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.
why the fuck is a schoolboard voting “along party lines.” I know it’s been this way for a while, but it doesn’t make it any less stupid that your godamn political party decides your EVERY attitude in life.
You’d also love to know that some hospitals boards are public and therefore elected positions are available to the community.
In Sarasota County in Florida they tried to get enough votes to take over the board to change the hospital policy from following CDC policy and best practices to the sole discretion of the doctor. This would of allowed the hospital to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID.
It ultimately failed so they are now opening a clinic in Venice Florida that follows no guidelines. The other half of the building is a podcast studio.
I’m trying to wrap my head around the intent.
Is this a case where she was fired because the book didn’t have anything to do with the class she’s teaching? Or because a bunch of parents went Karen and it made the school district look bad?
If a history class references passages from the bible, I think that is inappropriate in general but it depends on context. If it’s using the bible to explain say the history of the Holy War, that makes sense. Having the context about the why does help.
If she was teaching Sex Ed and talking about gender fluidity, in that context it makes sense to me.
Like you can’t talk about Hitler’s philosophies without being up Mein kampf even at a shallow level. And to ignore it is disingenuous to education.
The ‘insubordination’ part is especially confounding. She’s insubordinate by reading a children’s book to children? What?
Applying logic to bigotry is a waste of time. It’s just ingroup loyalty. The rest is mouth noises. They won’t be clever noises, and they won’t be consistent noises.
I did some digging to see if she was teaching a particular subject or anything. She was a teacher in the schools gifted program and per her Wikipedia page “According to the Cobb County School Board, Rinderle read the book during a time block that was supposed to be dedicated to mathematics instruction and enrichment, but Rinderle denies this allegation.”.
I’m going to keep looking but it seems like their schooling is structured differently than I have any experience in. When I was in 5th grade we had 3 teachers that we rotated between for different subjects. It seems like she was responsible for several subjects or the entire curriculum for her students. Either way, the school boards intent is clear and malicious.
This is the dumbest reason to fire a teacher. The education system is already hurting for teachers.
In what way could this be remotely worse then pushing a Bible on to a class
Sigh… of course it’s fucking kkkobb county.
Cobb county has actually turned pretty solidly blue over the past decade.
So what? The school board and other elected officials haven’t.
It will be soon
I hope so, but that’s cold comfort to this already-fired teacher.
Also, even if it flipped today (and “soon” isn’t that soon), it’d still be decades and decades before Cobb gets MARTA rail. Cobb’s influence on metro Atlanta as whole is an unmitigated catastrophe and probably will be for the rest of my lifetime.
Cobb might join MARTA sooner than we think, but sadly you’re mostly right. I have no hope for any rail expansion in my lifetime, and I’m not even old.
Unfortunately, “joining MARTA” and “getting rail” are far from synonymous, as Clayton is learning the hard way. But the United States in general’s comprehensive inability to build infrastructure in a reasonable timeframe these days is a rant for another thread…
Depressing truth
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The baller move here would be to show up and keep teaching anyways.
Got em
Great news!!
She violated district policies on controversial , so she’s wrong. If she was teaching any subject other than human growth and development, she’s doubly wrong.
Elementary school teachers should be teaching their assigned subjects, not their personal politics.
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You know what actually makes aggressive sales pitches and pushes? Religion.
Books like the one the teacher read do NOT force or influence children to become trans. They teach them about being open minded and to love everyone around us, no matter how they choose to express themselves.
Religion, on the other hand, DOES force children to pick a life of close-mindedness by threatening the fear of eternal damnation if they don’t follow the rules in a book.
Kids need to be protected from this stuff. Sorry.
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Usually, people who speak out against teaching kids about gender typically have a religious agenda. I apologize for making that assumption about you.
However, I do think it’s important to teach kids about what it means to be human and that nothing is ever exactly one way or the other. Most things in this universe operate on a spectrum. Nobody is “chest-thumping about trans stuff”. As I mentioned in my previous message, most people are just trying to teach kids about loving and caring for everyone and that it’s okay to be different.
It shouldnt be “normalized” since it really isnt.
