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Academia Free-For-All Parenting Pronouns Or Else

Impermissible Thoughts

March 5, 2024 181 Comments

Via Uma Thurman’s Feet, some educational news:

An eastern Ontario teachers’ union is warning its members they could face discipline under the human rights code [for] regulating student misbehaviour and expressing a series of opinions, 

The particulars of which, we’ll get to in a moment. But in the meantime, do feel free to take a guess. Perhaps it could be the basis for a drinking game.

The email to union members, sent by John Vince, the chief negotiator for Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation district 27, is positively heaving with thou-shalt-nots:

Vince encouraged teachers that keeping secrets from parents is not a bad thing, telling teachers that they shouldn’t tell parents if they catch their child vaping and implied that if a teacher caught a student snorting cocaine or other illicit substance, parents shouldn’t be notified. 

As we’ve seen, many times, some teachers and educational bureaucrats do seem rather titillated by the prospect of actively deceiving parents. As, for instance, when middle-school teachers in Missouri were urged to fabricate and publish a false curriculum, purely to hide from parents the details of their activism and what they were actually up to in class. A move pre-emptively described by its proponent, Natalie Fallert, as “not being deceitful.” And regarding which, I wrote:

It occurs to me that when your solution to such complaints [from parents regarding classroom indoctrination] includes the words “so parents cannot see it,” it may be time to revisit your assumptions.

But I digress. Let’s get back to Mr Vince’s emailed instructions to Ontario educators:

Teachers were told to not tell students to get off their phone, to pull their hoodies down, and should not ask a student why they had arrived to class excessively late. 

Apparently, tardiness is a human right. Other sins to be avoided include the words blind spot, and the immensely oppressive phrase ladies and gentlemen. 

Also forbidden are:

The opinion that women who have gone through male puberty should not participate in women’s sport.

The opinion that women who have male reproductive organs (ex. a penis) may make some women uncomfortable in change rooms or washrooms.

The notion that there are only two genders.

Disagreement that someone could be born in the wrong body or that we all have a ‘gender-soul’.

The idea that keeping secrets from parents/guardians is bad. 

These, it turns out, are “right-wing” opinions, and therefore have soul-blackening properties.

Needless to say, this quoted selection is but a small sample, a mere appetiser. Teachers are also warned not to congratulate parents on their child’s performance in a school play. Why this humdrum politeness should be avoided, with the threat of disciplinary consequences, is not entirely obvious and no hints are offered as to the reasoning. It is, however, framed as equal in sinfulness to informing a parent that their child has been “snorting a white powder.”

Because if little Billy is chopping them out in class, it’s now a teacher’s duty to keep parents in the dark, you see.

The full text of the email in question can be found via the link above. Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Oh, and by all means consider this an open thread.

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Written by: David
Academia Parenting Politics

The ‘S’ Word

January 22, 2024 58 Comments

Attention, heterosexuals. The way you self-identify is, it turns out, terribly oppressive:

[Seattle high-school teacher, Ian] Golash had handed out a “Social Identity Wheel” worksheet to his class which supposedly helps determine who has “unearned privilege or oppression.” 

A Wheel Of Innate Sin For Which You Must Atone. Hours of fun. And that question-begging fatuousness won’t be internalised without a little prompting.

The mom of a (male) student in the class had complained to Golash and Principal Ray Garcia-Morales, writing that her son “was told that if he identifies as straight that he needed to pick a term that was less offensive. It is completely inappropriate to dictate what terms a student can and cannot use to identify themselves with.” 

Following the complaint, Mr Golash has replied that his disapproval of the term straight was directed at the entire class, not a particular individual, and is therefore merely a matter of encouraging “reflection” on the part of heterosexual students. Specifically,

Because I think language has power and that it shapes the culture that we live in, I did say to the class, in response to a student, that I do not use the term ‘straight’ because it implies that to not be straight is to be ‘crooked’ which could have a negative connotation. 

Should any gay readers have been rendered tearful and downtrodden by an utterance of the word straight, as Mr Golash would have us believe, do feel free to share your harrowing tales in the comments below. Sad music can be added for a small fee.

