Georgia school board fires teacher for reading a book to students about gender identity
apnews.com
A Georgia school board voted along party lines Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class.
You are viewing a single comment
5th grade seems like an appropriate time to start educating students about this as part of their health curriculum. That's the grade when they gave us the puberty talk in my old school district.
Some early bloomers absolutely start puberty during or before 5th grade.
For people outside the US how old would 5th graders actually be?
11 usually
That seems like a perfectly reasonable age to introduce a person to a topic like puberty.
Like I’m pretty sure I was taught the basics of it and what it does to your body when I was that age.
Isn't that a bit late to be starting basic health education? For girls, that's above the average age of beginning puberty and for both, it's years after the cutoff for it being consider precocious.
It is a bit late, but for what it's worth, we started the puberty lessons at 10 years old and I was one of the older kids in class. Most were 9.
Nowadays a lot of girls at that age already menstruate. It is not only appropriate, you might even argue it is a tad late.
Maybe it's just how I was raised or taught, sex ed didn't start till 7th/8th grade for me, and looking back seemed like an appropriate age to me.
But this isn't sex ed. Discussing gender doesn't mean discussing having sex.
The teacher was fired for teaching gender theory, not sex education. Those are very different things and I suspect you know that.
Yes they are two different things but they are related. Puberty can be devastating to a child who isn't comfortable with their body. In some cases puberty blockers are prescribed to delay the physical changes for children with gender disphoria. So educating gender identity along with puberty isn't a bad idea.
And yes, some children do start questioning their gender before they start puberty.
But this is all speculative. We don't know what the context for this teacher reading the book, but calling it inappropriate for their age is wrong.
I think it's wrong. Gender theory is pretty radical. It has no factual basis. Reinforcing delusions is universally destructive in psychology. As long as those delusions aren't reinforced, most kids reconcile without intervention. This study found that only 37% of children still identified as dysphoric five years later. This study found that 88% had desisted (they were no longer dysphoric). This mirrors other historical research into various areas of child psychology. Children frequently change identity and beliefs around identity.
As for puberty blockers, they don't just delay puberty. They also have devastating side effects, including osteoporosis and diabetes. That is why puberty blockers for gender dysphoria have now been banned in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and other European nations.
This topic is rather personal to me, so I've researched it to the best of my abilities. I'm happy to concede this isn't settled science, but must reinforce that this isn't settled science. It's not clear that affirmation is beneficial, and in fact, research indicates the opposite.