Worse than We Imagined, Part II

Sometimes it’s prudent to fact-check the fact checkers.

This Snopes headline came to my attention:

Reading, Writing, and RuPaul

Reports of revised curriculum standards for Washington state led to false rumors claiming that schools there will be teaching "transgenderism" to Kindergarteners.

That relates to what I wrote in my last post, “Worse than We Imagined.” So I began to read, wondering if I had missed something and would need to write a retraction.

But Snopes is…not fully accurate.

They claim that the Daily Caller article on Washington State Board of Education changes to standards to include teaching transgenderism to kindergarteners is “mostly false.”

Image from here

The original Daily Caller article actually begins with this: 

By fall 2017 Washington state public schools will begin teaching gender expression to kindergarteners under newly-approved health education learning standards that designate sexual health a “core idea” of public K-12 education.

Here is what Snopes says is actually true:

Washington State has released updated curriculum guidelines in 2016 that include directives regarding gender and gender expression.

So, Snopes agrees with the Daily Caller so far.

What they don’t seem to like is the conclusion drawn by the Daily Caller opinion piece, that teaching “gender expression” to kindergarteners can easily be construed to mean teaching “transgenderism” to kindergarteners. Snopes says the guidelines don’t actually use the word “transgender” except in the glossary section.

But why would they include transgenderism in the glossary (on page 53 of the .pdf file) of their standards if they did not assume it would come up? The word itself may or may not be used in kindergarten. The state standards writers seem less concerned about the teaching of the word transgenderism than they are about the teaching of the various ways gender can be expressed— which, of course, to them, must include transgenderism, else why change the standards?

The Daily Caller article included the link to the .pdf file (which I also linked in Monday's post and above), and Snopes shows page 29, which is at issue—below.

Snopes uses this to show how overblown the Daily Caller claims are. But I look at the chart and see that the Daily Caller point of view is totally justified.

One point the Snopes piece makes is that the standards are not curriculum; curriculum and lesson plans decisions are made at the local school board level. But, to fact-check Snopes, that’s not entirely accurate.

It has been a long time since I worked as a curriculum writer. I worked in California, writing hi-low textbooks; that is, high interest level (middle school to high school) but low reading level (around second grade). I didn’t write for kindergarten, or even for elementary school. But I think some practices translate across grades.

I wrote mostly government and civics related books and workbooks. But one big project was a biology text (which I did not complete at that job). A publisher looks at who is most likely to buy. The biggest markets then, and probably still, were California and Texas. As a writer I referred to the California and Texas standards; they were different in significant ways. For a biology text, human reproduction had to be handled very differently for the two markets. A publisher might decide to aim for a California market or a Texas market, or might do separate versions, with different chapters for materials for which the standards were disparate.

It was unlikely that a publisher would do a special version of a text just to fit Washington State standards, or Utah standards, or Mississippi standards. The other states would look at what was available and choose from among the variety of available materials—which had been aimed mainly at the California or Texas markets. On the topic of transgenderism, Washington State would probably choose materials aimed at the California market.

Smaller niche marketers, often coming from interest groups, might provide supplemental materials on certain subject matters, and try to sell those to individual states or school districts. (We’ll talk about one of these below.)

In Texas the SBOE does not write curriculum; it reads it and deems it acceptable or not. Then local school districts can adopt what they choose. Local school board members, who are unpaid for their school board work and probably make a living elsewhere, are unlikely to read every text. They might have committees set up to do that. The committees might include community members and parents—or, more likely, they include only teachers and administrators. (I have known parents who volunteered for this work in Texas, because Texans are proactive that way.)

Parents who disapprove typically get involved after they see the chosen materials and then must work to get something inappropriate removed from their schools by going through a long and challenging process.

So, when the Daily Caller says that the standards changes, which clearly include talking about “gender expression” to kindergarteners, might be a way of teaching the LGBTQ agenda on transgenderism, that isn’t alarmism. It isn’t making things up. That is likely to happen across the state—unless parents become aware and speak loudly their disapproval.

The Daily Caller article was originally written in June 2016, shortly after the standards changes were announced and approved. The hope is to get enough attention so that parents can prevent implementation of things they do not want their children to be taught, so those materials will not be forced on them by fall 2017, which is now upon us.

By the way, who might be one of the special interest groups offering materials they hope the schools will teach? Planned Parenthood might be one. In my last post I mentioned obscene materials they were trying to force on teens.

Two days ago I came across a story about Planned Parenthood’s new guidelines for talking to

Image from here

preschoolers about sex. These include, "Boy, girl, man, and woman are words that describe gender identity, and some people with the gender identities “boy” or “man” have vulvas, and some with the gender identity “girl” or “woman” have penises/testicles. Your genitals don’t make you a boy or a girl.”

This differs from their previous guidelines (which also include vocabulary not normally used by preschoolers): "I’m a woman—a girl who is all grown up—so I have a vulva instead of a penis. And you’re a boy, so you have a penis instead of a vulva."

Body parts don’t tell you anything anymore, they say. Because of new science? Of course not. Because they’re pushing an agenda. And they’re aiming it at our children. We can also assume they’re using taxpayer dollars to produce the indoctrination.

Will this new Planned Parenthood preschool material make its way into elementary schools in Washington State? I have no idea. But they meet the new state standards.

So, until the Washington State standards are changed back to something closer to sane reality, assume the standards changes likely means that confusing, biology-denying lies, along with immoral values, are going to be foisted upon your children—unless you stand up and refuse to let that happen to your children.

