Elementary Education

Over 18 ONLY! For grown-ups. . .

Moderators: Sluggo, Amskeptic

Post Reply
User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Elementary Education

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Nov 15, 2018 1:57 pm

I posted this on my Facebook page two days ago in response to to a NPR segment that made me puke a little. As I skid into irrelevancy, I am posting it here to see if there is any more airplay. Soon, I'll get the message, but in the meantime:

While listening to NPR yesterday, I heard a very *earnest* school teacher ooze sing-song sincere "caring" AT a nine year-old about "neutral" pronouns to use so that her classmates could be in a "safe space" for "exploring their gender". Are you kidding me? Let's commit the school day to learning about reading, writing, mathematics, history, and science, with some music and art and physical education down at the elementary school level. Please!

The only interaction between a teacher and a child's exploration of their identity should be to crisply define the very necessary boundaries between the personal and public. Since a teacher is in a public environment, that teacher does not have to wade into the private struggles of a child's efforts to fit in and be an individual as a staged and phony act of compassion in front of the whole class! Yuck! A teacher has the critical job of declaring behavioral boundaries and expected social mores, yes! But a teacher does not have the right to drag into a conversation with a nine year-old the fact that she is a lesbian. It is not relevant to a 4th grade elementary school day. What was relevant at the time was to clearly declare that student A may not call student B a queer. Period! No humid sticky creepy gloppy over-explanations of why some kid named Timmy might want to wear a tangerine dress to school!

(later, of course, a teacher can have a private conversation with a bullied child, NOT to "support his choices for gender" but to give him some insight about how to handle the blowback for wearing a tangerine dress to 4th grade. Later, of course, a teacher can call Timmy's parents and suggest that although we all want Timmy to find himself, 4th grade is not the time or place to publicly parade his experiments. Seriously. It can wait. It can wait. It can wait until mid-adolescence at the least. It can wait)

We are LOSING IT with our kids because we adults are violating boundaries and trying to sidle up to children as an expression of narcissistic ego on the part of the adult, "see what a good compassionate teacher I am?". Stop it! Please!
(did this make any sense?)
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

User avatar
hippiewannabe
Old School!
Status: Offline

Re: Elementary Education

Post by hippiewannabe » Mon Nov 26, 2018 8:06 pm

Of course you're right, and rather brave for stating it in today's environment of political correctness run amok. Perhaps it didn't gather further discussion because while it is ridiculous, it is an isolated incident and just one more example of the myriad ways public education is failing our children.
Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.

Post Reply