A Georgia school board voted along party lines Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class.
A Georgia school board voted along party lines Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class.
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Independent thought IS overrated after all. Many things in society are tamped down to some lowest common denominator level to placate the masses and be palatable to the broadest cross segment. Emerging ideas though need discussion and facts being what they are the adults in the room are much more likely to be fixed in their ways and unwilling to acknowledge anything that goes against their ‘good old days’ perceptions of right and wrong.
I happen to be one of those adults and understand that some of the lenses I view things through are tinged by the experiences and perspectives around me while growing up. Those things though are not the current reality that we have to work within. I may not agree with every notion that my kids bring forth, but they’re welcome to challenge me on it to explain their point. If you don’t allow kids the information to make a detemination of their own however then the future world suffers for it.
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The way around that around here is a parental permission slip if there is any question on a topic being age appropriate. Affirmative rejection of education by the parent is recordable and should be actionable by society if at egregious enough levels where it’s seen as restricting a proper education.
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The notion of the slips as I’ve seen them implemented is as such:
In X grade we will have education on Y topic which has some measure of content that parents may find questionable for their children. If you object to this then please advise us in writing (through whatever means the school prefers) and we will have them placed in an alternative class dring that time.
If the parent rejects the class then it will be presumed they will attend the class the next year/semester, if it is rejected again at that time then there needs to be some intervention to have a discussion to identify a specific cause. That could include school counselers, social services or whomever else is required to ensure the kids get a comprehensive education in accordance with the established modern standards.
Parental interests should be noted, but not the exclusive dictation of what information is available to a kid. Those who look to restrict access to information are almost universally going to be doing so because they’re afraid that their own version of things is going to be seen as wrong, usually for good reason. Ignorance is bred in isolation through unopposed repetition of opinions stated as facts.
Helping shape curriculum is distinct from the choice to engage with it at any given point and not mutually exclusive. Arguing for the exclusion of information is almost always bad, arguing for the inclusion of it is less often bad but needs to be backed by sound logic and science.
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I assume that there will be some measure of eternal back and forth as one side or the other fights to have their side expressed, but that given ready access to information there is an inevitable tendancy for progressive ideals to become adopted as the norm.
Consider the major advances over the past 200 years in society, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the generalized acceptance of LGBT rights, etc. Im the early 1900s it was the norm to say interracial couples where immoral, now to publically say so would have you in a virtual pillory. When I was young gay jokes where commonplace and to be gay was used as an insult, now I’m here arguing that free discussion of such as being good science and should be valid public education material. Short of extrordinary efforts at repression those kinds of advancements are not going to be reverted. The very fact that I even can have such a discussion with people across the globe at leisure helps ensure that.
There’s a solid reason why urban centers tend to have a more liberal bend to them in that the common exposure to alternate ideas, particularly at a young age, lends itself to acceptance of those ideas on their merits.
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