I remember how it was -- JR
Science shows transgender education doesn’t belong in schools
School districts are embroiled in a battle over whether to teach children in grades K-3 about being transgender. Advocates recommend teachers read their young students “Introducing Teddy,” about a boy teddy bear who transitions to be a girl, calling it a “heart-warming story about being true to yourself.”
The books offered to young children make changing genders sound like a cakewalk. Truth is, it’s easier for teddy bears than for people.
For honest answers on what should be taught in public schools, follow the science and the US Constitution.
First, the science: A staggering 99%-plus of the population does not have the physical traits that cause someone to become transgender. People with gender dysphoria — a condition that causes extreme distress — deserve empathy and respect. But only a miniscule 0.6% of the adult population has it, says the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ think tank.
A classroom lesson proposed for New Jersey 6-year-olds called “Pink, Blue and Purple” says children should be taught, “You might feel like you’re a girl even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘boy’ parts. . . . No matter how you feel, you’re perfectly normal.”
Normal, no. It is a rare condition. Most gender dysphoria manifests in early childhood, according to a 2020 study at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, so guidance counselors and teachers should be trained to offer families help. But there’s no reason to incorporate it into the curriculum, inviting children to choose their pronouns and confusing the 99% who don’t have the condition.
The Human Rights Campaign and other LGBTQ+ advocacy groups ignore this science and insist that someone with “boy parts” can become a girl and vice versa.
These groups are teaming up with the National Education Association to steamroll schools into disseminating this false claim, even designating national reading days when school kids are indoctrinated with lessons about transgender characters like “I am Jazz” and “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope.”
Scientists are still debating actual causes, but a consensus is emerging that boys’ and girls’ brains are different, and people with gender dysphoria have a brain structure that does not correspond to their genitalia at birth.
Transgender individuals process the sex hormones estrogen and androgen differently from other people. Exeter University researchers say gender dysphoria is caused by Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, in which “the testosterone receptor is mutated and faulty, and thus cannot function.”
The LGBTQ community is adamant this condition not be stigmatized as mental illness. When the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by American psychiatrists was updated in 2013, it changed Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria.
Trans advocates want greater acceptance. But instructing young kids that it’s normal for boys to become girls and vice versa is going too far. Parents rightly fear their kids are being “groomed.”
In the last two decades, the proportion of minors saying they’re transgender has soared to 1.8%. Gender dysphoria used to be a condition experienced primarily by young boys. It’s suddenly shifted to teens born female. Brown University’s Lisa Littman calls this “social contagion,” meaning teenage girls mimicking their friends and claiming to be trans, without displaying the classic signs of gender dysphoria that emerge in early childhood.
Children need to be protected from gender hysteria and moving headlong into transitioning.
What does the US Constitution say? We have the freedom to practice our own religion. Many Christians and Jews believe God created man and woman. They don’t want their kids indoctrinated in a belief system that claims a person born with “boy parts” can become a girl. Parents in Ludlow, Mass., are suing to stop the public school from teaching transgenderism.
They’re likely to win. The US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled last year that an Ohio public university could not force a professor to address transgender students using their chosen pronouns contrary to the professor’s Christian beliefs. This month, Shawnee State University agreed to pay the professor $400,000 to settle his suit.
Transgender advocates have a right to their views, but they don’t have a right to brainwash our kids with them
https://nypost.com/2022/04/20/science-shows-transgender-education-doesnt-belong-in-schools/
*****************************************************DeSantis Signs Bill to Reform Higher Education
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a higher education reform bill on April 19 to hold faculty accountable, and ensure transparency with the curriculum.
Under the new law, which takes effect July 1, tenured faculty will be reviewed every five years by a Board of Governors of the State University System of Florida, which will consider such things as accomplishments, productivity, performance metrics. and compensation.
“Transparency and accountability is absolutely key,” DeSantis said as he signed the bill in The Villages. “We’re going to make sure that our institutions of higher education are committed to excellence, not ideology – we’re going to be even better than we have been, and we’ve been pretty doggone good over the last many years.”
The Republican governor told a boisterous crowd that Florida’s higher education institutions were ranked No. 1 in U.S. News and World Report for the last five years, but, with these reforms, he wanted to make it even better.
Senate Bill 7044 addresses three main issues that DeSantis’s administration sees as “eroding higher education,” he said. Accreditation, transparency in course descriptions, tenure reforms and allowing grandchildren of Florida residents in-state tuition.
“It’s all about trying to make these institutions more in line with what the state’s priorities are and, frankly, the priorities of the parents throughout the state of Florida,” the governor said.
The bill sponsored by Republican Senator Manny Diaz will also remove the “stranglehold that faculty unions and accrediting agencies have had on universities and colleges,” a written statement from the governor’s office said. It also “adds common-sense transparency requirements for tuition, fees and cost of materials.”
