Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
When discussing issues relating to the LGBTQ+ community, teachers frequently insist that they want children to be their authentic selves. Those words have become so common that they could be considered a cliche. There's a slight problem with their comments. Children should be seen as far more than gender identity and sexuality.
When I served my time in the system, my teachers tried to shove everyone into the same mold. When any students dared to deviate even a little from this narrow and rigid mold, they were consistently met with intolerance from their teachers. Does that really sound like letting them be their authentic selves?
Part of the issue here is that teachers have embraced a shallow definition of diversity. As long as they support the right checklist status, they feel that they are adequately supportive of diversity. In the process, they have been outright attacking mental diversity. They are fine with people who check off the right boxes as long as they are otherwise identical.
Their push to support these checklist items frequently includes the specifics of what they want children to think. This is especially obvious with race. They are pushing the idea that explicit racism is the solution to implicit and systemic racism. Teachers will turn on students who want to address racism but have different solutions. This is even though explicit racism has already been proven catastrophic. The more we embrace this solution, the stronger racial tensions have become.
Visit the websites for the NEA and AFT sometime. I dare you to find anything that deviates from the perspective of mindless liberal conformists. A lot of this seeps into the schools. They talk about diverse books that they want to push children to read, but all of them seem to come from like-minded individuals.
I should also mention what I have seen from social media. The NEA has been known to block people whose perspectives are different from their own. Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, restricts comments to anyone except those she knows has the same perspective. Weingarten also has a history of referring to any perspectives that deviate from her own as extremist.
If children are nothing more than sexual beings, I can understand how teachers are fighting to allow them to be their authentic selves. For those of us who see children as more than that, their argument completely falls apart. I view children as unique individuals with minds of their own. If we truly want children to live their lives as their authentic selves, we need to become more tolerant of mental diversity. I will stand by this view even if they don't become mindless liberal conformists.
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