Let’s clear up confusion about whether parents do or should have control over what their children learn in public schools — you don’t, and you shouldn’t.
I’m not sure when this generation of uber-entitled kids-turned-parents started slurping the far-right Kool-Aid that promotes the idea that anyone should be able to do anything they want anytime, anywhere, except for everyone else.
Stop pretending this is about anything other than political histrionics. As if these parents would think of stepping into a math class and saying, “Yeah, I don’t want Travis being exposed to hierarchy based properties at school. His mother and I want to be able to discuss that.”
The rest of us, however, and that means the vast majority of us, want all this to stop.
Rather than line up for hours at local school board meetings to lament the fact that thousands of people far, far smarter and better educated than you are doing the hard and often thankless work of teaching critical stuff to all of our kids, go home.
Go home and put on those big-girl and big-boy panties, turn off the Fox News and whacko talk radio and reach way back to when you were actually learning stuff in school and college and think hard, hard, hard.
Did any teacher you ever had ever do any of the crazy crap you’re accusing your kid’s teachers of doing or wanting to do?
Hell, no.
If you actually think that public school teachers are going to stand up in class and tell every little first grader that their white ancestors were ruthless slave owners and they should be ashamed of their great-great-great-great grandma for what they did, even if they came from Poland nine years ago, you’re as unhinged as Congresswoman Lauren Boebert or half of the Douglas County School Board, all candidates for 2022 Please Go Back to Your Bunker Awards.
You know what teachers do, however? Besides constantly trying to get your kids off their damn cell phones, they ask and prod them to ask questions and talk about their own ideas and thoughts.
If you’re horrified at the idea of public school students discussing what racism is and why it exists, maybe you should try talking about it at home sometime.
For those parents convulsing with panic over the outlandish lies being perpetrated about indoctrinating kids with Critical Race Theory, what do you tell your children about why so many people were protesting the death of Elijah McClain and George Floyd?
Do you tell your kids that Elijah McClain had it coming because he was walking home at night in Aurora wearing a mask? Do you tell your kids that people who tell Asian-Americans to “go back where they came from” are creepy bigots?
I can promise you, teachers in Colorado don’t do that. Nor, do they say that cops are murderous thugs who hate Black people.
And only people as deranged as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his pack of complicit GOP state lawmakers believe that elementary school teachers go on all day about human sexuality and gay rights.
What teachers have done and still do is help kids understand that bigotry is wrong and has no place in public schools. They teach kids on the fly that human rights exist for everyone and must be extended to everyone.
Teachers take that perfect opportunity to teach kids that different is not bad. It’s just different. There is no bad biology. It’s just someone tall, someone red-headed, someone gay or trans, someone left-handed and someone dark skinned.
Pretending that gay people don’t exist, or Muslim people or people with grandmas serving as mothers is repugnant, is wrong.
If you teach your children that being gay, or Jewish or an immigrant is a bad thing, get help. But don’t inflict your psychological problems on your children or everyone else’s children.
Your ability to abuse your own kids doesn’t overrule everyone else’s ability to call you out on it.
Your parental role can’t prevent a teacher from explaining to kids why a student dresses like a boy sometimes and dresses like a girl others times.
“Because they want to,” would be my answer. But I’m not a teacher. Because all of our children go to school in a world where human sexuality exists from birth and dealing with it is nobody’s business but our own, we owe it to kids to be honest and truthful when they ask questions. And they will always ask questions.
The governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, is married to a man, and they have kids. It’s normal. If a first grader asks, you tell them.
It goes beyond just answering questions, however. Teachers stop kids from calling each other homophobic and racist slurs, and they should. Most times, they even contact parents to give them a head’s up.
What they don’t do, however, is let kids continue to abuse other kids with bigotry or homophobia they get from each other or even bring from home.
This doesn’t mean that parents don’t have huge say and sway on what goes on in classrooms and entire school districts. From the school board on down, parents are not just encouraged, but begged to be engaged.
