Ruling on MCPS LGBT curriculum case coming this morning

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 2 genders.

And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?

That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.

+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.

My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.

Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?

DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.

It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.

Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.

That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.

Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.

You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"

Wow.

Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.

I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.

Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.

Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.

If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.

Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)

They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.

seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.

What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?

Or science in general?

This is nuts

As parents, its their choice.

People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.

Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.

This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.

It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many of these posts miss that many principals and teachers objected to these books too. I guess we invoke “educational authorities” when it suits our position.

Because they had common sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 2 genders.

And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?

That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.

+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.

My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.

Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?

DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.

It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.

Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.

That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.

Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.

You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"

Wow.

Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.

I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.

Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.

Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.

If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.

Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)

They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.

seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.

What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?

Or science in general?

This is nuts

As parents, its their choice.

People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.

Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.

This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.

It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.

+1

This ruling is the result of extreme overreach by quasi-religious activists in educational administration. You start teaching your faith-based beliefs as fact to young children, and people will reasonably push back. MCPS wildly overreached and this is the consequence.

I think this thread is fascinating because it shows once again how untethered DCUM is from where the vast majority of the country is at. The vast majority of kindergarten parents across the country are fine with two gay couples as background in books or whatever. But they are tired of classrooms decorated endlessly with rainbows when kids can’t read. They are tired of instructional content on how to use pronouns when math scores are in the toilet. They are tired of units on LGBTQ+ history when kids in third grade can’t spell. Nobody nationwide is objecting to science because there’s barely any science left to object to anyhow. Probably if we reached the point where the science curriculum was rigorous enough that people wanted to object to it, that would be a huge win overall.

DCUM is wailing and gnashing its teeth because DCUM is, as usual, in a bizarre and tightly sealed bubble. The rest of the country is celebrating this ruling, if they are thinking about it at all. I am always surprised at how extremely out-of-step DCUM posters are, but it has been a consistent truth for around a decade now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many of these posts miss that many principals and teachers objected to these books too. I guess we invoke “educational authorities” when it suits our position.

+1 I read this part, too. Principals sent MCPS a letter stating that those books were not appropriate for ES. But, as usual, the out of touch MCPS admin who almost never spend time in the classroom, thought they knew better.

Well, you've got egg on your face now. But, I know they still will not have learned their lesson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many of these posts miss that many principals and teachers objected to these books too. I guess we invoke “educational authorities” when it suits our position.

+1 I read this part, too. Principals sent MCPS a letter stating that those books were not appropriate for ES. But, as usual, the out of touch MCPS admin who almost never spend time in the classroom, thought they knew better.

Well, you've got egg on your face now. But, I know they still will not have learned their lesson.

*Principals that were not in MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS was not overriding Constitutional religious rights by teaching books with diverse characters.

MCPS did not allow parents to opt out, which SCOTUS said went against parental rights about religion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many of these posts miss that many principals and teachers objected to these books too. I guess we invoke “educational authorities” when it suits our position.

+1 I read this part, too. Principals sent MCPS a letter stating that those books were not appropriate for ES. But, as usual, the out of touch MCPS admin who almost never spend time in the classroom, thought they knew better.

Well, you've got egg on your face now. But, I know they still will not have learned their lesson.

*Principals that were not in MCPS

? Principals who are in MCPS.

[Anonymous]

just let them stay home with excused absences. as long as they aren't creating a strain on school resources, go nuts. it's their education that they sacrifice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:just let them stay home with excused absences. as long as they aren't creating a strain on school resources, go nuts. it's their education that they sacrifice.

yes, exactly. It's a win/win. Not sure why MCPS fought it so hard. There are kids who opt out of Family Life. Not a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:just let them stay home with excused absences. as long as they aren't creating a strain on school resources, go nuts. it's their education that they sacrifice.

yes, exactly. It's a win/win. Not sure why MCPS fought it so hard. There are kids who opt out of Family Life. Not a big deal.

i think it is because the religious were demanding alternative programming and babysitting for kids who can't be by themselves. If MCPS doesn't have to provide that, then it's all good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 2 genders.

And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?

That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.

+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.

My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.

Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?

DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.

It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.

Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.

That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.

Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.

You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"

Wow.

Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.

I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.

Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.

Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.

If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.

Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)

They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.

seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.

What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?

Or science in general?

This is nuts

As parents, its their choice.

People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.

Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.

This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.

It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.

+1

This ruling is the result of extreme overreach by quasi-religious activists in educational administration. You start teaching your faith-based beliefs as fact to young children, and people will reasonably push back. MCPS wildly overreached and this is the consequence.

I think this thread is fascinating because it shows once again how untethered DCUM is from where the vast majority of the country is at. The vast majority of kindergarten parents across the country are fine with two gay couples as background in books or whatever. But they are tired of classrooms decorated endlessly with rainbows when kids can’t read. They are tired of instructional content on how to use pronouns when math scores are in the toilet. They are tired of units on LGBTQ+ history when kids in third grade can’t spell. Nobody nationwide is objecting to science because there’s barely any science left to object to anyhow. Probably if we reached the point where the science curriculum was rigorous enough that people wanted to object to it, that would be a huge win overall.

