Hi there, I'm Teacher Annie of "The Gods Are Bored!" I'm an expert on all things teachy, since teaching is my job. Okay, okay, I'm only proficient, never distinguished, but you fellow educators out there will appreciate this -- on my most recent evaluation, I was 0.02 away from distinguished! So close and yet so far.
But enough about me, let's talk about not talking about gay!
The beautiful thing about teachers is how we all share our best ideas with each other. Some hard-hearted bastard teachers ask for money, but by and large we are a wide-open profession.
That's how I have seen nice teachers in Florida sharing "best practices" for not saying gay. Or trans.
And before the big reveal of those b.p., let me say something about trans children. They know themselves by kindergarten. They just don't know it's wrong to know, unless their parents tell them it's wrong to know. Which, if you are a truly loving parent, how could you tell your child they're wrong about their fundamental self-image?
Back to the school setting.
So apparently the bill signed by the Florida legislature (which no I have not read, kiss my ass) bans the teaching of anything about gender. This is what I'm getting from the Florida teachers who have to live with this thing, so they have read it.
Can't teach gender. Can't teach boy/girl. Can't have gender-specific bathrooms, because they would have to be designated Boy/Girl. Can't read books where there are boys and girls. All children have to be kids. Can't teach about gay families? Can't teach about straight families either. Kid wants their parents to come to school, it better be a pair of storks.
Me personally, I'm all for not teaching one damn thing about gender from kindergarten to third grade. No stories with people in them at all! Not even the Muppets! A steady dose of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, thank you very much.
Here's a book that would make the cut, so long as you don't mention that chickens are female and roosters are male.
And you can even get it from this nice Christian book distributor!
My elementary school had non-gendered bathrooms. Only one kid could use the bathroom at a time. They were basically little water closets. All good, right? Gosh, how is it done now? Do you have a bunch of little girls hanging out in a bathroom together? Bullying each other and smoking cigarettes, like they do in high school? DANG!
I think if it's done carefully, this whole not saying anything about gender or sexuality could be a boon to Florida's schoolchildren. Take baseball, for instance. Scrap those sissy softball teams, let's play some hardball, kids! Kids! Kids! Don't draw a family picture of your mommy and daddy, kid! Draw your parents. Chances are they're both working themselves to death, so why differentiate the gender?
Halloween's here! You don't want to be a princess, you want to be royal. But why even be royal when you can be a skeleton, or Pac-Man ... oops ... Pac-Person. Super heroes? Spiderperson, Batperson, Wonder Person! Or just be a cat. It's easier.
I can honestly see the upside to a gender-free experience in K-3. Let's put the lil tykes in unisex uniforms too, while we're at it. No one will get bullied for wearing the wrong thing to school.
I'm not taking credit for any of these brilliant ideas. I've seen them shared on teacher blogs. Sharing is caring, and teachers know how to do both!
To conclude this sermon, I would like to shout out my elementary school principal, Miss Hazel Fridinger. She was very dedicated, to the point where she didn't have time to get married. Her female housemate never got married either. I love to think of that happy pair, sharing expenses and chores all their lives long. See what I mean? Teaching is such a sharing kind of experience. Always has been.
Have a nice day, kids! Children! Youngsters! Tots! Precious little gender-free souls.
4 comments:
I do find it ironic that Teachers are being targeted, since yes, that last Paragraph about your dedicated Ms. Fridinger reminds me of so many of the best Teachers I ever had in School, especially the Elementary School Years. These crackpots who are so freaked out about Gender seem to think that by not saying a Word or Words, somehow it eliminates Real Life. And you're Right, the Trans Kids know themselves at a very early Age, I've Raised one and by Two 'knew', it just took a while for a lot of other people in the Orbit to catch up and just learn to accept. For some of us it was never an Issue, but there are a lot of folks in Society that have a great Deal of struggle with accepting other Human Beings. Perhaps one day Society will evolve instead of devolve into these petty superficial judgments about other Humans who aren't just like them. It won't happen in my Lifetime, I always had wished it would have.
Well, I'm not an expert teacher at all, but I DID teach Sunday School for a while at a Unitarian Universalist church. And among my young charges, it was so easy to spot the up and coming next LGBTQ+ generation. You're so very right when you say kids don't know something is "wrong or forbidden" unless their parents or other authority figures tell them it is. The age of innocence! If only it could last.
can't we just give florida to cuba?
What is happening in Florida and Texas should be of great concern to every thinking person. Right wing ideology with a heavy underpinning of religious fanaticism and intolerance is a sure pathway to fascism. It seems more critical than it has ever been to mobilize the vote to toss these people out of office. I know they are gerrymandering and doing everything possible to ensure their own victory, but the prospect of that happening is too dire to contemplate.
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