Teachers want to talk to parents about what’s going on in the classroom. Most of the time, they have only each other to share with, lamenting that you didn’t see how one kid stood up for another when someone called a kid “queer.”
School districts invite parents and others to see what’s new in textbooks and curricula, weighing in on what’s good or mediocre.
Most schools even beg parents to volunteer in the schools, where you can get an up-close view of how busy and non-controversial 99.9% of class-time is for teachers and students.
But don’t think you have the “right” to call the shots for every kid in the region because you have social or behavioral problems you haven’t worked through.
These are public schools, created for the benefit of everyone, and everyone benefits from an educated public. Your concern should be resources and especially the resources to bring lagging kids up to speed.
As for helping kids understand racism and sexuality in a world where racism and homosexuality exist?
Please.
Imagine how Colorado schools could focus on real problems facing education if the bigots and homophobes had just dealt with all this when they were kids in classrooms themselves.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Thank you, Dave, for saying it’s the way it is. And here’s the sad thing: that this even has to be said in the United States of America.
Homeschool. Do not put your kids in the hands of people who believe killing a baby is a right.
Kind of a broad brush you’re painting with there, Susan. When you homeschooled your kids how did you handle prom?
Research shows that teenagers naturally transition from learning mainly from adults, especially parents and grandparents, to learning from peers. It’s probably not a good idea for a young person’s development to have that peer learning stifled via homeschooling.
At the same time, it’s also important to have a healthy experience with peers. Some schools are unsafe because of gangs. That includes gangs of bigots. I went to a high school that had one black student in my four years and that family was driven out of the city within six months. So, there is more than one kind of gang.
Being gay in that place was only slightly better, because it was a bit easier to blend in. Even so, I was ostracized and attacked several times. I had the fortune of being tall and having the new principle who took a hard line on the weekly brawls that happened under the previous administration. High school was a bad experience overall (particularly because adults sided with the bigots, such as when I was given an in-school suspension for standing up for myself verbally after months of harassment, including gum in my hair) but home schooling would have been worse. My step mother greatly resented me, chain smoked, and had a low IQ.
The key is to have school be a kind benevolent experience for all students, not just the majority type. Hiding away at home isn’t an efficient use of resources and it won’t work if home life isn’t good. Gay males are treated like trash by a lot of families. When Connie Chung interviewed gay teens who had been thrown out like garbage, made homeless… she never said a word about legal accountability for the parents. She, instead, tried to blame the kids. She asked them “Knowing what you know now… if you could have changed would you have.’ Most of the kids gave this tabloid production the satisfaction of breaking down in tears but one actually said the truth: “I would choose to have parents who love me.”
I find your editorials less convincing than they might otherwise be when you seem to lead most of them off with ad hominem attacks on those holding ideas or positions other than yours. When you exacerbate that stance with unsupported generalizations stated as fact that only makes your arguments less compelling, at least to me.
As for me, my progeny are beyond school age now. Still my tax dollars support the public schools and I might wish educators concentrated more on education than socialization, though the two are nearly inextricably entwined. Still, I recognize socialization can morph into indoctrination quite easily. When that is attempted by either the political right or the political left I object.
I close by noting that from my perspective political indoctrination is introduced, or attempted to be introduced, from both ends of the political spectrum.
There is no spectrum. There are facts and there are fictions. The melting point of gold doesn’t give a fig about our ridiculous politics.
It’s a fact that people are born gay. It’s a fact that you are not entitled to live their lives for them. Leave them alone and let them be free.
Dr. Hooker’s seminal research proved that sexual orientation has no relationship to mental health. That was published in the 50s. If educators had been free to tell kids the truth, they would know it. Instead, we are in 2022 with the same lies, over and over and over again.
The only thing that has changed is that transgenderism is now being worked through. Since most people lack the basic facts about gayness, having transgenderism in the mix makes the situation even more fraught.
Make no mistake, censoring this aspecy of education does no one any good — not even demagogue politicians who think their lives are improving because they’re cashing in on bigotry.
