The Florida legislature and governor continue to brutalize public schools, teachers and students on the premise that they are giving parents more control over what their children are being taught when they must leave their sight for 7.5 hours.
Before you continue, please note this is not a column to sing their praises or speak on what a great job they are doing. Remember, I am one of the tree hugging, feminist, union liberal snowflakes that are so disparaged in today's political landscape. Problem with that is, schools are not supposed to be battlegrounds for politics because it is not the adults who suffer, it is the students.
Let me begin by stating the things I don't do. I don't teach CRT. I don't teach literature. I don't teach human sexuality. I don't teach religion.
I do teach history. I do teach journalism. I do teach children who need to understand both sides of every story and are given the tools to, in order to think for themselves. I do teach students who have questions which need to be answered. I do teach students who are homeless. I do teach children who live in group or foster homes. I do teach children who do not have a parent at home they can talk to. I do teach students who are more mature than they should be due to the life they were born in to. I do teach students who see what adults do on a daily basis and don't want to grow up like them.
I am honest. I don't know how to be anything but honest. History is not pretty sometimes. History has some very negative parts. The United States is not always the good guy. She has done or I should say, her politicians are not lily white as they would have you believe and they do not always have your best interests at the core of what they do.
Most teens I teach are young adults who know a lot more than I did at their age. Parents who believe by not speaking about the LBGTQ issues, they can prevent their children from becoming gay. Tell that to the parents whose child was kicked out of school because they beat up a young man so terribly, he had to be hospitalized. There are parents who believe if sex is not discussed, they can prevent their children from having it. Tell that to the 7th grade boys who were caught with the 6th grade girl giving oral sex in the bathroom at school or the two girls who walk around school holding hands because they are girlfriends, but their parents don't know.
What am I to tell the young woman who was raped but I can't speak to and she can't tell her mother because her mother has already told her she would carry a child of rape if it ever happened because abortion is murder.
I respect parents. I really do. I am one. I also began speaking to my son about sex when he was 6 and the AIDS epidemic was just beginning. Nothing major was said, but it was explained to him. I spoke to him about sex in high school and the consequences. I also explained history and religion. I gave him that foundation at home but he also had education at school. He had teachers he spoke to because once he hit high school, he became a foreigner to me. That is what happens as children begin to grow up.
They have thoughts and feelings that may not coincide with parental thought and despite what parents would like to believe, that is pretty normal. They are growing and changing and are not robots that we can program.
So you keep on protesting and the legislature can keep on passing these insane bills and eventually, as history shows us, this cycle will begin on a downturn, and all your bloviating will be for naught. I might not be around for it. I am old but it will happen. It always has.
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