Florida’s higher education institutions are required to seek accreditation, but the bill requires them to “seek accreditation from different accreditors in consecutive accreditation cycles.”
The bill reads: “State Board of Education and Board of Governors (BOG) will identify regional accreditors that are recognized by the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) that are best suited for each institution. Institutions must seek accreditation from identified regional accreditors and if they are denied by the regional accreditor, they may seek accreditation from any USDOE-approved accreditor that is different from their current accreditor. Prior to this legislation, accrediting agencies had a monopoly on Florida colleges and universities and were able to hold a hand over the operations of educational institutions and remove objectivity from the process.”
The bill also takes on tenured professors.
“Tenure was there to protect people so that they could do ideas that maybe would cause them to lose their job, or whatever, and academic freedom. I think what tenure does is [that] … it has created more of an intellectual orthodoxy—and once you’re tenured, your productivity really declines,” DeSantis said.
“The BOG will be authorized to adopt regulations for performance reviews of tenured professors to hold tenured faculty to the highest standards of accountability. These reviews will help ensure that tenured staff remain active and effective in educating Florida’s university students,” the bill said. “Previously, tenured faculty had to be retained despite repeated instances of political motivations, ineffective teaching practices and overall bad behavior in the classroom.”
Dr. Michael Poliakoff, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni said that the bill is the “guardianship” of the future.
“There is no doubt tenure without accountability is an invitation to abuse,” he said.
Florida State University senior Taylor Walker was in attendance, and said she agreed with holding universities accountable.
“As I go into my classes, my professors hold me to high standards, as they should—but this bill gives me the opportunity to hold them to the same high standards,” she said.
Walker, a first-generation college student, said her conservative views were sometimes “stifled” and that “woke narratives” are thought by some to be the only narratives that should be taught.
“When so many in this world, especially in academia, will put their own biased agendas over excellence, it is refreshing to see a government that applies standards to mitigate injustice,” the fourth-year history major said, calling the bill “excellent.”
Current Florida Secretary of Education Richard Corcoran, with two more weeks before he returns to the private sector, quipped that he was on his “farewell tour.”
The governor has kept his inaugural promise of making life better for the children of Florida, he said.
Corcoran also took the opportunity to address the decision on rejecting the math textbooks for reasons of inserting critical race theory (CRT) into the content of the books, which violates Florida law.
“It’s a math textbook you’re trying to teach two plus two equals four, and it’s like this whole hidden agenda of indoctrination,” he said of the books. “I don’t care how you feel when you’re doing the problem, just be able to solve it.”
He continued to predict that because of making sure CRT is not “infiltrating” the content of textbooks that Florida will “shoot to the top in all education metrics.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/desantis-signs-bill-to-reform-higher-education_4414185.html
***********************************************************A University Will Not Consider Male Applicants for Tenure-Track Position
A prominent public university recently listed a job opening for a tenure track assistant professor position in science and geography. Reportedly, white men are not eligible to apply. Applicants are vetted in the first steps of the application where they must select one of four categories; women, transgender, nonbinary, or "two-spirit."
The University of Waterloo, a public university in Waterloo, Canada listed the job in March, according to the Daily Mail.
“Two-spirit,” according to Canadian-based website Researching for LBGTQ Health, means someone “who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit, and is used by some Indigenous people to describe their sexual, gender and/or spiritual identity.”
Daily Mail noted that the role in the school’s Natural Science and Engineering Research division will pay between $90,000 to $120,000 a year. Though not considering men for the position would be discriminating against someone based on gender, the university apparently found a way to work around the policy.
“In the listing, the school asks applicants to fill out a self-identification form to ensure that they fall into one of the four categories, in an effort to 'address the underrepresentation of individuals from equity deserving groups among our Canada Research Chairs.'
'Because this is a special opportunity for a specific member of the four designated groups, applicant self-identification information will be used for the purposes of screening and consideration,' the university said.
'As such, this opportunity is open only to individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, non-binary, or two-spirit.'
The stipulations from school brass may come as a surprise to some, as the university, which has a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, and three more satellite campuses in the province, is a public institution, meaning policies that discriminate based on gender are prohibited.
'However,' the ad asserts that school officials can circumvent that policy by implementing 'special programs' under the Ontario Human Rights Code, 'designed to help people who experience hardship, economic disadvantage, inequality or discrimination.'
The school said those who self-identify as women, transgender, non-binary or two-spirit fit that criteria.”
Last fall, Matt reported how a Canadian professor, Carrie Bourassa, was placed on leave after serious questions were raised about her Indigenous identity. An investigation by CBC News found genealogy as eastern European, though she claimed to be Anishinaabe and Metis.
CTV News reported that some of Bourassa’s colleagues at University of Saskatchewan also worked to trace her genealogy.
"What we found is that Dr. Carrie Bourassa doesn't have a drop of Indigenous blood in her and that she has been faking her identity for at least 20 years," Winona Wheeler, associate professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, told reporters.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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