Originally Posted by James Brown
This one seems like a no-brainer, but the Court reinstated the right of the parents of young children to opt out of book readings involving LBGTQ+ issues.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-backs-parents-seeking-opt-kids-lgbtq-books-elementary-sc-rcna208040
Another win for religious rights. This will infuriate that social-left activists for sure.
The school boards I worked for from the mid seventies to my retirement in 2006 always had a policy that a list of reading materials was sent to every parent in September... Any parent could insist that their child could opt out of reading a particular book and be given an alternate book to study. This mostly affected English classes.
If any guest speaker was to be presenting at the school, be it to one class or to an assembly of the entire school, the name and a brief bio and thumbnail of the presentation is sent home. Again, parental objections were always honoured.
And I, as a typical lefty, agree with this very common sense policy and am not at all infuriated.
Couple of somewhat related stories:
In my 30 year career I only ever had one parent remove their child from my class - they objected to my incorporating
evolutionary principles in trying to explain how organisms co-evolve with their environment in a very slow fashion so when organisms, especially vegetation, are confronted with certain sudden climate changes, they cannot adapt quickly enough and they die and their contribution to the food chain is lost and there is a cascading effect on many other organisms. The parents objected to my assuming evolutionary timelines as a given (as opposed to young-Earth creationism). They actually requested that I teach the class the basic principles of Creationism as an 'alternative' which I flatly refused to do and my principal backed me up 100%. I fully supported their sudden decision to home school an 18-year old in the last semester before her graduation.
Another odd moment occurred with my girls' basketball team. The games were normally on weekday afternoons, 2-5pm approx, and most parents couldn't come to the games. We got into a tournament on a Saturday once and many parents came out. One mother came to see her daughter play for the very first time that day. We didn't even get through the warm-up when this mom came on the court and dragged her daughter away with much very loud arguing and some tears. I and the Athletic Director both rushed over to see what was the matter. The mom was furious that we would haver daughter "dress like that in public" to which I replied, "Dressed like what, exactly?" And she said, "Pants. My daughter does not wear pants - it is against our religion etc. She must wear a skirt or a dress only." Mom didn't like the shorts that were part of our uniform....
Now this girl was my starting centre and I really wanted her to play - the A.D. asked mom, "if she wears a skirt can she play?" to which she said, "yes, of course". The A.D. sprinted to the equipment room and came back with a girl's Field Hockey skirt - kind of a little kilt which didn't come that close to the knee - a mini skirt, basically. My player wore the skirt/kilt with the alarming result that the entire gym saw her white underpants frequently during the game. But mom was just happy that it wasn't pants. We won the tournament, too!
My point being, parents can be very weird but they should always have the last say about their kids.
Dave
