There are no boys and girls in the Lincoln, Nebraska public school system — only “campers” and “purple penguins” and “dogs,” greeted by “All Genders Welcome” door hangers when entering the classroom.
Administrators at Lincoln Public Schools, the state’s second-largest school district, have recommended teachers use these phrases when referring to any of its more than 39,000 students to avoid creating a “gendered space.”
This incident is the latest example of modern liberalism’s war on gender — with all the confusion and nonsense that war entails.
“Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention,” a training pamphlet distributed to LPS middle-school teachers recommends. “Point out and inquire when you hear others referencing gender in a binary manner … provide counter narratives that challenge students to think more expansively about their notions of gender.”
The instructions come from an initiative titled “12 steps on the way to gender inclusiveness” produced by Gender Spectrum, an organization that “provides education, training and support to help create a gender sensitive and inclusive environment for children of all ages,” according to its website.
In addition, National Review Online reports that teachers received a handout from the Center for Gender Sanity which describes how “gender identity … can’t be observed or measured, only reported by the individual,” and an infographic labeled “The Genderbred Person” from www.ItsPronouncedMetroSexual.com.
Parents want their kids to learn in school — mathematics, reading, history, etc. — and to enjoy more opportunities and better lives from education. Most parents in Lincoln, Nebraska know better than to try to have deep conversations with their elementary-aged children about sex or to encourage them to explore gender fluidity. And if parents don’t want their children to investigate their sexuality, then why should school administrators and teachers?
Some media pundits have rightly noted that taxpayer-funded administrative positions should benefit students, not circulate controversial documents that distract from actual learning. But that neglects the deeper problem: LPS espouses a new type of education befitting the modern person, now a gender-neutral entity unable to discern universal truth or fixed reality unless adherent to the dominant worldview. Through this lens, children identifying either as boys or girls and not vaguely neutral beings is a repressive mindset that society must asphyxiate and replace.
The general public often exonerates modern liberalism because its representatives claim to be apolitical. LPS superintendent Steve Joel, for example, recently told told KLIN Radio’s Drive Time Lincoln that “We don’t get involved with politics. We don’t get involved with gender preference. We’re educating all kids … and we can’t be judgmental.”
Somehow Joel stands on a platform of impartiality, expertly declaring he’s an arbiter of fairness. Meanwhile, he brands dissenters as judgmental ideologues. It’s an old albeit effective tactic: Earnestly pretend to transcend politics while pushing a specific political agenda.
And this agenda owes much to John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice,” which asserts every individual has equality of primary goods, including material resources and self-respect. Rawls defines self-respect as how man feels about himself, especially economically and sexually. The results: Liberation from sexual norms and traditional family roles, and a break from older notions that freedom demands moral restraint and that some loves are forbidden.
This conception of justice demands self-respect ratified by society. The task of Joel and others is to destroy the old moral framework of America by initiating one child at a time into the new Rawlsian regime.
Public school systems shouldn’t push their “gender-neutral” political agendas on children, few of whom have gender identity issues when they begin school. Nonetheless, LPS crusades for LGBT rights, distributing gender literature to elementary and middle schools and launching a propaganda campaign that exploits children as mere test subjects for social engineering.
Believers in universal truths and fixed human nature should be bold and say so, even if it means enduring petty insults. Being called bad names by people like Joel shouldn’t deter someone from standing up for truth or children. If not, that dog and the rest of the purple penguin administrators in the Nebraska public school system will continue marching toward an education more concerned with left-wing gender politics than helping children learn.
