Florida ban on classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity has been expanded to all grades

All the curriculum was available to parents long before Covid. In all my years of teaching, I have never had a “parent night” with more than 10% turnout. If the parents didn’t know what their kids were learning, it’s because they didn’t bother to know.

No school is teaching CRT. Kids are more progressive on social issues because the majority of the world is. Kids get much more of their information about these topics from social media.

If I truly had the power to indoctrinate kids, they put their phones down. They would do homework. They would stop plagiarizing.

There is no evidence of a parent listening to a Zoom class and hearing CRT or lessons on transgender.

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CRT continues to be only be taught in law school. So, unless we are talking incredibly precocious children - that’s a complete red herring. Civil rights protests continue as they have since literally The Civil War (and before).

Not sure how gun control has anything to do with the conversation up to this point.

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Nevermind.

The high school I went to in the 80s seemed to have protests all the time. I know a few of them were about dress code, locker searches, freedom of speech, etc.

The college I went to had protests about recruiting more underrepresented students and staff, divestment, tuition increases, systematic racism and homelessness. There was everything from a tent city to a take over of the administration offices. I graduated in 1991 from a state flagship.

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I don’t doubt it. Parents didn’t pay attention until it was on the screen in their kitchen. I’m betting most parents assumed their kids were being taught the same stuff they were a few decades ago. I’m also not saying it happened everywhere but it happened enough that parents started showing up to school board meetings and running for school board positions.

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If the FL bill was just about kids learning about sexuality at home, they wouldn’t have just tried to pass a bill to remove kids from parents or sanction doctors for providing gender-affirming care. It obviously isn’t about parental choice. It’s about marginalization and erasure.

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Where did it happen and what explicitly was being taught?

Yes a it is important to see all the things happening in conjunction.

And many of those parents swore they saw or heard things that no other parents (who were also online) heard.

One of those people that ran for school committee (unopposed as a last-minute candidate) for that very reason had to admit that those things aren’t happening once he was on the school board and saw what actually happens in the school, what the curriculum is and how teachers teach. Now that he has to use facts, he is no longer able to push his agenda.

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Or it’s about a difference of opinion as to what constitutes medical care vs child abuse.

A doctor providing information is not child abuse. Nor is a doctor using preferred pronouns. Both of those things are gender-affirming care. Both doctors and parents are well aware of the suicide rates of children that DON’T receive gender-affirming care. If you want to look at the data, not supplying gender-affirming care is actual child abuse. If a parent withdraws their child from a mental health facility and they harm themselves, they can file a report against the parent. How does that fit into interfering
with gender-affirming care?
If you are worried about hormones, my nephew took the same ones so that he could gain a few inches in height and I know females that have taken them to delay early puberty. Obviously, that doesn’t fall under child abuse. Yet if it’s for gender affirmation, it’s suddenly child abuse?

What about parents that want to follow different, radical diets or have their kids in dangerous or intense sports with overuse injuries? There are lots of grey areas where people can feel something is “abusive” to a child, yet the state has not gone out of its way to legislate much beyond gender-affirming care.

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Breast implants are gender affirming care. Viagra is gender affirming care. Hormone replacement therapy after menopause is gender affirming care.

Either gender affirming care is good (I fall on believing it is very good) or its bad and we need to make sure that all gender affirming care is banned, not just the type we personally think is icky/not necessary.

Both of which are gender affirming care as well (I know you know, just want to point that out to others who might not have thought it through).

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Your opinion shouldn’t matter when all of the medical associations agree that gender affirming care is needed for a child’s well-being and mental health.
Why do you get to decide what medical care my family receive?

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All of these examples are for adults… not children.

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Hormone replacement care is for children who have growth deficiencies or sex related disorders. Breast reductions are done on both male and females who are 15 ish.

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Breast implants/reductions are done on teens as well. As is hormone therapy for boys’ height.

Gender affirming care happens throughout our lives, not just as adults.

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Rule of thumb:
If medical Doctors agree on care, it’s medical care.
If laypeople’s religious or political zealotry forbids such medical care, it’s child abuse.

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That’s not very comforting, knowing that currently the definition of what is “constitutional” is aggressively being redefined - especially in areas dealing with separation of church and state, and freedom from religion.

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@vpa2019

Did you read either of those articles? The second one does not list the number of vacancies and the information across states is not comparative. It also mentions 2019 data in a couple of places.

Your other article is based on data published in August 2022. The raw data informing the article indicates that, in 37 states with either “clear” or “less clear” vacancy data (as opposed to 13 states with no or unknown data) Florida (in the “clear” category) had 3911 teacher vacancies–more than any other state.

I will concede though, on a per capita (student) basis–as opposed to raw vacancies-- Mississippi is winning the teacher shortage crisis.

We clearly had very different school experiences in our youth.

I’m really glad I had teachers who cared, because my parent’s divorce when I was 11 at a time when divorce was really uncommon would have been even more difficult to endure if there weren’t some caring people in my life. I was able to find colleges further from home due to recommendations from others too. My parents would have had me going to their Alma mater about half an hour from where I lived. I applied there because mom told me to, but fortunately I never had to really consider it.

I (and my classmates) learned a lot about the Vietnam war from teachers who had been there. I saw a Holocaust tattoo on the arm of another teacher who shared. I learned about the Hippie days from actual Hippies.

I could go on.

Oh, and I still got really good ACT/SAT/AP scores and went on to do quite well in college as did many of my classmates who went to schools many kids covet to this day (like MIT).

There’s no way in the world I’d have traded my experience for yours.

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