The American Mind

Back to school gender identification

William Hillman

(10/2017) Last Thursday was back to school night for my son in 8th grade. How I hate these nights. But this one goes into the record books, or at least the newspapers.

At the end of the first day of school, I came home from work to my wife and my oldest son giggling, and as much as those two butt heads, them laughing together is always a wonderful sight. My wife to my son, "Tell your father about your first day."

My son: "My first period this year is science. At the beginning of class the teacher stood up, told us what his name is, and said he self-identifies as a male and his preferred pronouns we should use to address him are He, Him, and His. He then passed out cards and had the kids write their names, the gender they self-identify as, and the pronouns that should be used to address them.

This went on in nearly every class.

My son at first joked that he wanted to write down "x-box" as the gender he self identifies as, but knew the teacher would not appreciate the joke to stand up and say that in front of the whole class. I suggested that the next day he tell this teacher to address him as "His Majesty", and when addressing him, the teacher should get on one knee.

It gets better. The first night of school his only homework was to read an article from the New York Times, which, of course, was critical of President Trump and his comments after the tragedy in Charlottesville. Worse yet, the article paints Antifa as a peaceful, altruistic group that opposes white supremacists. It argued that there is no conceivable way anyone could liken Antifa to Nazis. (Please refer to my September column).

That night we had a conversation about freedom of speech and how it is easy to be in favor of freedom of speech when it is an opinion you agree with. The real test of free speech is when you don’t agree with what is being said, do you still support the right of those you disagree with to express ideas that you wholly disagree with? I then showed him videos of Antifa using violence in an attempt to suppress others. I then asked my son what we call people who use violence and violent intimidation to impose their views on other people. Without missing a beat, he responded, "fascists."

Last week was back to school night. The first class we visited was the science teacher who self identifies as a male. Looking at him, it was evident he was male. I’m not sure why he thought it was important to announce this to his class. He did the normal grade breakdown, review of what the class would study this year, etc. He then went on to explain how he is very "into" social justice and he tries to incorporate that into all of his lessons. Sitting on his book shelves where one would expect to see copies of the periodic table, biology and chemistry books, were books on slavery and race relations.

Sitting on his desk was a "Bill Nye The Science Guy" stuffed doll. The science teacher said Bill Nye was his hero. I bit my tongue from commenting that Bill Nye is not a scientist, he is just another Marxist actor. Mr. Nye believes that skepticism is dangerous and that transgenderism is all part of "evolution". He recently teamed up with Rachel Bloom in a vulgar, laughably embarrassing, science-excoriating "transgender anthem" video called, "Sex Junk".

Onto Social Studies.

On the wall of this classroom was projected a slide, asking the question, "On Columbus Day should people have the right to steal from other people?" The assumption in the question is that Columbus stole America from the Indians. In this fantasy version of history, the Native Americans were a commune of peace loving people, living in a symbiotic relationship with nature, never hurting so much as a fly. Then big bad Columbus came along and stole their land and imprisoned their people. There is not enough space in this column to expose this BS.

She started out the class by asking one parent to be the "official passer-outer" of papers and then asked another parent to be in charge of picking on other parents to answer questions. I find it a little more than condescending then when a teacher treats parents like students.

She started the meeting by trying to engage the parents in a discussion on slavery in America. No one would bite. Thankfully, the parent she asked to pick parents to answer the questions was not having anything to do with this nonsense and was reluctant to participate. The teacher was forced to call on parents herself.

She then moved onto to questions of social justice and the unjust way scarce resources are distributed in the United States. I could read my wife’s thoughts, "please don’t pick my husband". "Racing through my mind was the dilemma of wanting to speak up and tell this woman what I think of her as a teacher and the problems this would cause my son in her class.

I could not get out of that class quick enough. Walking out of class, a friend who shares many of my political leanings grabbed my shoulder, and while chuckling, asked if I was okay after what we just encountered.

This is going to be a long year.

At home, I asked my son what he thought of his teachers. He said he liked most of them except his social studies teacher. I then asked him about all the social justice stuff the teachers talk about. His reply, that warmed my heart was, "I don’t listen to all that crap."

It is time to introduce my son to William F. Buckley’s great book, "God and Men at Yale". Our missions as parents this year will be to debunk the propaganda he hears in school.

A little background about this school. The average teacher salary is $98,000 per year for 10 months of work. The district spends close to $30,000 per year per student. Average state salary for a teacher is $59,000. The school district abuts a district that spends $12,000 per student. I wonder how these social justice teachers would feel if the scarce resources for public schools were equally distributed and their salary was dropped so that all teachers across the state were made equal.