I recently listened to our school’s sex educator proudly exclaim that she teaches her entire puberty course without saying “boy or girl, man or woman once” because she was committed to “inclusivity.” I was mystified.
No one had told parents, even those on the Community Education Council, that this would be how such courses would be taught. But it’s all-too-typical of how the Department of Education treats these councils. And parents.
Five years ago, this same educator taught my eldest children in the same elementary school about puberty, explaining to the boys what would happen as they became men and to the girls what would happen on their journey to womanhood.
She did this in sex-segregated classrooms, because all the adults, including her, agreed 9- and 10-year-olds were most comfortable learning about the soon-to-happen changes to their bodies in sex-specific groups, where they’d be more likely to ask questions.
In fact, our parent coordinator, a DOE employee, wrote to fifth-grade parents in 2019 that “two [of four classes] will be with students separated by gender. This is more comfortable for the boys and girls when discussing certain topics and issues.” (Emphasis added.)
Yet I was now listening to a parents-only Zoom presentation about the upcoming course — taught by the same sex educator at the same school — and the changes from just a few years ago made it unrecognizable.
Parents deserve a seat at the table when choosing how their children are taught sex-ed, according to Maron. Getty Images
Boys and girls are no longer segregated for sex-ed classes but all take the class together, for starters. And the educator told parents she follows DOE guidance on subject matter: “It is so important to them that we are discussing gender identity and sex assigned at birth at every opportunity so that no kid ever feels othered.”
She gave parents a “Gender & Sexuality Glossary for Parents & Caregivers,” which uses the word “gender” 27 times but never defines it other than to say that the “gender binary” is “the cultural concept that male (masculine) and female (feminine) are the only genders.”
Yet “gender-fluid” is defined; it’s a person who “identifies with multiple genders.” As is “gender identity”: “a person’s internal sense of their gender — who they are in their heart and mind relating to their gender.”
How, I wondered, did a sensible, reasonable puberty course transform itself into a radical gender-ideology indoctrination session? One thing I knew for sure: Kids are the losers.
In 2019, when my daughter had this very puberty-education program, she loved it. She was separated into a girls-only classroom for half the sessions. The girls could ask questions, and did. Recently I asked her if she thought anyone would have asked questions if there were boys in the room. “I doubt it,” she replied.
Bizarrely, DOE’s sex-segregation rules only apply to health classes. My son’s high school currently offers a financial literacy club open only to girls and non-binary students. Boys need not apply.
Keep up with today’s most important news
Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update.
No one has suggested kids have changed. Or that girls now feel comfortable asking about tampons or bras in front of boys, or that boys won’t be embarrassed hearing about erections in front of girls.
The NYC DOE Guidelines on Gender would shock most parents if they knew about them. Yet despite one of the most expansive (and expensive) elected parent-leader systems in the country, parents were never given an opportunity to weigh in on the Gender Guidelines, which also allow boys who identify as girls full and mandatory access to girls bathrooms and sports teams and prohibit educators from saying things like a “boy’s penis.”
The guidelines were created by DOE’s first “LGBTQ liaison,” Jared Fox, an unelected man from Iowa with no kids and apparently no need to consult with city parents before radically changing how our kids are taught.
DOE is now holding biannual elections for its Community Education Councils. It pays great lip service to “elevating parent voice” and pays millions to advertise these elections in many languages. But why should parents run and devote hours away from their families to influence school policy when the agency adopts enormous changes, like the Gender Guidelines, without ever mentioning the proposed changes to elected parent leaders?
I can’t say I’d be surprised by low interest in these elections. I served as president of Manhattan’s largest school district’s Community Education Council, 2017-2021. I was also a member of my kids’ elementary School Leadership Team, 2016-2022. Despite both positions overlapping with the development of the Gender Guidelines, never once did anyone from DOE, my school principal or district superintendent ever inform us about these guidelines or solicit feedback from parents.
If DOE wants parents to run and serve as parent leaders, it should commit to a real partnership with parents, and that starts with a real seat at the table and a real opportunity to be heard.
Maud Maron is a public-school parent of four and the former president of Community Education Council District 2.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/radicalized-sex-ed-nyc-educrats-shut-out-parents-even-on-community-education-councils/