I remember how it was -- JR
Politically correct education
Monica Gill teaches at Loudoun County High School in Leesburg, Virginia. She teaches two classes of “academic level” U.S. history, designed to prepare students for college-level coursework. Trouble is, “a third of my kids in these classes cannot read above a fourth-grade level. Cannot.” Monica chalks that up to a number of things — mostly, perhaps, to a culture that’s increasingly more interested in coddling children than challenging them.
“We are so involved in this culture of feelings. We don’t want kids to have low self-esteem; we don’t want them to be hurt by being held back. And we’re paying the price for that mentality right now. I see kids who are suffering academically, and from mental health issues. That’s hard, because you’re trying to deal with both — and I don’t think we’re dealing with either effectively.
“I have so many more students now than I did 20 years ago who suffer from mental health issues: gender dysphoria, depression, anxiety, stress — even being hospitalized for those things. It’s heartbreaking. And it seems like the adults around these kids are not always helping them make the best decisions in navigating these issues.”
Monica has come to believe that her school district, like many others, “has been making decisions that seem far more ideological than really about what is best for kids.
“It’s been a slow crawl,” she says, describing some of those dubious decisions. Directing teachers not to grade homework, for instance, “because some kids don’t have any support at home. It’s not ‘fair.’ Not ‘equitable.’” But, of course, homework that won’t be graded is homework that won’t be done — so there’s no point in assigning it, Monica’s learned.
Other policies followed: “‘We’re not going to penalize students’ grades for being tardy, or being absent, or skipping class,’ they tell us. ‘We’re not going to take points off if they don’t put their name on their papers. These are behaviors, and we shouldn’t be grading behavior.’” More and more indulgences inspired less and less discipline, Monica says, and the challenge of learning fell by the way.
Then came the pressures to embrace critical race theory and, later, Policy 8040 — requiring all teachers, whatever their beliefs about biological sex and gender, to use the pronouns that transgender and “gender-expansive” students specify, regardless of their true biological sex.
“Which means,” Monica says, “that any kid, at any time, can make a gender claim, and I, as the teacher, have to accept that claim. If they are a boy, and say, ‘I was “Charlie,” but today, I’m “Cindy,” and I want you to use she / her pronouns for me,’ we are mandated that we have to participate in that. We have to use those pronouns. We have to accept and affirm that this boy is now a girl, or vice versa.”
That, Monica found, was the line she couldn’t cross.
“I’m a government teacher. I know that it is always wrong for government to mandate speech.”
“There are so many issues with that policy in particular that, as a teacher and as a Christian, were just untenable,” she says. “We’re supposed to be loving, respecting … protecting and not harming.” And yet, “we’re compelled to say things we don’t agree with, that we don’t believe — things that aren’t true — to our kids.”
Monica was far from the only one feeling the frustration. At a Loudoun County School Board meeting last spring, another teacher — Leesburg Elementary physical education teacher Tanner Cross — became an instant lightning rod for the gathering storm of controversy when, speaking in his personal capacity, he eloquently expressed the concerns of a growing number of parents and teachers in the district:
“It is not my intention to hurt anyone,” he said. “But there are certain truths that we must face … We condemn [these] policies [because they] damage children, defile the holy image of God. I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them ... I’m a teacher, but I serve God first. And I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa, because it is against my religion. It’s lying to a child. It’s abuse to a child. And it’s sinning against our God.”
Monica was sitting in the audience, awaiting her own turn to speak. She had talked with Tanner at other meetings in recent weeks, and knew she had found a kindred spirit. Kim Wright, an English teacher at Smart’s Mill Middle School and the wife of a pastor at Monica’s church, decided she had, too. Both were stunned, two days later, when district officials placed Tanner on administrative leave while they investigated his alleged “disruptive impact.”
If the move was intended to intimidate Tanner — and other teachers, like Monica and Kim, who agreed with him — it quickly backfired. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed suit on Tanner’s behalf against the district, and the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Tanner’s constitutional rights had likely been violated. He was permanently restored to his teaching position.
When they learned that ADF would be amending Tanner’s lawsuit to directly challenge Policy 8040, both Kim and Monica asked to join him as plaintiffs in the case.
