Brave teachers refuse to be silenced in San Diego

(AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

It is easy to forget that most teachers went into the profession because they actually want to teach children.

After all, everything we hear these days about what is happening in the public schools is about how they have been recruiting centers for alphabet people and ideological training grounds for the cultural Marxists.

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But for generations, most people went into teaching because some teacher in their own life made a difference to them. Even today, while the new generation of teachers has been restructuring the entire public education system, the majority of teachers are decent people trying to do a very difficult job.

Unfortunately, most of those teachers are afraid to speak up. Many of them give up and leave the profession, seeing their profession collapse.

That’s why I was so excited to see that two teachers in San Diego decided to stand up against the Establishment and decided to sue their district over new speech restrictions that would prevent them from discussing their child’s behavior in school.

A California law has been interpreted in such a way as to require teachers to refuse to discuss anything having to do with their own children’s sexual behaviors in school.

In fact, teachers are being told, basically, to lie to their parents. The Escondido School District in San Diego has even provided a script to teachers for how they are supposed to respond to parents’ questions. Two teachers are not taking the demands lying down.

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The complaint alleges that district representatives told the teachers that the policies might be required by state and federal law and referenced a page on the California Department of Education website referencing Assembly Bill 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act, which was signed into law in 2013.

The website states, “The right of transgender students to keep their transgender status private is grounded in California’s anti-discrimination laws as well as federal and state laws. Disclosing that a student is transgender without the student’s permission may violate California’s anti-discrimination law by increasing the student’s vulnerability to harassment and may violate the student’s right to privacy.”

“Vulnerability to harassment.” The state is presuming that parents trying to be parents are engaged in harassment.

The lawsuit is being spearheaded by the Thomas More Society, which fights for religious freedom.

Teachers from a California middle school are suing their school district and the California State Board of Education over policies requiring them to keep secrets from, and even lie to, parents about their minor-age students. The federal lawsuit, filed by attorneys from the Thomas More Society on April 27, 2023, charges administrators at the Escondido Union School District, California State Board of Education, and Rincon Middle School, with violations of the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment over a policy with which they have allowed activists to “coopt school districts to push gender theory.”

The litigation was prompted by the Escondido Union School District, a K-8 school district, implementation of a series of new policies on the treatment of “transgender” or “gender diverse” students.

These policies force teachers to aid in a student’s transgender “social transition” by:

  • unhesitatingly accepting a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender-diverse identity;
  • immediately using any pronouns or a gender-specific name requested by a student during school;
  • but reverting to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with parents in order to actively hide information about a child’s gender identity from his or her parents.

“All of this is to be done without parent or guardian agreement or knowledge. Schools routinely send notes home to parents about trivial matters, like missing homework, so it is unfathomable that Escondido Union School District has a policy that forces teachers to withhold from parents some of the most fundamental and basic information about their children,” explained Paul Jonna, Thomas More Society Special Counsel and Partner, LiMandri and Jonna LLP.

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This is all part of a larger Leftist movement designed specifically to separate children emotionally from their parents–in fact, to make parents a scary and seemingly dangerous oppressive authority. Schools are portraying themselves as the saviors of students who are being oppressed by parents who try to provide moral and life guidance.

Furthermore, the federal court filing reveals that Escondido Union School District requires elementary and middle school teachers to ensure that parents do not find out about their child’s social transition. The policy goes so far as to state that “revealing a student’s transgender status to individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information, without the student’s consent” is prohibited. According to the district, “parents or caretakers” are individuals who “do not have a legitimate need for the information,” irrespective of the age of the student or the specific facts of the situation.

Escondido Union School District has even scripted the response that its teachers must parrot if confronted by “a suspicious parent.” They are coached to reply that “the inquiry is outside of the scope of the intent of their interaction” and that they can only discuss “information regarding the student’s behavior as it relates to school, class rules, assignments, etc.” Even if a parent expresses concern, teachers are specifically “directed to refrain from elaborating on their personal beliefs” regarding the child’s gender confusion.

“The real outrage here,” declared Jonna, “is that schools are requiring educators to hide critical information from parents about their child’s well-being. Rather than partnering with parents to help raise up young people with a well-rounded education and breadth of knowledge, these radical agendas are pitting parents and teachers against one another, to the detriment of their students.”

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I agree with Jonna, although I think the statement doesn’t go far enough. This isn’t about interfering with the relationship of the parent with the teacher; it is aimed to create a moral divorce between parent and child.

The model of child rearing being pushed is one where parents assume financial responsibility for housing and feeding children while ceding all other authority to raise their children to the state. Children are emotionally and morally separated from their parents, but the state can still use the parents as physical caregivers.

It’s dystopian but hardly unique. This is the totalitarian model of the family and has been seen in communist regimes such as East Germany and China.

It is this agenda that drives the war on parental rights.

Too many Americans are naive to what is being done. As I have said before the modern Left is pursuing a truly evil agenda, and rightfully most of us can’t see it. Americans have no direct experience with totalitarianism in the way that Eastern European countries have, so we look at their efforts to beat back the Left agenda as authoritarian.

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Rather, most Americans believe the rhetoric that the Left is compassionate and just wants what is best for people. They have weaponized our compassion and our naivety against us.

It’s frustrating when you see it because railing against it makes you look insane. COVID woke a lot of people up at the same time it intellectually lobotomized others.

No amount of yelling “Don’t you see?!” will convert people, but a steady drumbeat of dissent does have an effect. We just have to keep pointing out the examples and at some point most people, I hope, will experience the “aha!” moment.

The radical Left is a small fraction of the people who consider themselves liberal. Most people buy the compassion arguments. It will take years to change their minds, unfortunately.

From my friend Walter Hudson, a newly-elected State Representative in Minnesota about what the Democrats are doing to education here in Minnesota.

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Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force.

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Beege Welborn 8:00 PM | December 02, 2024
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