students on these matters before the 4th grade.<\/strong> Until then, the situation will remain in the hands of the students\u2018 families and their doctors.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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It would be difficult to contrive a more sensible demand in reaction to the current climate. This is perhaps the most stunning aspect of the entire controversy. Beneath the wailing and screeching is an utterly reasonable request.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as such, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Floridians support the new law, along with the vast majority of the U.S. voting population.<\/strong> Nor is it a surprise that voters who have read the actual text of the law support it in even greater numbers.<\/strong> Even a majority of Democrats back the legislation. And yet, outlets like NPR and CNN, and subsequently their audiences, have reacted to its passage as though it were an edict from the pope. The cultural left\u2019s blind spot here is profound.<\/strong> At this point, the DNC and its media allies should be charging Ron DeSantis consulting fees. No one is working harder to elect him president.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201eThe fundamental cause of trouble in the modern world,\u201c philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, \u201eis that the stupid are full of certainty, while the intelligent are full of doubt.\u201c For years, the cultural left has taken the Democrat party hostage and forced it to abandon any pretense of intellectual humility, let alone electoral realism. Both parties have undergone bouts of dangerous self-certainty in recent times. The Republican Party was guilty of this during the Iraq war. But it is obvious that today\u2019s Democratic Party has claimed pathological self-certainty as its banner.<\/strong> While even the most egalitarian countries in the West retreat from pushing gender ideology on prepubescent children,<\/strong> American liberals appear bent on doubling down.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of the emotional component, it is understandably difficult to zoom out and gain perspective. But the current environment beggars belief. Can the cultural left really be so certain of an academic theory<\/strong> \u2014 so certain that sex is \u201eassigned\u201c at birth as opposed to \u201eobserved\u201c in the same manner as eye and hair color, weight, and length \u2014 that they will continue to demand its presence in early childhood curriculum?<\/strong> Even at the cost of looming political catastrophe?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s still possible that it will relent. But it will require a good dose of humility.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Laffin is a teacher and writer in Laguna Niguel, California. His work has appeared in the American Spectator.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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For more on SEL, see Why the Classroom Activists Never Give Up<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201eSocial-Emotional Learning supposedly arose out of the COVID-19 pandemic<\/strong> and a need to attend to the emotional psyches of fragile youth. It is a shift<\/strong> in the role of a teacher from an educator to a therapist<\/strong> and places a high value on a child\u2019s emotional competency over academic performance. After locking kids in their homes, isolating them from their peers, muzzling them with ineffective face diapers, and pounding them with fear and doom for 2 years, activists have swooped in to provide emotional support<\/strong> in the classroom once they were permitted to return. In typical government fashion, it seems like a solution looking for a problem. They didn\u2019t create SEL to mend the fragile psyches of youth, they damaged the fragile psyches of youth to push SEL.\u201c<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201eIn a recent Twitter thread by podcaster Josh Daws of the Great Awokening Podcast, Daws lays out in 23 tweets how CRT and gender ideology have been deployed sequentially and their effect on the minds of America\u2019s youth. Based on the work of postmodern critic James Lindsey, Daws suggests that the opening salvo of CRT was\u00a0to tear down approved identity in the youth.<\/strong>\u00a0It imparts\u00a0guilt, shame, and social rejection of majority identities like whiteness, maleness, a binary gender paradigm, or even heterosexuality<\/strong>. Once a person has been made to reject their own race, gender, or sexuality, it is\u00a0followed up with an approved list of identities from which they can choose in order to be socially <\/strong><\/em>acce<\/i><\/b>pted. \u201c<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

via Science Matters<\/mark><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 12, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ruckus Over Classroom Genderism | Science Matters (rclutz.com)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best overview I\u2019ve seen comes from a veteran teacher in California. Peter Laffin writes in American Thinker\u00a0The Truly Remarkable Thing about Florida\u2019s Anti-Grooming Law.\u00a0\u00a0 Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. It is difficult to remain objective over the Florida education fracas. So much of the episode fires up the amygdala. The innocence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-OTD","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":258575,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=258575","url_meta":{"origin":195649,"position":0},"title":"Relax, Fresh Plaza, Florida Strawberry Production Is Growing","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"22\/05\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Fresh Plaza, a global trade publication for the fresh produce industry, ran an article claiming climate change is harming Florida\u2019s strawberry production. 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