“Tanner and Kim and I all believe that lying to a kid is harming them,” Monica says. “It’s ultimately harmful to say, ‘Okay, yeah, you really are a girl now,’ or to use pronouns that don’t align with their biological sex.
“Words matter,” she says. “Words carry meaning. If I am forced to use a pronoun for a student that does not align with their biological sex, I am essentially conveying to that student that gender is fluid — and that’s not true. As a teacher who cares for her students — as a Christian who believes firmly that all human beings are created in the image of God as either male or female — I can’t participate in that.
“I’m a government teacher. I know that it is always wrong for government to mandate speech. Micromanaging people’s pronouns, this is not the job of government.”
“I just am so thankful to the Lord and for ADF, to have this group of people come around me and provide all of the expertise and resources and support I needed to take on this Goliath.”
Her decision to join the lawsuit wasn’t made lightly. Two years ago, when CRT began to dominate teacher training programs, she asked to meet with her principal, who suggested Monica take her concerns directly to district officials. Monica wrote a letter to her superintendent and to those leading the district’s “equity initiative.” None of them replied.
So, she began attending — and speaking out at — school board and equity committee meetings. But officials weren’t listening, she says. “They did not seem to care at all about the concerns of teachers or parents. We were just talking to the air.”
Some people, though, took notice. A writer for The Federalist heard Monica speak at one of the increasingly volatile school board meetings. She invited Monica to write an opinion piece for the online magazine. Monica wrote two. Word spread fast. This time, her principal called her.
“You gave me a lot to think about,” she said. She also told Monica that, the day after the article was published, she had gone to the district’s HR office in person, to tell officials there, “they had better not try and do anything to you. I’m here,” she told Monica, “to protect you.”
“And she has,” Monica says, at least as far as her out-of-school writing is concerned. But Policy 8040 is another matter, and that puts Monica under threat of punishment right now.
Still, when a lawyer she spoke with connected her with an ADF attorney, she was relieved to find strong legal support. That’s when she learned ADF was also representing Tanner in challenging the district’s Policy 8040. She decided to join the lawsuit.
“I just am so thankful to the Lord and for ADF, to have this group of people come around me and provide all of the expertise and resources and support I needed to take on this Goliath,” Monica says.
“You just feel like, ‘I'm not getting anywhere, not going anywhere, not going to make it. This isn't going to make a difference.’ And then, finally, you get someone on your side who says, ‘We've got you. We've got everything you need to take this fight to the next level and really make a stand for what's right.’ That makes a huge difference.”
“I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them ... I’m a teacher, but I serve God first.”
A huge difference is exactly what’s needed, says Logan Spena, legal counsel with the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, and one of the attorneys representing Monica and her colleagues. Too many people, he says, underestimate the full breadth of what’s happening in places like Loudoun County.
“This is the government adopting an orthodoxy about the relationship between sex, gender, and human identity,” he says, “and forcing teachers to affirm that it’s true. These administrators are willingly adhering to this idea, not just that a person can be a man or a woman, regardless of their biological sex … but that human identity is not related to those categories at all. That you can identify as anything.” School officials are calling that idea “gender expansiveness.”
“This is not “just a ‘live and let live’ kind of controversy,” Spena says. “This is school districts adopting an ideological account of what human beings are — and forcing their employees to go along with it. These officials are demanding that we accept and adhere to radical and harmful ideologies.”
For those not willing to do that, he says, now is the time to speak up. Many are persuaded that these schools’ transgender agendas are unstoppable, propelled by near-universal assent. “And that’s not the case,” Spena says. “In fact, most people don’t accept these ideas. The only reason there’s so much pressure to adhere is that so few people are willing to talk about it.
“In order to protect the lives of countless children,” he says, “it’s time for people who really don’t agree with this to talk about it.” That’s what makes Monica, Kim, and Tanner so remarkable, he says — not the rarity of their views, “but that they have the courage to stand.”
“School districts [are] adopting an ideological account of what human beings are — and forcing their employees to go along with it.”
“This whole experience really has been a huge growth point and shift in my faith,” Monica says. “Prior to this … I wouldn't have considered myself a particularly courageous person.” But now?