Worse than We Imagined

I have a good imagination. But imagining the ugly, savage, creepy, disgusting—I don’t spend a lot of time doing that.

So I didn’t imagine that things would get so bad so soon.

Washington SBOE seal
image found here

Let me share the easier bad news first. This is from schools in Washington State, where we lived when my kids started school. The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) has put out a new set of Health and Physical Education Standards. They begin their 126-page document with this reassurance:

The 2016 Health and Physical Education K-12 Learning Standards were developed collaboratively with teachers, administrators, subject matter experts, state and national association, and stakeholders in health and physical education. Teams of Washington state health and physical education teachers started working on drafts in September 2014 with the aim to develop the most comprehensive, relevant, medically-accurate, and inclusive set of health and physical education learning standards for our state.

That is to reassure you parents, who were NOT consulted and were excluded from the process, don’t worry; experts are in charge.

Here’s what the experts are planning for Washington children:

·         Beginning in Kindergarten, students will be taught about the many ways to express gender.  Gender expression education will include information about the manifestations of traits that are typically associated with one gender. Crossdressing is one form of gender expression.

·         Third graders will be introduced to the concept of gender identity.  These children will be taught that they can choose their own gender.

·         Fourth graders will be expected to “define sexual orientation,” which refers to whether a person identifies as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual; they’ll also be taught about HIV prevention.  Children in fourth grade will be told that they can choose their sexual orientation.

·         Fourth and fifth graders will learn about the relativity of gender roles and why such roles are social constructs that are not inherent to who we are as male or female human beings.

·         Seventh graders will be expected to “distinguish between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”

·         High school students will critically “evaluate how culture, media, society, and other people influence our perceptions of gender roles, sexuality, relationships, and sexual orientation.”

In case you, as a parent, are confused about terms, they provide a glossary. [The definitions below were reported by The Daily Caller, but the link to the glossary was no longer available.]

Gender: “A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex.”

Gender expression: “The way someone outwardly expresses their gender.”

Gender identity: “Someone’s inner sense of their gender.”

So, kindergarteners will be told they don’t know what “boys” and “girls” are, that it’s up in the air, and they ought to go ahead and try out being something they are not, or invent something that is neither boy nor girl and be that.

And fourth graders, who are still in the stage where the opposite sex has cooties, are being told that they might be homosexual if they do not feel attracted to the opposite sex.

Parents are, of course, outraged. Back when we had children in Washington schools, I met personally with the health teacher to go over the curriculum and verify that it met my standards, and that she shared my values. I could have opted out if I had not felt comfortable.

Parents worry that is no longer the case; the LGBTQ agenda is being incorporated fully into the entire health education curriculum. So it’s not a matter of sending a child to the library during the teaching of a particular lesson. It will be multiple days, in multiple ways, over multiple years from K-12.

School board member John Torre claimed parents will be able to opt out, “including the sexual orientation and gender identity lessons.” But Torre also told the Washington Times, the proposed curriculum changes (put out in March, approved in May) have nothing to do with the previous week’s vote to allow boys who identity as girls to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice. That’s just an unrelated coincidence.

Andrea Lafferty, president of Traditional Values Coalition, one of several opponent groups, said, “They are not being forthright with the information. They are not telling people the truth.  They are bullying parents. They are intimidating and they are threatening.”

Meanwhile Torre admits that he cannot provide either the science behind the curriculum changes, or examples of lessons; those things have not been written yet.

I might remind you that schools originally took on the role of informing children about sex for the purported purpose of preventing out-of-wedlock births. And I’ll repeat one of the Spherical Model maxims:

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

There’s another, related piece of news that goes beyond what I could imagine. It’s about Planned Parenthood, that bastion of savagery that exists because of taxpayer dollars. I am going to have to quote from an article, because I could not make this up, and I fail to be able to put it in my own words:

Pro-life advocacy group Live Action released a second investigative video on July 15 showing what Planned Parenthood “counselors” teach minors in the name of “sex-ed”: sexual bondage and sadomasochism, and steering them to sex stores to “get educated.” In the latest video, a Colorado counselor told the Live Action investigator (posing as a minor) that “sexual exploration is normal”—and went so far as to suggest defecating and urinating on men as an option. Really. Only conservative media found the film worth reporting….

According to the counselor, “sexual exploration” is “normal” and “can be really fun.” For ideas to imitate, she referenced 50 Shades of Grey as well as porn. She even offered some creative techniques of her own: “There are so many different fetishes out there,” she stressed. “Like, some guys like for women to urinate on them” or “pooping.”…

During a “Hannity” interview on July 15, [Live Action President Lila] Rose, elaborated on Planned Parenthood: “Their interest is not protecting these girls. Their interest is abortion and in pushing a sexual ideology—a sexology—that's very destructive and dangerous on our teenagers.”

Obamacare provided this particular Planned Parenthood with additional funding for educating teens. That means in schools. Rose encouraged parents to contact their principles and school superintendents to find out what their school’s relationship was with Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood Houston
image from here

That is a good first step wherever you are in the country. We think our schools are somewhat safe from such indoctrination here in Texas, because we are vigilant. And yet the huge Houston Planned Parenthood office is guilty of selling baby parts (another abomination I couldn’t have imagined until proof was placed before us), but they were temporarily successful in getting the reporters prosecuted, rather than the actual perpetrators. The reporters were eventually exonerated, but no real justice has been done yet.

I’ll say one more time, homeschooling is a lifestyle choice worth looking into. If there is any way you can do it, your family will benefit—both educationally and socially. If you are in an area where schools are already imposing this savage, anti-family doctrine, you must find a way out now.