And so, according to Mr Golash, we will march towards a shining tomorrow via cultivated neuroticism – fretting about the allegedly wounding properties of the word straight – and by telling heterosexual male students that they are merely a “product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care.” Because, unlike the word straight, that’s not insulting at all, apparently.

The claim that straight male students are the hapless dupes of some nebulous yet diabolical and all-pervasive force is not disputed by Mr Golash. And it remains unclear whether all this caring and reflection should extend to being concerned by the dogmatic overreach of an activist high school teacher – an avowed communist and Antifa-booster who uses the classroom to champion Hamas – and who punishes students for their unfashionable honesty. On which, more in a moment.

It’s perhaps worth mentioning that the term straight – meaning heterosexual or sexually conventional – is generally thought to have its origins in gay American slang of the 1940s. Which is to say, it was a favoured in-group term used by some gay people, and often used sarcastically.

If doubt remains as which party may be in need of “reflection,” I should also probably mention our educator’s hair.

And more seriously, this:

The same mom previously had taken Golash to task after allegedly giving her son an “F” on a quiz because he wrote that men can’t get pregnant, and women don’t have penises. 

You see, if students are presented with the statement “Only women can get pregnant,” and then fail to tick the word “false,” this is a basis for an ‘F’. And any attempt by a student to defend their answer – say, by referring to observable reality – will be construed by Mr Golash as disruptive behaviour and a basis for further scolding.

And so,

The mom eventually pulled her son from his class. 

Quite right, madam. Though other, perhaps more obvious candidates for removal may come to mind.

Previously in the world of neurotic word-policing.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Parenting Politics

She Should “Just Be Able To Have” Things

November 14, 2023 61 Comments

Via Mr Muldoon in the comments, umbrage is detected:

I've been saying it forever: they're upset that they've been asked to participate in their own survival. No clearer distillation of the worldview than here. https://t.co/QRawwks7eU

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) November 13, 2023

As this chap quips in reply,

Like, I get that someone has to work for society to function, but why does it have to be me?

And this one,

A lot of complaints about capitalism are more properly bug reports to God.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds,

I like that you tagged this ‘parenting’.

Well, addressing the matter earlier might have spared our unhappy madam a lot of pierced and tattooed grumpiness.

There is, of course, plenty of scope for grumbling about the seemingly endless range of things that can be taxed. And existential angst – or existential pouting – can be difficult to avoid, the human condition being what it is. See the aforementioned “bug reports to God.” But the emotional assumption that Things Should Just Be There For Me, Forever, In Unlimited Quantities™ is, I think, something best addressed before one’s children venture out into the world.

Children who, as adults, may then make TikTok videos of themselves bemoaning the fact that they aren’t simply being given a free house, and free food, and a free car, and free petrol for the free car. Children who, as adults, may then seem genuinely bewildered by the prospect of being responsible for the feeding and clothing of any children that they, in turn, might have.

Another thing occurs to me. If pretty much everything you need, or want, should just somehow be there anyway, on an indefinite basis, via some oddly unarticulated rearrangement of the universe, then it’s not obvious how gratitude might fit into such a mindset.

Also, open thread.

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Written by: David
Academia Anthropology Parenting Psychodrama

Cosmetics Were Applied

September 12, 2023 63 Comments

One for the totally-balanced-educator files:

Meet DeDe Duffy. A preschool teacher in Cape Coral, FL. She says she teaches her students that if they don’t like their parents, they can find another family.

She also says she teaches them to be gay.

These are the people teaching your kids. pic.twitter.com/e5HJFzMOvD

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 11, 2023

Those pre-school children are in good hands, clearly. Ms Duffy’s pronouns, since you ask, are they and them.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds,

A teaching job isn’t meant to be therapy for the teacher. 

Well, it would be nice – refreshing, even – if these people worked out their serious mental health issues on their own time. Rather than, as seems to be the fashion, inflicting them on other people’s children.

Chris G offers the following,

If you are an adult and looking for validation from children, you should probably reconsider a lot of things.

Indeed. Ditto TikTok likes. And yet, as we’ve seen many times, the more scrupulously woke a teacher is, the more likely he is to issue the class instructions to remember his birthday, to use his made-up pronouns, to browse his social media accounts, and to tell him, seemingly daily, just how pretty he is.

