To the Editor:
Jeff Van Drew’s public relations department is very good. I seem to see items about his activities everywhere.
As a long-time schoolteacher, in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, California, Kansas, Florida, and New Jersey, I take umbrage at his comments on the “My Child, My Choice” Act in an email dated May 6, 2022.
He is unnecessarily adding to the stress both on parents and teachers.
Teachers and educational institutions would like nothing better than to teach the three R’s (as well as spelling, handwriting, science, social studies, civics, technology, art, music, and physical education, while accommodating various levels of readiness for new material and critical thinking about that material and to those with various physical constraints), but much more has been dumped on them due to modern life.
Breakfasts and lunches (and sometimes weekend meals) are provided because families may be unable to support their children with adequate nutrition.
Sex education is provided in order to prepare children for changes in their bodies that are too often a surprise to them, perhaps due to parental discomfort in discussing these issues.
Changes in family dynamics are addressed, so that no child need feel ostracized if he/she has one parent, or two parents of different races, or two parents of the same gender, or is being raised by another relative or in a foster or adoptive family.
No one is pushing the teaching of “explicit sexual themes to children” using federal funds or any other financial methods of support. Many teachers are as uncomfortable approaching these issues as the parents are, but with texts and guidelines, they have a structure that helps them through it.
If every parent wants to “decide what their children are taught,” they are free to meet and talk with teachers, get involved in the schools and the classrooms (you can learn a lot, even as a one-hour-a-week volunteer), go through the years of training and qualifying requirements and become a teacher him/herself, and/or talk with your child and be sure your discussions include uncomfortable subjects (if your child is willing to talk with you about them).
The latest item on the agenda of those who want to micromanage a classroom is the issue of bathroom use. This is not “radical gender agendas” being taught. This is a response to what children go through in their struggles to grow into confident, productive citizens. However God made you is fine.
If trans children are such a threat, let’s look at the numbers involved. How many children in any one classroom, in any one school, fall into this category? In about 40 years of teaching in a number of states, from kindergarten to community college, I may recall one possibility. Not such a big threat.
The biggest threat was when someone would identify this child as “different” and use this difference to target the child for bullying.
If parents were doing their job and preparing their children with all the support necessary to lead to positive adulthood, the schools could slip back into the nostalgically imagined past when they did not have to do much other than assign pages in a book. This fantasy is not and never has been true.
Schools and teachers are substitute parents in so many ways. They cannot and never will replace good parenting, but when there is a lack, isn’t it nice to think that a caring adult will step in to help your child in any way he/she can?
– Bonny Collins, Ocean View
