The case for starting sex education in kindergarten
"Sex Educators Are Not ‘Grooming’ Your Kids—but Conservatives Want to Incite Fear Anyway "conix, What are the odds American children 20 years from now feel more relaxed in relationships, and grow with fewer sexual hangups. Some, i mean. I'm guessing the pro here""
Health May 27, 2015 1:44 PM EST
“Who here has been in love?” Anniek Pheifer asks a crowd of Dutch elementary school students.
It’s a Spring morning in Utrecht, and the St. Jan de Doper elementary school gym is decked in heart-shaped balloons and streamers. Pheifer and Pepijn Gunneweg are hosts of a kids television program in the Netherlands, and they’re performing a song about having a crush.
Kids giggle at the question. Hands — little and bigger — shoot up.
Welcome to “Spring Fever” week in primary schools across the Netherlands, the week of focused sex ed classes… for 4-year olds.
Of course, it’s not just for 4-year-olds. Eight-year-olds learn about self-image and gender stereotypes. 11-year-olds discuss sexual orientation and contraceptive options. But in the Netherlands, the approach, known as “comprehensive sex education .. http://www.unfpa.org/comprehensive-sexuality-education ,” starts as early as age 4.
Kindergarteners attend the opening assembly for Spring Fever week at the St Jan de Doperschool in Utrecht, the Netherlands. NewsHour photo by Saskia de Melker
You’ll never hear an explicit reference to sex in a kindergarten class.In fact, the term for what’s being taught here is sexuality education rather than sex education. That’s because the goal is bigger than that, says Ineke van der Vlugt, an expert on youth sexual development for Rutgers WPF, the Dutch sexuality research institute behind the curriculum. It’s about having open, honest conversations about love and relationships.
By law, all primary school students in the Netherlands must receive some form of sexuality education. The system allows for flexibility in how it’s taught. But it must address certain core principles — among them, sexual diversity and sexual assertiveness. That means encouraging respect for all sexual preferences and helping students develop skills to protect against sexual coercion, intimidation and abuse. The underlying principle is straightforward: Sexual development is a normal process that all young people experience, and they have the right to frank, trustworthy information on the subject.
“There were societal concerns that sexualization in the media could be having a negative impact on kids,” van der Vlugt said. “We wanted to show that sexuality also has to do with respect, intimacy, and safety.”
Beyond risk prevention
The Dutch approach to sex ed has garnered international attention, largely because the Netherlands boasts some of the best outcomes when it comes to teen sexual health. On average, teens in the Netherlands do not have sex at an earlier age than those in other European countries or in the United States. Researchers found that among 12 to 25 year olds in the Netherlands, most say they had “wanted and fun” first sexual experiences. By comparison, 66 percent of sexually active American teens surveyed said they wished that they had waited longer to have sex for the first time. When they do have sex, a Rutgers WPF study found that nine out of ten Dutch adolescents used contraceptives the first time, and World Health Organization data shows that Dutch teens are among the top users of the birth control pill. According to the World Bank, the teen pregnancy rate in the Netherlands is one of the lowest in the world, five times lower than the U.S. Rates of HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases are also low.
-- “We have to help young people navigate all the choices they face and stand up for themselves in all situations, sexual and otherwise,” --
There are multiple factors that likely contribute to these numbers. Easy access to contraception is one. Condoms, for example, are available in vending machines, and the birth control pill is free for anyone under age 21. But there’s also a growing body of research that specifically credits comprehensive sexuality education. A recent study from Georgetown University .. http://irh.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Investing_in_VYAs_SRH_2014.pdf .. shows that starting sex ed in primary school helps avoid unintended pregnancies, maternal deaths, unsafe abortions and STDs.
Courtesy of Rutgers WPF
Proponents of the Dutch model argue that their approach extends beyond those risks. Their brand of sex ed reflects a broader emphasis on young people’s rights, responsibility and respect that many public health experts say is the foundation of sexual health.
A 2008 United Nations report .. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001832/183281e.pdf .. found that comprehensive sex ed, when taught effectively, allows young people to “explore their attitudes and values, and to practice the decision-making and other life skills they will need to be able to make informed choices about their sexual lives.” Students who had completed comprehensive sex education in the Netherlands were also found to be more assertive and better communicators, according to an independent health research agency .. http://www.rescon.nl/ .. that conducted a study of the Dutch programs.
