What Are They Teaching
Your Children?
The battle for social change in the United States is increasingly taking place among vulnerable young people, especially in our public schools. And the stakes couldn’t be any higher.
Vladimir Vladimirov/iStock/Getty Images Plus
I
was up before sunrise getting ready for my day. Of course, at the age of seven that mostly involved watching cartoons and making myself breakfast. That early in the morning, I tried my best to be quiet since no one else was awake yet and for some reason my older sister didn’t like to be woken up before she had to be. We knew that by a certain time we had to be out the door, heading up the gravel road to the corner where the bus picked us up. If we were late my mother would most likely have to drive us to school, so we were sure to stick to our schedule. My parents sent my siblings and me off to school every day, trusting our teachers to give us a basic education. When children walk through the doors of a school, parents have certain expectations. They trust that the teachers, who have gone to school specifically to learn to educate young minds, will instruct students in the fundamentals they’ll need to successfully complete their education and one day find a career. Although that concept of educating the youth in the fundamentals of knowledge is still touted as the primary goal of public education, it’s increasingly evident that a major secondary goal is coming to the forefront of the curriculum in many countries.
by Lewis VanAusdle
vidual is irrelevant (even though it’s literally embedded in every single cell of his or her body) and that everyone should choose their own gender, sex and sexuality based on their own perceptions and feelings. The proponents further maintain that “gender stereotypes” of male and female have led to oppression and discrimination and that therefore traditional ideas about gender, sex and sexual orientation must be abolished.
“Gender Theory” holds that biological sex is irrelevent. Gender, sex and sexuality are choices based on personal perception. Reading, writing and “Gender Theory”
For several decades such ideological discussions have largely been On top of attempting to educate the confined to academic circles. But next generation in history, literature, in recent years these theories have been slowly incorporated into the science and mathematics, the U.S. public school curricula of younger public education system has begun and younger students—even being incorporating the morals, values, injected into areas of study that are theories and philosophies of public completely unrelated. opinion and popular culture into The pushing of these philosophies the everyday education of children. is intended to influence the moral Nowhere is this push—which has and ethical values of young children been subtly building through the regardless of what their parents value years—more evident than in the and believe. Essentially, the role of incorporation and teaching of ideas such as “Gender Theory” or “Critical instilling guiding beliefs and values in children is being removed from the Gender Theory.” parents and given to school districts, Proponents of this ideology argue administrators and educators. that the biological sex of an indiB Tm a g a z i n e . o r g
•
July-August 2022
15