And why should trans people not be normalized? If we only operated based on “this is wrong because it’s different”, then we would still believe that the Earth is flat, the Sun revolves around us, women shouldn’t vote, and white people have a god-given right to own slaves. The point is “It isn’t normal” is not a good excuse. Anything can be normalized.
I think having that kind of mindset is based purely on fear of the unknown. A good education where we learn about other people and other cultures would vastly improve how we think about those around us.
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In fifth grade I knew my gender for sure. Did you not? Maybe you could’ve used the book so you understood yourself.
I’ve known since birth.
You haven’t, you at best knew at age 2, typically 2.5. If you were a parent you could see the process. Why is it that the anti-LGBT crowd knows the least about childhood development? Is it because you think a book written for and by goat herders in the bronze age contains any value?
It’s because people who are anti-free thought tend to be lacking critical thinking capabilities. That’s why they need to be told who to hate and why they are able to move on to the next set of “others” to hate just as quickly as their media bubble steers them. They don’t have to waste time in forethought or hindsight.
What is your earliest memory…?
Patting themselves on the back for knowing their gender.
My eldest is going into 4th grade and it took me about 30 seconds to explain that her aunt was born male. It really isn’t that baffling of a concept.
Adults who have trouble understanding basic concepts (or those who need to be told how to feel about them) often assume everyone also has trouble understanding them.
So I can see how someone - someone who doesn’t understand other people’s capabilities - would have a hard time understanding that most grade school-aged people do not also have a hard time understanding those concepts.
In short, some people are too dumb to realize other people aren’t dumb, too.
I will go with that, basic projection.
Have you met a 10 year old recently?
I have and they usually have a phone in their hand and have been ruined by the Internet. I would know because I was one.
Might be best to opt out of parenting.
I just don’t understand why 5th graders should even be exposed to that that early. For kids that haven’t even gone through puberty yet I think gender identity is a pretty mature topic, and I don’t think I’d want a teacher being the one to discuss it with my child.
And before someone says that I just want to suppress the info keeping it out of school, what about the flip side where a nut job teacher decides 2 genders is part of the lesson plan?
Edit: Never been so dogpiled about a comment before. In MY OPINION I just think 5th grade is too early. According to the hive mind I am wrong.
I also get nervous having government agencies (schools) involved with anything lgbtq+. We all know the government and our courts always side with the compassionate and accepting side. And would never suppress people’s rights. /S
Some of you are out of control, I never thought that comment would cause people to assume my gender, orientation, political affiliation, hell one of you assumed my race (wtf)
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.
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.
My sister “knew” she was trans when she was around 8. Granted, we didn’t have the terminology back then so…
That being said, how is it a “mature” topic? We teach children the concept of “this boy” and “this girl” much earlier than that. And I’m confused how the concept has anything to do with puberty either.
It’s clearly a children’s book. Do you really think it’s presented in any sort of inappropriate way?
Except gender is a much less mature topic than sex and sexual attraction, something that should be taught around 5th grade if not earlier, before children have confusing feelings and their bodies undergo confusing changes. The media atmosphere already leaves impressions about sexuality in the minds of children much earlier, so there isn’t much harm for parents or teachers to discuss the topic in a much healthier way.
Gender on the other hand is something impressed upon and experienced by even toddlers, so the topic of gender isn’t all that mature, it’s only treated as mature because of the social taboos regarding trans individuals.
People are gender non conforming from a young age, not after puberty. Making them wait to learn about it just means they will be confused about it for longer, whether it’s themselves or their peers
Yeah, you think they should wait until the trauma really sets in? That’s the right time?
In response to the edit: I notice you pivoted from it being a function of “maturity” and placement relative to puberty, to now wrapping it in concern of the gov’t - some how - surpressing “lgbtq rights” by teaching about their existence, which is a contradictory stance, but w.e.
Look, my sister’s trans, my mothers are gay, and I’m the straight dood in my family. I’m not in a hivemind, and my experience watching them wade through life informs my thoughts. Your appeal that people who disagree with you are in one is troubling, to say the least.
Heck, you didn’t even address a few anecdotes of people being precisely in the age range you had issue with, and instead chose to take a different tact – instead doubling down you are correct.