“We have to help young people navigate all the choices they face and stand up for themselves in all situations, sexual and otherwise,” said Robert van der Gaag, a health promotion official at Central Holland’s regional public health center.
‘Little butterflies in my stomach’
At the St. Jan de Doper school, a group of kindergartners sit in a circle, as their teacher, Marian Jochems, flips through a picture book. The pages contain animals like bears and alligators hugging.
“Why are they hugging?” she asks the class.
“Because they like each other,” one girl answers.
Jochems asks them to think about who they like the most. Several kids say their mom or dad. One girl names her little sister. A few name other children at school.
“How does it feel when that person hugs you?” Jochems asks.
“I feel warm from the inside,” one boy replies. “It’s like there are little butterflies in my stomach.”
Lessons like this are designed to get kids thinking and talking about the kind of intimacy that feels good and the kind that doesn’t. Other early lessons focus on body awareness. For example, students draw boys’ and girls’ bodies, tell stories about friends taking a bath together, and discuss who likes doing that and who doesn’t. By age seven, students are expected to be able to properly name body parts including genitals.
[Insertion: LOL No longer uncomfortable, dirty words. In Australia the first time i mentioned penis to a group of 12-13y-olds .. [...]Like when i used to suggest to junior high kids who giggled in embarrassment when in Personal Development sessions penis was mentioned i suggested something like .. P - hey it's just another part of your body, as your forearm, so why be thingy about talking about that 'unmentionable' area .. they thought that made sense .. 2010 -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=54508779]
They also learn about different types of families, what it means to be a good friend, and that a baby grows in a mother’s womb.
“People often think we are starting right away to talk about sexual intercourse [with kindergartners],” van der Vlugt says. “Sexuality is so much more than that. It’s also about self image, developing your own identity, gender roles, and it’s about learning to express yourself, your wishes and your boundaries.”
That means the kindergartners are also learning how to communicate when they don’t want to be touched. The goal is that by age 11, students are comfortable enough to navigate pointed discussions about reproduction, safe sex, and sexual abuse.
Let’s not talk about sex
In the United States, sexual education varies widely from state to state. Fewer than half of U.S. states require schools to teach sex ed, according to the Guttmacher Institute .. http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_SE.pdf , a global nonprofit that researches sexual and reproductive health. Just last month Congress extended the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) .. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/research/project/personal-responsibility-education-program-prep-multi-component , which funds comprehensive adolescent sexual health initiatives across the country. At the same time they increased funding for programs that promote sexual abstinence until marriage to $75 million a year. And Deb Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth .. http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/ , a nonprofit dedicated to sexuality education, says that sex ed in the U.S. still overwhelmingly focuses on minimizing the risk of pregnancy and STDs from heterosexual intercourse.
“We have failed to see that sexual health is far more than simply the prevention of disease or unplanned pregnancy,” says Hauser. That narrow focus, she says, leaves young people with few skills to cope with their feelings and make decisions in sexual encounters.
Not everyone agrees. In fact, comprehensive sex ed has yet to take hold in most parts of the country. Utah, for example, requires that abstinence be the dominant message given to students. It bans discussing details of sexual intercourse and advocating for homosexuality, the use of contraceptives or sexual activity outside of marriage .. http://www.rules.utah.gov/publicat/code/r277/r277-474.htm#T3 .
Utah state representative Bill Wright has further tried to restrict sex ed. In 2012, he proposed a bill requiring that abstinence only be taught and that it be an optional subject. It passed but was vetoed by the governor.
Sex ed is “not an important part of our curriculum,” Wright said .. http://www.ksl.com/?sid=19180217 . “ It is just basically something out there that takes away from the character in our schools and takes away from the character of our students.”
Utah is far from alone. Half of U.S. states require that abstinence be stressed .. http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_SE.pdf . “We have created generations of people who are not comfortable with their own sexuality,” says Dr. David Satcher, the former U.S. Surgeon General. That extends to parents and teachers, he says.