I assume your reference to Dr. Hooker is to Dr. Evelyn Hooker and her paper on Overt Homosexuality. I agree it was a seminal work in that it was early and approached the subject matter from a relatively unique perspective. I did wonder if her experimental groups for both heterosexual males and homosexual males was representative of the relevant populations as a whole as it preselected persons with no apparent mental illnesses. I also note it did not include females in the study population. Still, it was a brave inquiry at the time and an interesting work.
As for what are facts, I don’t know that it is a fact that people are born gay, I am aware of some recent research indicating that may be so, but I do not find it definitive. Perhaps I don’t fully appreciate the import of the research. My understanding is that persons perhaps are born with tendencies or inclinations towards a sexual identity but that the final identity, if there is even a final identity is somewhat fluid. I understand the brain to still be developing and subject to environment, to nurturing, and likely to some imprinting at critical junctures of development, generally junctures fairly early in life.
As for allowing people to live their own lives I agree. I agree even when that is problematic for me, such as allowing parents to socialize their children towards beliefs I may find problematic or even abhorrent.
I have come to accept that persons from both ends of the political spectrum will battle over the education and socialization of our youth, those who are our very future. I hope that battle can be waged fairly, with respect for contrary viewpoints, and with an appreciation that those whose views differ from our own are not trying to hurt us or our children, but that they differ on how society undertakes socialization. That is difficult when one believes the others side of the spectrum holds views one finds without merit and even harmful. Myself, I find tolerance of others challenging. I strive for it, but I often fall short of my goal.
The unique perspective of the Hooker study was that she, unlike prior researchers, didn’t use a polluted sample to reach an illusory correlation. It was the fact that her samples were representative that was the breakthrough. Prior researchers used samples of gay men who had been treated for mental illness to conveniently conclude, falsely of course, that homosexuality has something to do with mental adjustment.
You may not be certain about the validity of Hooker’s work but the experts were, including one psychologist who designed one of the tests she used and admitted that his preconceived bias against homosexuality caused him to undertake a full review of the data twice before being forced to admit that there was no difference between homosexual and heterosexual in terms of mental adjustment.
Bias against gay people was so strong with the APA membership that that body made removal from the DSM a political battle that dragged on for much too long.
Revisionists like Spitzer and his daughter falsely claim that poor oppressed APA members were forced into the removal, forced to recognize the legitimate science. The poor dears! NPR gave his daughter around 25 minutes to try to falsify that history, likely to curry favor with the W administration. It took her over 15 minutes to even mention Hooker, in her intentionally convoluted presentation. The reality is that scientific bodies eventually have to bow to the science. The notion that a hated persecuted minority group could force the APA into anything is preposterous.
There is no need to include women in the test. You are grasping at straws.
”I don’t know that it is a fact that people are born gay.”
If you had been born gay you wouldn’t have said that. It’s just as absurd as a gay person stating that heterosexuals aren’t born that way. The difference is that gay people know better than to call huge populations liars because they know what it’s like to have to forge their own identity, to craft their own mores.
They comprehend the fact that, given all of the nasty relentless social pressure against living life honestly as a gay person the idea that they would want to choose to be gay, especially in childhood where conformist pressure is even higher, is a silly claim. Of course gay people would be happy to choose to be gay in a world that wouldn’t persecute them needlessly. They also recognize how ridiculous it is to flog this choice nonsense. The real choice is to learn the truth, to stop trying to undermine the quality of life of gay people with fanciful thinking.
When heterosexuals start “coming out of the closet” for being heterosexual you will be in a better position to pretend that gay people imagine their existence, are created by socialization in early childhood, or whatever it is you imagine.
My spouse is an identical twin. His early childhood was identical to his brother’s. Yet, he is left-handed and gay and his brother is right-handed and hetero. His brother also has worse eyesight. Looking at very early pictures one could see the temperament difference. My spouse had a big sunny smile and his brother was more reserved. Socialization had nothing to do with my spouse’s sexuality. Nothing. His family and upbringing were all about religious conservatism. Gay people know what it’s like to be denied all of the basic steps in socialization heterosexuals enjoy. For instance, when I was in early elementary grades we had to give Valentine’s candies and cards to opposite-sex students. I knew what I wanted but my ability to be myself was always under the boot of conformity. Not being able to date throughout childhood was a terrible loss. People like you speak of choices but the choice was invariably to live a lie. If only we had had choices.