“I'm really not afraid of anything anymore. I believe that the Lord has me. He is sovereign. He's placed each one of us in the times that He's placed us for a purpose. And, ‘if God is with us, who can be against us?’”
She reflects often on the late summer day, a few years ago, when that courage came to her. She was cleaning the dusty classroom she’d just inherited from a retiring fellow teacher. Feeling low, she remembers, and overwhelmed by all that she was seeing in the school system, and the dark impact it was having on the students she loved. She was looking for a way to leave.
“And I was praying … saying, “Lord, I can't do this anymore. It's just too hard.” Cleaning off a bookshelf, she found an old book stuffed back in the corner. “I picked it up, dusted it off, and looked at the cover. It said, Holy Bible.
“I thought, ‘My goodness, what are you doing here?’ And then I opened it. On the inside cover was written, ‘Presented to Loudoun County High School from the Senior Class of 1955.’”
“My cynicism kicked in, and I thought, ‘We'll never see anything like this again. This is terrible. Look at how far we've fallen.’ Then the Lord, just in that moment, got hold of my heart.
“‘I did not give you this gift for you to judge this place,’ He told me. ‘I gave you this gift so that you would know I have not abandoned this place. I have put you here for such a time as this. There are other Christians whom I have placed here for this time. I have not abandoned you. I have not abandoned public schools. I have not abandoned these children. You’re here to be my salt and light. So … stay.’”
“And so — I've stayed. I have not been anxious since. He just removed all my fear.”
Which is what allows a teacher who’s always telling her students she loves them … to step forward, and show them that it’s true.
https://adflegal.org/faith-and-justice/may-2022/teachers
*************************************************Ilya Shapiro Resigns at Georgetown Law, Citing ‘Untenable’ Status at School
Georgetown law professor Ilya Shapiro resigned less than a week after being reinstated by the school.
Georgetown Law School placed the constitutional scholar on administrative leave and subjected him to a four-month “investigation” over a tweet.
The tweet, which Shapiro deleted and called “inartful,” opposed the idea that a Supreme Court justice should be chosen by their race.
Shapiro, who previously worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, explained why he believed his job at Georgetown Law was “untenable” in an article for The Wall Street Journal.
Specifically, Shapiro wrote that a report from the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action he received after being reinstated confirmed that he needed to leave.
Instead of clearing Shapiro’s name and actually committing to free speech, Georgetown Law said he’d be reinstated on a technicality (the offending tweet was a few days before his employment). The school then said it would effectively be watching him for wrongthink.
“Dean William Treanor cleared me on the technicality that I wasn’t an employee when I tweeted, but the [Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action] implicitly repealed Georgetown’s Speech and Expression Policy and set me up for discipline the next time I transgress progressive orthodoxy. Instead of participating in that slow-motion firing, I’m resigning,” Shapiro wrote.
Shapiro noted that the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action made it clear that its policies would be far from objective. The report said essentially that if Shapiro made any statement in which people were offended—or said they were offended—he would be considered in violation of its policies, regardless of his intent.
Here are a few examples Shapiro gave that could lead to him being in violation of the school’s new rules.
“I laud Supreme Court decisions that overrule Roe v. Wade and protect the right to carry arms. An activist claims that my comments ‘deny women’s humanity’ and make her feel ‘unsafe’ and ‘directly threatened with physical violence.’”
“When the Supreme Court hears the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative-action cases this fall, I opine that the Constitution bans racial preferences. Hundreds of Georgetown stakeholders sign a letter asserting that my comments ‘are antithetical to the work that we do here every day to build inclusion, belonging, and respect for diversity’ (borrowing the language from Mr. Treanor’s statements of Jan. 31 and June 2).”
Given the meltdown that took place at Georgetown Law after the tweet, it’s almost difficult to see almost anyone operating in or teaching at Georgetown Law without causing offense.
What’s worse is that Shapiro would be a target in an environment in which the primary professional and social currency is to be an aggrieved victim.