In other places, the tide is shifting toward an approach closer to that of the Dutch. Two of the largest school districts in the country — Chicago Public Schools and Florida’s Broward County — have recently mandated sex education for elementary school students. Chicago Public Schools requires at least 300 minutes a year of sex education for kindergarten through fourth grade students and twice as much time for fifth through twelfth graders. In 2014, schools in Broward County began teaching sex education at least once a year in every grade, and the curriculum includes information about topics like body image, sexting and social media.
Courtesy of Rutgers WP
In the Netherlands, schools aim to educate parents too. Parents nights are held to give parents tools to talk to their kids about sex. Public health experts recommend that parents take cues from their kids and make it an ongoing conversation, rather than one awkward, all-encompassing “birds and the bees” talk. For example, they advise, if you walk in on your child masturbating, don’t react shocked; don’t punish or scold them. Have a talk about where it is appropriate for such behavior to occur.
“We talk about [sex] over dinner,” said one father at a Spring Fever Parents Night. Another said he recently answered questions about homosexuality posed by his twin 6-year-olds during bath time.
Lessons in love
Sabine Hasselaar teaches 11-year-olds. In a recent class, Hasselaar posed a series of hypothetical situations to her students: you’re kissing someone and they start using their tongue which you don’t want. A girl starts dancing close to a guy at a party causing him to get an erection. Your friend is showing off pornographic photos that make you feel uncomfortable.
The class discusses each scenario. “Everyone has the right to set their own limits and no one should ever cross those limits,” Hasselaar says.
There is an anonymous ‘Question Box.’ in her class during “Spring Fever” week. Students submit questions that teachers later address in class. “Nothing is taboo,” Hasselaar says. One of her students, for example, wrote: “I think I am lesbian. What should I do?”
Hasselaar addressed the issue in class: “It’s not strange for some girls to like other girls more than boys. It’s a feeling that you can’t change, just like being in love. The only difference is that it’s with someone that is the same sex as you.”
And in fact, most of the questions from her students aren’t about sex at all. “Mostly they are curious about love. I get a lot of questions like, “What do I do if I like someone?” or ‘How do I ask someone to go out with me?’”
Questions like these are taken just as seriously as the ones about sex.
“Of course we want kids to be safe and to understand the risks involved with sex, but we also want them to know about the positive and fun side of caring for someone and being in a healthy relationship,” van der Vlugt says.
That’s why you’ll find teachers discussing the difference between liking someone (as a friend) and liking someone. There’s even a lesson on dating during which a teacher talked about how to break up with someone in a decent way: “Please, do not do it via text message,” the teacher said.
-- “In the Netherlands, there’s a strong belief that young people can be in love and in relationships,” --
After elementary school, these students will likely go on to receive lessons from a widely-used curriculum called Long Live Love.
“In the U.S., adults tend to view young people as these bundles of exploding hormones. In the Netherlands, there’s a strong belief that young people can be in love and in relationships,” says Amy Schalet, an American sociologist who was raised in the Netherlands and now studies cultural attitudes towards adolescent sexuality .. http://www.amyschalet.com/not-under-my-roof-parents-teens-and-the-culture-of-sex/ , with a focus on these two countries.
“If you see love and relationships as the anchor for sex, then it’s much easier to talk about it with a child,” Schalet says. “Even a young one.”
Left: Teacher Janneke van den Heuvel leads her 8-year old students in a group discussion during Spring Fever week in the Netherlands. NewsHour photo by Saskia de Melker
'Sex Educators Are Not ‘Grooming’ Your Kids—but Conservatives Want to Incite Fear Anyway "conix, What are the odds American children 20 years from now feel more relaxed in relationships, and grow with fewer sexual hangups. Some, i mean. I'm guessing the pro here" "
How conservative politicians and pundits became fixated on an academic approach
By Adam Harris
[An illustration of a fearful man juxtaposed with a picture of Derrick Bell, legal scholar and the "father of critical race theory," surrounded by his students] Steve Liss / CSA Images / Getty / Katie Martin / The Atlantic
May 8, 2021
On January 12, Keith Ammon, a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, introduced a bill that would bar schools as well as organizations that have entered into a contract or subcontract with the state from endorsing “divisive concepts.” Specifically, the measure would forbid “race or sex scapegoating,” questioning the value of meritocracy, and suggesting that New Hampshire—or the United States—is “fundamentally racist.”
