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Posted on 04/21/2015 5:16:10 AM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
KITTERY, Maine – Officials at Mitchell Primary School are apologizing after a book about a transgender child was read to most of the school’s K-3 students.
“We have a practice of if a topic is considered sensitive, parents should be informed,” superintendent Allyn Hutton told SeaCoastOnline.com.
“In this situation, that didn’t happen. The whole culture at Mitchell School is about teaching tolerance and respect. The people presenting the lesson thought (the book) was one more piece of teaching that lesson.
“In retrospect, we understand that toleration is tolerating people of all opinions,” Hutton said.
Criticism flooded the district after Fox News host Sean Hannity posted about the lesson on his website, prompted by a Mitchell school mother who was angry she wasn’t given advanced warning that teachers were reading students the book “I am Jazz” by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, the news site reports.
The book details the struggles of a child “with a boy’s body and a girl’s brain,” who eventually finds a doctor that tells the family the boy is a transgender.
From the book’s description on Amazon.com:
“From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and didn’t feel like herself in boys’ clothing. This confused her family, until they took her to a doctor who said that Jazz was transgender and that she was born that way. Jazz’s story is based on her real-life experience and she tells it in a simple, clear way that will be appreciated by picture book readers, their parents, and teachers.”
The mother wrote in to Hannity.com to express her frustration that she wasn’t given a heads up about the lesson, which was read out loud to students in 20 of Mitchell’s 22 classes.
“I feel like my thoughts, feelings and beliefs were completely ignored….My right as a parent to allow or not allow this discussion with my child was taken from me,” the mother wrote. “It is very upsetting to me that I didn’t have an option at all.”
The mother said she tried to approach school officials about her concerns but was given the cold shoulder.
“When I spoke with the principal he was very cold about it,” she said. “It’s amazing how thoughtless the school has been with this whole thing.”
Hannity contacted Hutton with specific questions about the lesson and received “an anemic response.”
“I have spoken with the principal at Mitchell School who has been working with their guidance counselor to appropriately manage this situation and provide the appropriate information for the children at this age level,” Hutton said.
“All information has been posted on the school’s guidance blog for parent review.”
That blog, written by guidance counselor Dana Richerich, contends “some people may think primary school students are too young to worry about addressing issues surrounding gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Not so, experts say. It’s never too early to begin teaching children about respecting differences.”
“When our students and their parents have questions related to LGBTQ issues, our goal is to foster healthy dialog (sic), critical thinking and inclusiveness. With that in mind, our conversations include all students and perspectives to create a safe and supportive school climate,” the blog reads.
The critical LGBTQ thinking, however, seems to have confused at least one student. The mother who wrote in to Hannity said her son’s now confused about whether he’s transgender.
The boy asked his mother if he’s transgender, or if he could be “a girl in love with a girl.”
“The mother says that up until time the topic was brought up in school, her son had never said anything like that before,” according to Hannity.com.
“I was taken aback by it,” the mother said. “Being seven, once you put something in their mind they don’t forget so easily.”
"EAGnews.org is the flagship website of Education Action Group Foundation, Inc., a national organization headquartered in Michigan. EAG is a non-partisan non-profit organization with the goal of promoting sensible education reform and exposing those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo."
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“From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body.”
So there is such a thing a gender stereotypes now so that you can put a boy in a dress and demand we all play along?
And two years old?!?
Oh payback day is coming for these pervs.
Someone should’ve called the police.
America. You don’t have to put up with this crap and these fools sucking off your tax dollars.
And Hillary is up by as much as 24 points in polls. Forgive me if I don’t take this country that seriously anymore. /frustrated
The one thing you can be certain of is that when a school claims to be "fostering healthy dialog," the dialog will be either toxic or stupefying.
Same publisher as “Heather Has Two Mommies?”
The comment made by the the perv who promotes this crap was something to the effect it is never too early to teach children to respect differences....it should have been it is never too early to indoctinate children to our beliefs which are 100% counter to moral, cultural, and biological history.
if they sexualize children (really, what kind of adult feels compelled to discuss sex with some elses children?) at an early age, then the teachers can pick their victims more easily...
Subsitute “schizophrenic” or “autistic” with “transgender” in the above story and see if the doctor would encourage the family to entertain the child’s delusions.
> it is never too early to teach children to respect differences
Well, I agree.
But pandering to delusions is another matter.
Yep. People should literally just stop putting up with this degenerate evil. Something like this crops up, get all parents together, and go make sure that person who did something like this will never do anything like it again. For fear of the repercussions of real Americans.
I draw the line at hurting children, and taking away freedoms. Nice and polite play will get us no where with these freaks. They need to get their asses beat up and down main street trotted out in front of everyone in the middle of the day with someone on a loudspeaker telling everyone what they did to the towns kids.
This BS never ever happens in the midwest.
Only on the east and west coasts. Isolated incidences of things similar occur every once in awhile in the midwest, but in large, college cities.
When the pew pew starts, the targets are easily identified.
Our society has done this since the early 1960s. Many children don't have a sexual identity, and having it forced on them (culture, dress, education, popularity issues) many react in ways they wouldn't if they were left alone.
Dressing little girls and boys in non-suggestive ways, keeping their experiences focused on age-appropriate activities, and developing moral, cultural, and educational expectations when they're still children might produce less sexually-deviant people in our society.
JMHO
I have a 16 month old and I’m already worried about sending her to the local elementary school her in my upper middle class NJ suburb. Supposedly it’s a great primary school and every other parent who has slightly older kids tells me this... and they’re not all libs. So that gives me some peace of mind. For now.
But how the heck do you vet this kind of thing before it’s too late ? ?? Seems next to impossible.
This is why parents must begin to take their children out of these GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS and start their own “NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS”. Oh, I’m quite sure that if and when more and more parents begin to opt out of GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS, start their own “NEIGHBORHOOD” schools, the government will decide to make “NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS” illegal. Can’t have all these people thinking for themselves.
“and having it forced on them (culture, dress, education, popularity issues) many react in ways they wouldn’t if they were left alone.”
A lot of kids would never wear clothes if not forced to.
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