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Rather than work to improve academics or find ways to slow the exodus of students, state policymakers double down on their efforts to indoctrinate children in sexual and Marxist ideology and undermine parents.
Washington State will now require all public schools to teach students the histories of “historically marginalized” groups, including LGBT, under a new law that mandates “diverse, equitable, and inclusive” education materials.
Gov. Jay Inslee, D, signed SB 5462 into law in late March. It requires school districts to adopt “inclusive curricula and select diverse, equitable, inclusive, age-appropriate instructional materials that include the histories, contributions, and perspectives of historically marginalized and underrepresented groups including, but not limited to, people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, people with differing learning needs, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people… and people with various socioeconomic and immigration backgrounds.”
The law says that the legislature intends to “promote culturally and experientially representative learning opportunities” by directing the superintendent of public instruction to “screen for inappropriate bias” in state learning standards.
The legislature claims that so-called inclusive curricula improves the mental health, academic performance, and attendance and graduation rates of “historically marginalized and underrepresented communities.”
Schools boards must “seek curricula and instructional materials that are as culturally and experientially diverse as possible.” Charter schools and state-tribal education compact schools are also subject to the law.
The law mandates that school boards establish an instruction materials committee that may include parents at the school boards’ discretion, provided that the parents make up less than half of the committee.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Marko Liias, D, focused on LGBT history. “The contributions of gay Washingtonians deserve recognition, and just as importantly, students deserve to see themselves in their schoolwork. That leads to better attendance, better academic achievement and better overall quality of life, ensuring success for all our students. I’m so pleased to see this critical bill make it across the finish line and signed into law,” Liias said in press release.
Liias was also a sponsor of Washington’s highly controversial SB 5599, which allowed shelters and “host homes” to keep children who want to access gender transition treatments without getting consent from their parents or even notifying them. Critics called the bill state-sanctioned kidnapping.
Not everyone agrees with Liias on SB 5462’s impact. Brian Noble, executive director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, stated that teaching LGBT topics, in particular, to young children is not the state’s responsibility, explaining,
“I have no problem with us informing about cultures about different areas like that. But when it comes to our sexual behavior, those histories and what we’re heightening as acceptable, and as normal, I do believe the conversation should happen between the child and their parent or parents…. I think that we should pump the brakes. The fact is we just need to get back to reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
There is a key attribute that must be understood in this debate: Being LGBT is a choice of sexual behavior and expression that has been extrapolated into an identity. Being homosexual is not the same as being black or Hispanic or Native American or any other ethnic group. Critics of such a law often point to the sexualization of children whereas proponents argue that LGBT is an identity and not sexual in and of itself.
The claims of these proponents are false. Being a homosexual means you engage in homosexual activity. Being transgender means you are rejecting your biological sex in order to adopt another sex. The very identity of such an “identity” is sexual behavior.
Students who are struggling with homosexual attraction or feeling like they are in the wrong body don’t need LGBT “representation” to tell them what they are feeling is normal and that they are gay or need a sex change; what they need is encouragement that one cannot change their sex and that homosexual activity is abnormal and harmful.
In the meantime, America’s public schools have failed children, with an unacceptably high number who are struggling to read or to perform simple mathematic operations.
Washington public schools have hemorrhaged students, and its woke grading policies are failing kids. Schools in the state changed grading so now students and parents think that the student is succeeding, only to learn on standardized tests that they have actually fallen farther behind.
Rather than do the hard work of pushing students to learn the subjects they need to be successful, left-wing activists are bound and determined to indoctrinate students in their own belief system.
Parents in Washington need to wake up and recognize that state and local officials have allowed schools to be infiltrated and overrun by secular activists who are attempting to draw children to their own ideology and undermine parents. They must step in to protect their children by removing their children from public school, if at all possible.
But all parents, whether they have children in public schools or not, should step up to help other children by speaking up for righteous policies at school board meetings, talking to other parents about what’s happening and joining concerned parent groups, and voting for local and state candidates who will fight to ensure schools serve the moral and academic needs of children, rather than the interests of activists.
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