Ammon’s bill is one of a dozen that Republicans have recently introduced in state legislatures and the United States Congress that contain similar prohibitions. In Arkansas, lawmakers have approved a measure that would ban state contractors from offering training that promotes “division between, resentment of, or social justice for” groups based on race, gender, or political affiliation. The Idaho legislature just passed a bill that would bar institutions of public education from compelling “students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere” to specific beliefs about race, sex, or religion. The Louisiana legislature is weighing a nearly identical measure.
The language of these bills is anodyne and fuzzy—compel, for instance, is never defined in the Idaho legislation—and that ambiguity appears to be deliberate. According to Ammon, “using taxpayer funds to promote ideas such as ‘one race is inherently superior to another race or sex’ … only exacerbates our differences.” But critics of these efforts warn that the bills would effectively prevent public schools and universities from holding discussions about racism; the New Hampshire measure in particular would ban companies that do business with government entities from conducting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. “The vagueness of the language is really the point,” Leah Cohen, an organizer with Granite State Progress, a liberal nonprofit based in Concord, told me. “With this really broad brushstroke, we anticipate that that will be used more to censor conversations about race and equity.”
Most legal scholars say that these bills impinge on the right to free speech and will likely be dismissed in court. “Of the legislative language so far, none of the bills are fully constitutional,” Joe Cohn, the legislative and policy director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told me, “and if it isn’t fully constitutional, there’s a word for that: It means it’s unconstitutional.” This does not appear to concern the bills’ sponsors, though. The larger purpose, it seems, is to rally the Republican base—to push back against the recent reexaminations of the role that slavery and segregation have played in American history and the attempts to redress those historical offenses. The shorthand for the Republicans’ bogeyman is an idea that has until now mostly lived in academia: critical race theory.
The late Harvard Law professorDerrick Bell is credited as the father of critical race theory. He began conceptualizing the idea in the 1970s as a way to understand how race and American law interact, and developed a course on the subject. In 1980, Bell resigned his position at Harvard because of what he viewed as the institution’s discriminatory hiring practices, especially its failure to hire an Asian American woman he’d recommended. Race, Racism, And American LawDerrick A. Bell, Aspen Law & Business When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
Black students—including the future legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who enrolled at Harvard Law in 1981—felt the void created by his departure. Bell had been the only Black law professor among the faculty, and in his absence, the school no longer offered a course explicitly addressing race. When students asked administrators what could be done, Crenshaw says they received a terse response. “What is it that is so special about race and law that you have to have a course that examines it?” Crenshaw has recalled administrators asking. The administration’s inability to see the importance of understanding race and the law, she says, “got us thinking about how do we articulate that this is important and that law schools should include” the subject in their curricula.
Crenshaw and her classmates asked 12 scholars of color to come to campus and lead discussions about Bell’s book Race, Racism, and American Law .. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735575746/?tag=theatl0c-20 . With that, critical race theory began in earnest. The approach “is often disruptive because its commitment to anti-racism goes well beyond civil rights, integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures,” Bell explained in 1995. The theory’s proponents argue that the nation’s sordid history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination is embedded in our laws, and continues to play a central role in preventing Black Americans and other marginalized groups from living lives untouched by racism.
For some, the theory was a revelatory way to understand inequality. Take housing, for example. Researchers have now accumulated ample evidence that racial covenants in property deeds and redlining by the Federal Housing Authority—banned more than 60 years ago—remain a major contributor to the gulf in homeownership, and thus wealth, between Black and white people. Others, perhaps most prominently Randall Kennedy, who joined the Harvard Law faculty a few years after Bell left, questioned how widely the theory could be applied. In a paper titled “Racial Critiques of Legal Academia,” Kennedy argued that white racism was not the only reason so few “minority scholars” were members of law-school faculties. Conservative scholars argued that critical race theory is reductive—that it treats race as the only factor in social identity.