I didn’t “pivot”, i didnt brink up the age aspect because it is pretty apparent that i’m in the minority (at least on here) with my opinion, The government / school aspect was before the edit if you look again. I only brought that back up because I felt i could expand my train of thought on it, i didn’t feel there is anything to add about the age when such education is appropriate, especially when me and the other commenters disagree so strongly that nothing will come of it.
Yeah why tell kids about puberty until they’re done with it?
I think my teachers did a really good job discussing this when I was a kid. In fact, I think they did such a good job, that it should be the standard until we have a more agreed-upon understanding of gender fluidity. I mean, I’m in favor of teaching it but I understand not everyone is and it’s maybe not fully understood yet.
Way back in 2005, my 5th grade health teacher essentially said this:
"Usually men want to have sex with women and women want to have sex with men. But sometimes, men want to have sex with men, women want to have sex with women, and not everyone feels like they were born in the right body. Sometimes, men feel like women and women feel like men.
You guys have probably heard a lot about gay marriage and homosexuality in the news. This is what they are talking about and adults don’t always agree on some of this. A lot of people think it’s okay to be gay or to change your gender. Other people think it goes against their religion. I’m here if you have any questions, but you can also ask your parents what they think about it."
This was after he sent home a permission slip to talk about sex ed. in general. Every parent signed except for one Muslim girl in the class. She went and watched movies in the room next door because her parents preferred to talk to her about it in their own way.
I thought it was a pretty uncontroversial way to handle this whole thing. We could probably go a bit farther today, but this was pretty progressive for 2005.
I remember this so vividly because I could feel that there was tension around the topic and I could tell that my teacher was respectfully trying to share “both sides” of an issue. I use quotes around both sides because I honestly think homophobia and transphobia are ridiculous views to hold, but I know people have them, unfortunately. And I do think people have some right to dictate what education their child receives even if they’re teaching them abhorrent things.
I remember thinking it was interesting that adults didn’t agree on this. There was a legal battle over gay marriage licenses in New York City going on in 2005 and it was all over the local news, so I remember it being a big deal.
I was in catholic school and started sex ed (well what counts as sex ed for a catholic school) in 5th grade. They told us about some of the most extreme cases of what some.of the worst sti’s do and we watched video of an actual birth so if we could handle hearing and seeing those things in a catholic school, I think 5th graders can handle learning about how people express their genders.
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Edit: Never been so dogpiled about a comment before.
Let’s keep going. Hope you disabled notifications.
In MY OPINION I just think 5th grade is too early. According to the hive mind I am wrong.
Just cuz you had a bad take doesn’t mean we’re a fucking hive mind. I didnt even bother reading others’ replies before giving you my piece. But way to be condescending to cushion your ego!
I also get nervous having government agencies (schools) involved with anything lgbtq+. We all know the government and our courts always side with the compassionate and accepting side. And would never suppress people’s rights. /S
So you support government censorship as a tool to protect against… government censorship?
Some of you are out of control, I never thought that comment would cause people to assume my gender, orientation, political affiliation, hell one of you assumed my race (wtf)
Still haven’t read what others had to say, it’s probably quite disgusting yes
Look you had a bad take and now you’re lashing out to protect your ego. its fine
You are 100% correct. Absolutely no reason to be bringing up any of this nonsense to 10 year olds.
But good luck having a logical conversation with some about this - just because you don’t want 10 year olds exposed to this, they immediately (and quite wrongly) accuse of you being some bible-thumper or some right wing nazi or a MAGAt or someone along those lines. Maybe you just know your kid and know it is too early to discuss this stuff with them? This teacher forced the hand of the school board panel to fire her because she specifically pull this stunt against parent wishes.
It is obnoxious to see that many on the far-left act the same way and use the same attack techniques as those on the far-right. They both are just as stubborn and just as closed-minded to altering viewpoints. What makes it especially bad is that liberals at least like to pretend that they are open-minded to differing viewpoints, but the reality is that for many, that is absolutely not the case.
This shit has no business in schools, especially at this young age. Those who are stubbornly pushing this nonsense are doing way more harm than good to liberal causes. These people are painting a terrible picture to the country of what the far-left wants to do and that they will do it regardless of what parents agree to.
You all are setting the movement back, not helping it move forward. You come off as clowns.