DCUM is wailing and gnashing its teeth because DCUM is, as usual, in a bizarre and tightly sealed bubble. The rest of the country is celebrating this ruling, if they are thinking about it at all. I am always surprised at how extremely out-of-step DCUM posters are, but it has been a consistent truth for around a decade now.

Truth be told, I’m not sure how instep DCUM posters are with even Montgomery Country residents generally either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:just let them stay home with excused absences. as long as they aren't creating a strain on school resources, go nuts. it's their education that they sacrifice.

yes, exactly. It's a win/win. Not sure why MCPS fought it so hard. There are kids who opt out of Family Life. Not a big deal.

i think it is because the religious were demanding alternative programming and babysitting for kids who can't be by themselves. If MCPS doesn't have to provide that, then it's all good.

It was more than that- did you read all the objections from principals and teachers? This was a strange place for the administration to double down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am curious why the Jewish and Muslim families who supported this opt out do not see how this opens the way for parents to push for opting out of having kids read story books with Jewish or Muslim characters on the basis of the religious burden that including these characters might do to Christian kids. Christian parents can argue that seeing these characters at a young age could be burdensome to their religious beliefs and that they want to introduce their kids to the existence of these types of beliefs when they are older. I think people forget that respecting diversity that includes your beliefs also means respecting diversity that does not. Anyways, I get why male, straight, Christian conservative white nationalists would celebrate this ruling. I disagree, but it makes sense. For anyone not part of this group, I do not understand.

I'm Muslim and don't support this and it's partly for the reasons you describe.

As someone who worked with their school to help raise awareness and ensure that ALL kids and families were seeing themselves and experiences in books within the classroom and library and has watched this and the removal of DEI fallout, I can absolutely tell you this will be a setback.

Do folks know how painstakingly we through trying to be sure kids could understand that other religions exist (and they should know this) without being sure we’d run afoul of someone trying to claim indoctrination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 2 genders.

And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?

That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.

+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.

My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.

Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?

DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.

It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.

Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.

That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.

Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.

You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"

Wow.

Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.

I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.

Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.

Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.

If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.

Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)

They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.

seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.

What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?

Or science in general?

This is nuts

As parents, its their choice.

People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.

Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.

This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.

It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.

+1

This ruling is the result of extreme overreach by quasi-religious activists in educational administration. You start teaching your faith-based beliefs as fact to young children, and people will reasonably push back. MCPS wildly overreached and this is the consequence.

I think this thread is fascinating because it shows once again how untethered DCUM is from where the vast majority of the country is at. The vast majority of kindergarten parents across the country are fine with two gay couples as background in books or whatever. But they are tired of classrooms decorated endlessly with rainbows when kids can’t read. They are tired of instructional content on how to use pronouns when math scores are in the toilet. They are tired of units on LGBTQ+ history when kids in third grade can’t spell. Nobody nationwide is objecting to science because there’s barely any science left to object to anyhow. Probably if we reached the point where the science curriculum was rigorous enough that people wanted to object to it, that would be a huge win overall.

DCUM is wailing and gnashing its teeth because DCUM is, as usual, in a bizarre and tightly sealed bubble. The rest of the country is celebrating this ruling, if they are thinking about it at all. I am always surprised at how extremely out-of-step DCUM posters are, but it has been a consistent truth for around a decade now.

Truth be told, I’m not sure how instep DCUM posters are with even Montgomery Country residents generally either.

I think some of you should get off DCUM and read other social media by folks in MoCo and out. You’ll see there are a great many people who are not happy about this ruling and were actually quite supportive of what MCPS was doing.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes the best way to normalize things is to *not* make such a big deal about it.

Like others have said, it’s 2025. Everyone on the planet can rattle off a long list of beloved gay celebs and many know a gay person IRL. Our state embraces gay marriage.

The fact that kids feel comfortable enough identifying as LGBTQ or non-binary or even as a furry demonstrates that our MoCo community is in fact a safe place.

So why drill down sooooo hard in the schools?

It’s not necessary…particularly at the K-5 level.

As a Gen X’er, I was raised in MoCo to embrace and celebrate diversity…and it seemed to work. My Gen X friends and coworkers have diverse friends groups and a “live and let live” mentality. It wasn’t until the post-George Floyd era that race and then gender identity became some bizarre tribal thing where everyone decamped into strictly defined—and let’s face it, self-segregated—groups followed by a hard push to drill down on special interest everything…including curricula.

Enough already.

Embrace and celebrity diversity. Easy peasy. But please focus on academics, civics, and just treating everyone with the same respect you would expect.