John Malcolm, the vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation, said in a statement to The Daily Signal that Shapiro is correct in his decision to step away from Georgetown Law:
After being reinstated to the faculty based on a technicality by Georgetown Law School, Ilya Shapiro has wisely decided to resign because of the hostile work environment the school has created, especially for conservatives and libertarians and anyone else who says anything that offends the liberal zeitgeist that prevails on campus.
While Georgetown may talk the talk about free speech and the robust exchange of ideas, they clearly do not walk the walk. In his resignation letter, Shapiro said that the Dean had put a target on his back and set him up for failure (and additional undeserved ridicule). He is absolutely correct. We at Heritage look forward to continuing to work with Ilya in the future, and look forward to hearing about his next endeavor.
There is an immense double standard for how people on the right and left are treated in higher education. Georgetown might be an extreme example, but it’s far from alone. Our universities are of, by, and for the left, a left that is now immensely intolerant of dissent and is looking to purge everyone on the “wrong side of history.”
Of course, those who are actually victimized by left-wing mobs and bullies are assumed to be villains, unworthy of even basic civility. For all their language about students being harmed by Shapiro’s tweet, Georgetown Law seemed to have little public concern for how he felt or was being treated by students and faculty.
All are welcome, unless you disagree with the extremely rigid but perpetually morphing tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And this ideology is ruthlessly enforced by an expensive, taxpayer-subsidized administrative apparatus that has mushroomed in our colleges and universities.
Higher education is becoming a mockery of what it once was. Our most prestigious schools now fit a caricature of being the bastion of privileged, unthinking, entirely left-wing elites absorbed with performative, narcissistic displays of offense and grievance.
This campus culture festered for decades and now pervades every powerful institution in the country.
What happened to Shapiro was shameful but at least it shines a light on the deep rot in modern academia, which is increasingly about ideological credentialing and little else.
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Teachers Explain How They Push ‘Gender Lessons’ on Young Children
Teachers across the country revealed the strategies they use to teach young children about gender ideology in a Friday article published by The Washington Post.
Teachers discussed the various ways they are injecting gender-related discussions into their lessons, including comments about using hormones to stop menstrual periods and declining to state that sexual anatomy is gender-specific, according to The Washington Post. One transgender teacher makes a point of telling students about the process of gender transitions, including with personal testimony.
“LGBTQ identities are a naturally occurring facet of human variation, and that is why we need to learn about them in the context of biology and human anatomy,” Sam Long, a biology teacher at Denver South High School, told The Washington Post. Long, who is transgender, frequently discusses gender ideology with students, teaches that gender is a spectrum rather than a binary, and shares his own sex-change experience.
Bill Farmer, a science teacher in Evanston, Illinois, teaches students that gender is a social construct, not a biological reality, he told The Washington Post. There are currently more transgender and nonbinary students in his classes than ever before—at least one or two per class—and approximately half of his school’s biology teachers cover these subjects.
“There’s not many spaces where students have the opportunity to engage in these discussions in a more structured way and where there’s a safe space to ask questions,” he told The Washington Post. “Most students are testing out or trying to figure out where they fall in their gender identity.”
One Massachusetts kindergarten teacher gives children lessons on pronouns, including gender-neutral pronouns “they” and “ze,” and introduces them to concepts including trans identities and “gender queer,” he told The Washington Post. He doesn’t fully define the terms because it would be “too much” for kindergarteners.
“We don’t say a penis belongs to a man,” he told The Washington Post. He instead teaches that a penis belongs to a human, and that doctors sometimes get it wrong when determining a newborn baby’s gender.
Kara Haug, a sex-ed teacher in the Sacramento area, claimed she didn’t bring up gender identity in her classes but would simply answer students’ questions when they arose, she told The Washington Post. When one student asked her if she could stop her period if she felt like a boy, for example, she explained how hormones work.
Several states require that school curricula include LGBT topics, and multiple curriculum plans addressing transgender and gender ideology have come into use in schools, according to The Washington Post.
One of these lessons, titled “Pink, Blue and Purple,” instructs teachers to ask first graders how they know what gender they are and then explain that gender identity is a feeling and is not based on one’s body parts. It was developed by Advocates for Youth, a youth-oriented sexual health group.
Haug, Farmer, Long, and Advocates for Youth did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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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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