Ms Duffy has now locked her social media accounts, so further illumination is, sadly, denied us. But it occurs to me that if I were employed to work with small children, I don’t think I would choose to film myself having eye-widening meltdowns – or to then share the recordings with lots of random strangers on TikTok and Instagram.

But maybe that’s just me. Shy soul that I am.

Azi asks,

How do these people get hired?

The supply of bedlamite educators does seem all but inexhaustible. Such that one might wonder whether schools and universities, those fiefdoms of the progressive, are actively favouring the psychologically marginal. Presumably, there are people doing the hiring who think that emotional instability and pretentious “non-binary” pronouns denote an ideal candidate, an exemplar for impressionable children.

Rather than… well, you know.

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Written by: David
Academia Parenting Pronouns Or Else Sports

This Little Red Light Keeps Flashing

August 24, 2023 80 Comments

A tale of a girls’ tennis team, a locker room, and a high-school hiring dispute.

First, the view from afar, all rather fragrant and elevated:

One father read a letter on behalf of his son, who was not present. The former tennis player for the [Pennsylvania] high school stated: “Sasha [formerly David, Yates] is a woman. Over the past four years I have watched her realise this, and have watched as she has transitioned into her true self,” going on to urge those motioning not to rehire Yates to “fix their hearts.”

And,

Dr Sonya Deltredici… identified herself as a leader of an “LGBT health curriculum” at York Hospital. She said, “It does not hurt our children to be in the presence of trans people… What hurts our children is discrimination against trans people.”

The words “transphobia” and “hate” were of course deployed.

And now the view from close quarters:

According to the reprimand issued to Yates, many of the female students said they were uncomfortable with the man’s presence in the facility, as well as with the comments he made to the girls. “I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor when I read it,” [school board member, Michelle] Smyers said. “Because the second incident outlined where he’d gone into the same locker room and was… talking to them about their menstrual cycles and what type of panties they like to wear.”

See? All totally innocent and above-board. Not weird or creepy at all. Oh, and then there was the time Mr Yates followed a sixteen-year-old girl – a girl he wasn’t coaching – into the girls’ bathroom, otherwise unoccupied, and attempted to strike up a random conversation, resulting in the girl’s alarm and some hurried texting.

The reprimand mentioned above – or rather, reprimands, because, well, what’s behaviour without a pattern? – did not seem to deter Mr Yates. Nor did the provision of private bathroom and changing facilities, typically used by sports officials, including coaches. Direct appeals from the girls also failed to discourage him from parading around their locker room in a bra-and-panties ensemble and various states of undress. Such that the girls were left in little doubt that their cross-dressing coach was, as one board member put it, “still fully a man.” And all while seeking out details of the girls’ menstruation cycles and their preferences in underwear.

Indeed, when subsequently challenged, Mr Yates, seen here, invoked “discrimination” and insisted that he is entitled to use “any bathroom.” The school is currently weighing the views of parents against the prospect of legal action and accusations of “transphobia,” with another meeting on the matter scheduled for September. Mr Yates is, he says, “completely overwhelmed with how the community is coming out and supporting me.”

At which point, readers may wonder whether such overwhelming support, largely from progressive women, is actually part of the problem.

Above, Mr Yates, being supported.

Update, via the comments, where Nikw211 adds,

Let’s be clear – a female teacher, an actual one that is, who behaved in this way would not only be reprimanded, but fired. This isn’t “discrimination” because he’s a transwoman. Any teacher talking about such intimate details with children in their care while parading around in their underwear should and would be suspended on the spot, almost certainly fired. This shouldn’t even be a question.

Well, one might think so. And yet here we are.

Still, it’s interesting to see how Mr Yates’ supporters – again, largely progressive women – will merrily elevate themselves with the airing of modish views, their displays of compassion and inclusivity, while in effect screwing over the girls. Girls, who, by disapproving, even politely, become low-status.

Update 2:

A decision has been reached regarding the future of Mr Yates’ teaching career. And by extension, his workplace interest in the panties of young girls. See if you can guess which way it went.

Update 3:

The further adventures of our strapping madam.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.