4 ms·

> Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities a

by darawk 5y ago

> Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents. This sure sounds like a lot more than "telling our kids that racism is bad".

woodruffw 5y ago
Again with the language of "subversion." We would all benefit from a direct link to a recording or summary from this CTA conference. I suspect the reality is more banal than claimed: teachers are frequently the only (trustworthy) adult contacts outside of a child's family, and can be a resource for children who might otherwise be pushed into conversion therapy or other objectively harmful and outright illegal[1] "treatments" by their guardians. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy#Legal_status_by_US_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy#Legal_statu...
- darawk 5y ago
  Ya, it very well may be. I make no claims about the integrity of Abigail's transcription here. She may well be severely misrepresenting things. But if so, that's where the criticism should be located.
saghm 5y ago
I'm not quite sure how to interpret this objection. If the objection is to surveillance of the students, I don't see how it would be any better to inform parents about participation in LGBTQ clubs, given how parents would be able to violate the privacy of their children far beyond merely providing them access to a club, and some would be motivated to if they knew their children identified as LGBTQ. If the objection is that parents _should_ be able to monitor their children in this way, I'd have to disagree; having sympathetic adults be the ones who find out seems better in virtually every way. And if the objection is that nobody should be monitoring the kids at all, I think you're either underestimating how little control minors have on their lives in general, and focusing on LGBTQ students getting help is probably not the most effective way to argue for a much larger structural change in society.
- darawk 5y ago
  > If the objection is to surveillance of the students, I don't see how it would be any better to inform parents about participation in LGBTQ clubs There's a difference between simply not informing them and actively hiding the information from them. Aibgail implies they are doing the latter. She may be lying or misrepresenting things, but the latter is bad. What's being done here is heavy surveillance by the school, and the exclusion of that surveillance information from the parents. If the argument is that kids have no right to privacy, fine - share it with the parents. But regardless of the merit of the particular ideas under discussion now, they are a lot richer and more complex than simply telling kids "racism is bad".

by darawk 5y ago

woodruffw 5y ago

Again with the language of "subversion." We would all benefit from a direct link to a recording or summary from this CTA conference. I suspect the reality is more banal than claimed: teachers are frequently the only (trustworthy) adult contacts outside of a child's family, and can be a resource for children who might otherwise be pushed into conversion therapy or other objectively harmful and outright illegal[1] "treatments" by their guardians. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy#Legal_status_by_US_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy#Legal_statu...

darawk 5y ago
Ya, it very well may be. I make no claims about the integrity of Abigail's transcription here. She may well be severely misrepresenting things. But if so, that's where the criticism should be located.

saghm 5y ago

I'm not quite sure how to interpret this objection. If the objection is to surveillance of the students, I don't see how it would be any better to inform parents about participation in LGBTQ clubs, given how parents would be able to violate the privacy of their children far beyond merely providing them access to a club, and some would be motivated to if they knew their children identified as LGBTQ. If the objection is that parents _should_ be able to monitor their children in this way, I'd have to disagree; having sympathetic adults be the ones who find out seems better in virtually every way. And if the objection is that nobody should be monitoring the kids at all, I think you're either underestimating how little control minors have on their lives in general, and focusing on LGBTQ students getting help is probably not the most effective way to argue for a much larger structural change in society.

darawk 5y ago
> If the objection is to surveillance of the students, I don't see how it would be any better to inform parents about participation in LGBTQ clubs There's a difference between simply not informing them and actively hiding the information from them. Aibgail implies they are doing the latter. She may be lying or misrepresenting things, but the latter is bad. What's being done here is heavy surveillance by the school, and the exclusion of that surveillance information from the parents. If the argument is that kids have no right to privacy, fine - share it with the parents. But regardless of the merit of the particular ideas under discussion now, they are a lot richer and more complex than simply telling kids "racism is bad".