The headline jumped out at me like a sore thumb:
"Colorado school district instructs teachers to avoid informing parents if their child shows persistent gender confusion"
Knowing that in an era of "revenue-by-click," headlines can sometimes sensationalize reality in order to get attention amid a billion other flashy online user options, I did a little more investigating into the claim.
I was partially relieved to find out that the district in question, Jefferson County Public School District, at least did not maintain that policy for elementary students. But sure enough, in the "Toolkit for Supporting Transgender and Gender Expansive/Nonconforming Students," the district advised teachers that for all students over the age of 11, informing parents that their children were using different names, or identifying publicly as a different gender could lead to child abuse, mistreatment, bullying (at home), or even abandonment. Instead, teachers are to work with the student directly to determine the degree to which the parents are involved.
Full disclosure: I'm a parent. But I'm also a teacher in a public high school, and this policy is extraordinarily concerning.
Not because its intentions are necessarily wrong. One thing people outside the classroom may not fully comprehend is the immense pressure on educators these days to function as counselors, advocates, and even psychiatrists for kids besides just teaching them their subject matter.
A generation of self-absorbed parents has left a shocking number of young people without any semblance of structure or order at home. No guidance, no example, no role model, no moral grounding. Someone has to fill that void. Couple that with the progressive movement's decades-old effort to harness the public-school system as a vehicle of cultural brainwashing, and you have a monumental problem in the making. One where, as ever, kids are caught in the crosshairs, becoming the unwitting pawns in a perpetual power struggle waged by immature adults.
Though not insensitive to the dilemma of an ever-increasing number of young people falling through the gaps formed by shoddy parenting, any culture that pretends that teachers should or even can adequately replace the primacy of mom and dad in the life of a child is sorely mistaken. This perspective is also on the ascendance in our beleaguered society.
Besides the situation in Colorado, notice the imposition of government "experts" dictating choices and decisions that directly impact the physical, emotional, and mental health of children. In the name of protecting adults – adults who have the ability to get vaccinated against the Covid virus if they so choose – officials are now mandating that kids wear masks all day at school.
- Masks that are clinically proven to harbor innumerable germs and pathogens that are hazardous to their health.
- Masks that toy with the proper development of a young person's immune system, resulting in susceptibility to serious illnesses like RSV.
- Masks that impede the social learning of language and non-verbal cues.
- Masks like this:
Parents have no say in the matter because the experts have spoken. Even when the parents are citing far more science than those hyperventilating about "following the science," conventional wisdom pretends that they cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of their own children.
The whole thing is oddly reminiscent of the bizarre debate over cameras in the classroom a few weeks ago. Seemingly rational, able-minded people began railing against proponents of the policy as favoring Orwellian "big-brother" tactics. Huh?
Orwell warned of an oppressive nanny-state, one that was always watching its citizens. He was not warning of a situation where citizens would be watching over the state and what its agents were teaching young people.
There were plenty of reasons to oppose the idea of cameras in the public-school classroom – privacy rights of children being at the top of the list. But the righteous indignation at the thought that parents be given the ability to surveil the government as it "educates" their children? Just add that to the growing list of signs Americans now live with and accept a warped and inverted understanding of who exercises ownership of the thoughts, values, ideas, and beliefs that are passed on to their posterity.
That's not what God intended or instructed, so I'll give you one guess how it's going to turn out.