As with other academic frameworks before it, the nuances of critical race theory—and the debate around it—were obscured when it escaped the ivory tower. It first entered public discourse in the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton nominated the University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Lani Guinier to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Republicans mounted an aggressive and ultimately successful campaign to prevent her appointment, tagging her the “Quota Queen .. https://www.newsweek.com/crowning-quota-queen-193420 .” Among the many reasons her adversaries said she was wrong for the job was that she had been “championing a radical school of thought called ‘critical race theory.’” The theory soon stood in for anything resembling an examination of America’s history with race. Conservatives would boil it down further: Critical race theory taught Americans to hate America. Today, across the country, school curricula and workplace trainings include materials that defenders and opponents alike insist are inspired by critical race theory but that academic critical race theorists do not characterize as such.
Fox News gave only passing thought to critical race theory until last year. The first mention on the network occurred after Bell died, in 2012. A video of President Barack Obama praising him 21 years earlier began circulating online. “Open up your minds and your hearts to the words of Mr. Derrick Bell,” Obama said. That introduction was followed by a hug between the two men, which Fox cited as further evidence of Obama’s tendency to consort with radicals. A guest on Hannity offhandedly alluded to the theory during a segment on George Zimmerman’s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2014; network regulars briefly referred to it twice in 2019. Then, in 2020, after Derek Chauvin was captured on video kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, and the United States became awash in anti-racist reading lists—some of which included books and articles that discussed critical race theory—Fox suddenly took a great interest in the idea. It became the latest in a long line of racialized topics (affirmative action perhaps being the most prominent) that the network has jumped on. Since June 5, 2020, the phrase has been invoked during 150 broadcasts.
[Insert: It's yet another word or phrase conservatives have abused to be able to used it to describe programs or policies or just discussion topics they don't like. Things that threaten them. It's politically correct, they say. It's dangerous. Radical is not necessarily political correctness, or shameful or dangerous. Radical is just a bit different than what is not seen as radical by most ordinary people. Conservatives have made radical dangerous. It's not though. Radical is just radical.]
If a single person bears the most responsibility for the surge in conservative interest in critical race theory, it is probably Christopher Rufo. Last summer, Rufo, a 36-year-old senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian think tank, received a tip from a municipal employee in Seattle. (Rufo had lived in the city and, in 2018, ran unsuccessfully for city council.) According to the whistleblower, the city was conducting “internalized racial superiority” training sessions for its employees. Rufo submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and wrote about his findings for the institute’s public-policy magazine.
“In conceptual terms,” Rufo wrote, “the city frames the discussion around the idea that black Americans are reducible to the essential quality of ‘blackness’ and white Americans are reducible to the essential quality of ‘whiteness’—that is, the new metaphysics of good and evil.” The training was rampant, he wrote, infecting every part of the city’s municipal system. “It is part of a nationwide movement to make this kind of identity politics the foundation of our public discourse. It may be coming soon to a city or town near you.” His article—which did not include the phrase critical race theory—inspired a rush of whistleblowers from school districts and federal agencies, who reached out to him complaining about diversity training they had been invited to attend or had heard about.
A month later, Rufo employed the term for the first time in an article. “Critical race theory—the academic discourse centered on the concepts of ‘whiteness,’ ‘white fragility,’ and ‘white privilege’—is spreading rapidly through the federal government,” he wrote. He related anecdotes about training influenced by critical race theory at the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the Treasury Department, among others. In early September, Tucker Carlson invited him on his Fox News show during which Rufo warned viewers that critical race theory had pervaded every institution of the federal government and was being “weaponized” against Americans. He called on President Donald Trump to ban such training in all federal departments.
“Luckily, the president was watching the show and instructed his Chief of Staff to contact me the next morning,” Rufo wrote to me. (He would agree to be interviewed only by email.) Within three weeks, Trump had signed an executive order banning the use of critical race theory by federal departments and contractors in diversity training. “And thus,” he wrote to me, “the real fight against critical race theory began.”
Trump’s executive order was immediately challenged in court. Nonprofit organizations that provide these training sessions argued that the order violated their free-speech rights and hampered their ability to conduct their business. In December, a federal judge agreed; President Joe Biden rescinded the order the day he took office. But by then, critical race theory was already a part of the conservative lexicon. Since Trump’s executive order, Rufo told me, he has provided his analysis “to a half-dozen state legislatures, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate.” One such state legislature was New Hampshire’s; on February 18, the lower chamber held a hearing to discuss Keith Ammon’s bill. Rufo was among those who testified in support of it.
