Kids

There is a debate going on about when, where, by whom and if children should be taught about trans people. I think you all know where I stand on the issue but in a Northern California town the battle royal is beginning.

Should kindergarten include books about being transgender?
LA Times
By Sonali Kohli
September 2, 2017

Ankur Dhawan’s 6-year-old daughter walked into the living room one day in June and told her family she’d learned in school that you could be a girl in a boy’s body. Her classmate was one of those girls, she said.
[…]
Dhawan is happy, though, that outside resources exist to teach his daughter about gender identity.

She began to learn her way around the subject when her teacher at her Northern California charter school, Rocklin Academy Gateway, read from the book “I am Jazz,” co-written by transgender teenager Jazz Jennings. Earlier that week the teacher had told the class to refer to their classmate as a girl, by a new name.

In the book, Jazz says, “I have a girl brain but in a boy body. This is called transgender. I was born this way!”

“I think it’s a great way of addressing a very pertinent issue,” Dhawan said. “I think the book does it in a way that’s at least meaningful from the 5- or 6-year-old perspective.”
So there is a transgender child in the class and she brought the book to class like other students do,
The transgender child brought “I am Jazz” into class for the teacher to read, said school spokeswoman Elizabeth Ashford. Students often bring books in, she said. The teacher also read the class “Red: A Crayon’s Story,” which talks about identity and labels without bringing up gender.

And the trouble begins, clue the suspenseful music…

Rocklin is a small, conservative-leaning city north of Sacramento. At Rocklin Academy, not all parents agreed with Dhawan that having the teacher read the books was good for their children. Some complained, to the school and publicly, saying they should have a choice about if and when to talk to their children about gender identity.

Yes, let’s all vote on every item that is going to be taught in class and the topics we don’t like we can bury our heads in the sand, and repeat after Sergeant Schultz… “I know nothing…nothing!”

The school takes a hard line,

Legally the school could not tell parents that a student was transitioning because of privacy laws, school leaders wrote in a post on the Rocklin website Wednesday. As for the books the teacher read, it said, the school wasn’t required to tell parents about them.

Schools have an obligation under both state and federal law to “create a safe and welcoming learning environment for all students,” Orr [Asaf Orr, an attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ transgender youth project] said. “Carving out exceptions for books that are specific to transgender kids … or a specific group of people is highly problematic.”

These books can teach children that “difference is an important part of humanity and that it’s important to respect others’ differences and treat them as equals,” he said.

The conservatives want to deny us and pray we will go away, but we are here and we are not going away. They don’t want anything to do with diversity; they want the right to discriminate against people who are different. All they want to do is build statues to the oppressors.