Bisexuals, especially bisexual men whose same-sex attractions are not as strong as those toward women, are often the source of a lot of this choice confusion. Many times they have been caught preaching against gay folk and sleeping with males on the side. It’s a symptom of our society’s willful ignorance when it comes to sexuality. Instead of being honest and educated, too many want citizens who are ignorant and dishonest. Research shows that it’s very possible for repressed bisexual men to strongly deny their same-sex attractions while being rated as strongly homophobic by the researchers’ tools. Kinsey indicated that weak bisexuality in males is far more common than homosexuality. Society has never handled that well at all and gay men pay a very disproportionate share of the price.
“People like me…” Those who are not certain?
At any rate I thank you for the thoughtful reply. I will consider your words.
You might also consider your belief that sexuality resides in the brain.
The other options being what, entirely genetic determination? I doubt that as fetishism would seem to indicate otherwise. That is often so specific it seems only explainable by imprinting rather than genetics.
Great piece Dave. When I read that something like 60% of parents polled thought that “Arabic Numerals” should be banned from classrooms a few years ago, it cemented that parents need to let the experts do the teaching and keep their phobias out of the classrooms. Thanks again for a great, thought provoking piece!
Sadly, greed speaks to too many people much mote loudly than the altruism that is the true ideological basis of public education. Many would rather have education be a vocational experience that creates “obedient workers” to quote George Carlin.
Greed is behind all of these examples of institutional discrimination. It isn’t and has never been about much more than that. There are careers to be made whilst stepping upon the backs of those perceived to be weaker. And, here we are, with Ukraine under attack for that very reason. All of this aggression is connected. It’s money talking rather than the deities people are so fond of claiming their actions represent.
One positive thing about Dave wanting to reach into and comment on things current and controversial he presents an opportunity to offer a different side to the story. A side that the Sentinel could never imagine exist. Since Daves piece is about education and politics, OK, let’s look at some of it. If Dave had his way, in full support, Perrys thinking on CRT and every other cooked up notion- this guy, – a salaried educator is a perfect fit. This fellow, holding a staff position in Aurora public schools. And better yet, had his hat in the council race for Ward 2. After a little deeper look at it, (the campaign beliefs and some twitter blogs) the Ward 2, citizens narrowly dodged a big bullet. The ongoing twitter conversations/inputs are fascinating to read. Mr. Perry, thank you for opening my eyes to the roots in Aurora public schools, and some of its educator’s politics, and the prodigious decline APS suffers from.
https://www.bryan4aurora.com/meetbryan
https://twitter.com/Bryan4Aurora?
ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://twitter.com/Marcano4Aurora/status/1499793549830721540
“My first city council meeting was daunting. I was just an observer at the time and I looked up to the podium where a speaker was begging for their home, I realized it was a parent to one of my students. Denver Meadows was the trailer park that they lived in and the city had helped craft the policies that led to their displacement along with over 100 other people. That was the lightbulb that clicked for me and why I want to serve on city council.”
“This work solidified the impact that a few hard-working leaders could have on our community. This is when I took my advocacy upstream to the city level. I was a highly educated individual from two middle class parents and I was almost squeezed out. My students weren’t in the position to win that same fight that educators were slowly winning.”
The example of Denver Meadows mobile home park because Bryan’s lightbulb clicked on and “the city helped craft the policies that led to their displacement”. WoW… The true lack of his knowledge of the facts behind the park’s private ownership awareness since the late 1960’s and private land rights knowledge are astounding, particular for a history professional. Remarkably, not surprising.
The twitter feeds off of the 4Aurora .com/bryan site. Amazing dialog with council, I would have not usually bothered with.
So again, thank you so much Dave for your thoughts on educators what they are teaching and policy makers oversight.