Concerned that the measure might fail on its own, Republicans have now included its language in a must-pass budget bill. In March, Republican Governor Chris Sununu signaled that he would object to “divisive concepts” legislation because he believes it is unconstitutional, but he has since tempered his stand. “The ideas of critical race theory and all of this stuff—I personally don’t think there’s any place for that in schools,” he said in early April. But, he added, “when you start turning down the path of the government banning things, I think that’s a very slippery slope.” Almost everyone I spoke with for this article assumed that Sununu would sign the budget bill, and that the divisive-concepts ban would become law.
Although free-speech advocates are confident that bills like Ammon’s will not survive challenges in court, they believe the real point is to scare off companies, schools, and government agencies from discussing systemic racism. “What these bills are designed to do is prevent conversations about how racism exists at a systemic level in that we all have implicit biases that lead to decisions that, accumulated, lead to significant racial disparities,” Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, told me. “The proponents of this bill want none of those discussions to happen. They want to suppress that type of speech.”
Conservatives are not the only critics of diversity training. For years, some progressives, including critical race theorists, have questioned its value: Is it performative?Is it the most effective way to move toward equity or is it simply an effective way of restating the obvious and stalling meaningful action? But that is not the fight that has materialized over the past nine months. Instead, it is a confrontation with a cartoonish version of critical race theory.
For Republicans, the end goal of all these bills is clear: initiating another battle in the culture wars and holding on to some threadbare mythology of the nation that has been challenged in recent years. What’s less clear is whether average voters care much about the debate. In a recent Atlantic/Leger poll, 52 percent of respondents who identified as Republicans said that states should pass laws banning schools from teaching critical race theory, but just 30 percent of self-identified independents were willing to say the same. Meanwhile, a strong majority of Americans, 78 percent, either had not heard of critical race theory or were unsure whether they had.
Last week, after President Biden’s first joint address to Congress—and as Idaho was preparing to pass its bill—Senator Tim Scott stood in front of United States and South Carolina flags to deliver the Republican response. “From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress,” Scott said. “You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.” Rufo immediately knew what he meant. “Senator Tim Scott denounces critical race theory in his response to Biden’s speech tonight,” he tweeted. “We have turned critical race theory into a national issue and conservative political leaders are starting to fight.”
Further excerpt from the post this post sits in reply to:
“"They’re trying to attach shame to the act of learning about bodies,” Isham said.“It’s about power and control; it’s about power and control over people’s bodies; it’s about power and control over educational content.”
And of course, language like this also causes panic.
[INSERT: AH. That guy -- How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory Thanks. You saved me chasing those videos. I never heard of that Rufo dude before, yet seems he's a key - even the KEY - player in the present political outrage around CRT. P - To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164563458]";
tweeted, “waging sophisticated narrative warfare, mobilizing grassroots parent-driven protests, designing robust policies to change incentives, and supporting strong leaders who will stand with families against nihilistic elites.”
In short, those using this terminology hope that parents end up in such a tizzy that administrators have no choice but to go on the defensive. And with administrators desperate to avoid controversy, teachers will become too afraid to do the work it’s so important that they do.
How critical race theory became today’s defining culture-war issue
-- Sex Educators Are Not ‘Grooming’ Your Kids—but Conservatives Want to Incite Fear Anyway [...]“They’re trying to attach shame to the act of learning about bodies,” Isham said. “It’s about power and control; it’s about power and control over people’s bodies; it’s about power and control over educational content.” P - And of course, language like this also causes panic. P - It’s designed to do so. P - Conservative activists have admitted as much. P - “We are building a new model of conservative activism,” anti-critical race theory activist Christopher Rufo .. https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1512497154748682240?s=20&t=VwrJ3PPrz7BpZ912k7qMsg .. P - [INSERT: AH. That guy -- How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory Thanks. You saved me chasing those videos. I never heard of that Rufo dude before, yet seems he's a key - even the KEY - player in the present political outrage around CRT. P - To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164563458] P - tweeted, “waging sophisticated narrative warfare, mobilizing grassroots parent-driven protests, designing robust policies to change incentives, and supporting strong leaders who will stand with families against nihilistic elites.” --
by Jim Jones, Opinion Contributor - 06/21/21 12:00 PM ET
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Fox News host Tucker Carlson during the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel March 29, 2019 in Washington, D.C.
