Teacher Union Agenda Dysphoria
Alberta teachers union pushes a radical sexual agenda on kids.
Earlier this year, several doctors tore into new guidelines that promote transgenderism in the Canadian province of Alberta. These MDs haven’t fallen for the uber-progressive fairytale that “gender is a social construct” and insist that identifying one’s gender as different from one’s biological sex is a disorder akin to anorexia. They point out that with anorectics, the role of parents, doctors, and teachers is “not to uncritically approve” their disordered thinking “but to help them recognize the source of such confusion and to reaffirm and help re-align their ‘assigned’ sexual gender with their perceived identity.”
Unfazed by the doctors’ pushback to the politicizing of biology, the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) has now come out with a “toolkit” that aims to promote “safe and caring discussions about sexual and gender minorities.” And it seems that there are now so many “gender minorities” that the alphabet-soup bowl is overflowing. On the Table of Contents page, the ATA blesses us with a new sobriquet – “LGBTTTPQQAI+.” (The A” is for “Aromantic.” I wonder if the emphasis on the “romantic” or the “aroma? Then again, I don’t really want to know.)
The rest of the document is a pastiche of feel-good hooey cloaked in inclusionary jargon. And while teachers aren’t actually required to use the toolkit, which provides lesson plans for grades 7-12, many will because it incorporates the new guidelines and provides an easy way for them to deal with the subject. And since the lessons will be taught during mandated instructional time, students cannot opt out.
The activities are a gender-bender’s dream. One lesson suggests, “…invite local drag queens to come to the school to teach make-up and hair techniques. Students may also want to organize a drag performance for the school.” If that doesn’t wag your tail, how about “gender swap,” in which students are asked to select a piece of writing that is typically strongly associated with a particular gender, but one that is not the gender they identify with. For the more creative types, there is a lesson in which students are challenged to create fashion that transcends gender and fully incorporates the masculine and feminine in all their pieces.
Perhaps the whole toolkit can be summed up by taking a gander at the “Gender Unicorn” on P.21, which is used to explain that the “authentic way of understanding gender is looking at it as a spectrum, with all people expressing maleness, femaleness, otherness, and both to varying degrees.”
Unsurprisingly, not everyone in Alberta is okay with the Unicorn, let alone the rest of the toolkit. Donna Trimble, who runs Parents for Choice in Education, says “the guidelines are an imposition on families who may disagree with topics to be discussed.” She adds that many parents are concerned and upset that they can’t opt out. “There are individuals that still feel marriage is between a man and a woman, and that there is a biblical understanding of male and female from a faith perspective.”
Theresa Ng, a parent and former teacher, is perhaps the most vocal and articulate opponent of radical new sexual curriculum. She started a blog site, “Informed Albertans” as a response to the province’s new guidelines. Needless to say, Ms. Ng has been even busier since ATA came out with its toolkit. On October 30th, she posted “You think you know what Alberta students learn in school?” which delves into the more egregious parts of the program.
As Ng notes, the toolkit is rife with newspeak. “Mom and dad” are out, replaced by “guardians” or “adults.” “Boys and girls?” Nah. Now it will be “folks or students.” (Tellingly, “comrades” was initially included as an alternative to “boys and girls” but after some bad press, the Communist allusion was scrubbed.)
Those of us in the Lower 48 should not be smug and assume that this nonsense is only going on in the Great White North. The teachers unions here have long championed a radical sexual agenda and very well may be emboldened by the ATA toolkit. (Not that it really needs it; the National Education Association has its very own gender “diversity toolkit” on its website.) And let us not forget that in 2004 NEA gave its prestigious Human Rights Award to Kevin Jennings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN). This is the group that presided over the infamous “Fistgate” conference held at Tufts University in Massachusetts in March 2000, where state employees gave explicit instructions about “fisting,” and other forms of sexual activity to children as young as 12. Additionally, a how-to manual that included headings like “F**kin’, S**kin’” and “Spit or Swallow,” was given to the kids. (The conference was secretly recorded; its extraordinarily vile contents can be heard here.)
Also, at a UN conference in 2011, Diane Schneider, an NEA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Trainer of Trainers, proclaimed “Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education.” She told this to the audience at a panel on combating transphobia. Additionally, she advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in our schools, with curricula based on “liberal hetero and homosexual expression.” Lest parents think they could just excuse their child from that class, she claimed that the idea of sex education “remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence based, or if students are still able to opt-out.” She then added that comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity.”
And who can forget the in-your-face “NEA Drag Queen Caucus” (thankfully now defunct) which came to be in 2010.
(More on the U.S. teachers unions’ radical sexual agenda here.)
The children who have gender disorders need help. They should not be bullied, looked down on or ridiculed in any way. But in its attempt to gloss over gender dysphoria and make it into a “lifestyle choice,” the Alberta school district and its union are doing more harm than any bully could. No parent should have to put up with their gender-bender agenda. Parents should be able to opt out of any district that promulgates an education program that they are opposed to.
Coincidentally, Alberta does have a school choice law. But sadly even private religious schools are now burdened with government edicts regarding gender bending and risk losing taxpayer assistance if they don’t fall in line with regnant radical agenda.
Homeschooling anyone?
Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.