As the 2020 election entered its final stretch, President Trump was searching for a means of blunting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) fervor that threatened his electoral chances in some swing states. He’d had some success with claims that Democrats supported lawlessness and wanted to defund the police, but, understanding that the best defense is a strong offense, he apparently felt the need to mount a vigorous counterattack.
Trump discovered the perfect weapon on the Sept. 1 episode of Tucker Carlson’s show. Conservative writer and activist Christopher Rufo .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo .. was expounding about the dangers of critical race theory (CRT), claiming it promoted the belief that America is an irredeemably racist society. Rufo’s presentation must have struck a responsive chord because Trump immediately picked up the theme .. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210612085115831 . Just 22 days later, he churned out an executive order prohibiting the promotion of CRT, as well as sexism, in federal programs.
[insert: So Rufo created the war. Like Putin, but in America and psychological rather than physical. Carlson gave him a much expanded delivery with a fast food-hungry target. And Trump gave CRT a hugely cynical political boost.]
Although Trump lost the presidential race, he planted a seed that has been vigorously nourished by the extreme right ever since. CRT has become the weapon of choice in the Republican culture wars. Attacking CRT and claiming that kids from pre-K to the university level are being indoctrinated in the pernicious doctrine has become commonplace across the country.
While Fox News has been the primary purveyor of CRT hysteria on a national scale, a large network of conservative organizations has taken the fight to the state and local levels. These include the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council .. https://www.alec.org/article/reclaiming-education-and-the-american-dream-against-critical-theorys-onslaught/ .. and the Social Policy Network (SPN), which has affiliates in every state.
[You know ALEC the corporate funded bill-mill outfit. Say state legislatures - Republican - want a bill to target black voters, or clean air, or progressive education initiative as CRT or gender education stuff or, how could anyone forget abortion. It's tough to write a heavy bill, eh. Takes time, money and expertise. the later two sadly lacking in some red states. So ALEC writes the bill and sends it to any state legislature that wants it. There it is presented as a grass-roots effort ( fraudulently] and passed into law. See a couple from 2014
Republicans Launch Game-changing War on Black Voters in the South [...]ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council. While it appears to be an association of state legislators, it has been revealed to be a corporate-funded bill mill that produces model legislation used by conservative legislators across the country. P - “I wish I had known it was an ALEC bill when we filed our lawsuit,” Bondurant told me. “The appearance was that it was a grassroots movement to deal with voter fraud." https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105979551 ..and.. The ALEC Exodus: Which Big Companies Have Dropped Out? https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=106533625]
Idaho’s State Board of Education and teachers were dumbfounded by the allegations that CRT existed in the public schools and that kids were being indoctrinated.Local school boards, which oversee educational operations, were equally mystified .. https://www.abc4.com/news/local-news/what-you-need-to-know-about-idahos-critical-race-theory-law/ .. by the charges.Even the legislators being urged on by IFF to put a stop to CRT could not produce any credible evidence that it existed in the state.
So Rufo really did have a lot of helpers. It's call 'Create a Culture War.' Call it CCW Con concoction wherever]
Organizations like IFF have inspired legislative battles in other states to stamp out non-existent CRT indoctrination. Texas enacted a far-reaching CRT bill on June 17. The bill was strongly supported by IFF’s Texas counterpart and the national conservative network that has pushed such legislation in Idaho and across the nation.
[Around about 2014 maybe i read Republicans were much more politically organized than Democrats. ALEC would be a good example of that.]
The fight over CRT was percolating before Trump embraced it as his own political weapon last September. His adoption of the divisive issue supercharged it on the national stage. It is not just a struggle over the curriculum at state-supported schools across the nation, but also a potent weapon of conservative candidates to stir division and win local, state and national elections.
The upshot is that CRT is virtually non-existent in public schools across the nation. It is misunderstood or misrepresented by those using it as a political weapon and has the potential to do extreme damage to the system of free public schools that has brought America to greatness.
Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as Idaho’s attorney general (1983-1991) and 12 years as an Idaho Supreme Court justice (2005-2107).
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