Grooming By Teachers In Us Public Schools, What Should Indian Parents Do?

Your concerns are valid.

I am out of touch with how these topics are currently taught in elementary and middle schools. So, I googled it for California.

I first read What is Comprehensive Sexual Education? and some of the claims there about what is being taught in schools are disturbing.

Then, some more googling lead to this FAQ for Sexual Education, HIV/AIDS, and STDs - Comprehensive Sexual Health & HIV/AIDS Instruction (CA Dept of Education) which is the CA Dept of Education's official website. I read through all the 21 questions there.

The "opt-out" strategy rather than "opt-in", teachers need not be specially trained, the name-sake vetting of outside speakers, and how the medical facts are checked before being taught to the students -- all these left me shaking my head in disbelief.

The CA law requires CSE to be taught in grades 7-12. For K-6, it is left to each school district to decide. So, a bunch of tenured school district staff have full control over what is the "age appropriate" way of teaching all these topics to kids under 10-11 years old. Good Lord.

What should Indian parents do? Read up good quality balanced opinions on both sides of any debate. Research. Get to know the many terms, acronyms and definitions around LGBTQ, gender identity etc. Be aware of their rights such as all the materials used in schools have to be available for parents to inspect. Don't blindly believe that the school and teachers have the child's best interests at heart. I used to think if I vote Democrat, pay taxes, vote regularly, check the child's Friday folder, read the newsletter, sign all forms in time, I am good. Had some rude awakenings.

Above all, develop an atmosphere at home where the child feels comfortable to come to parents for support and answers. There will be times and years when the child trusts their friends more than parents, but always keep the lines of communication open.

For the record, I consider myself very pro-LGBTQ, was shamefully ignorant about the gender identity related concepts and educated myself on those and have come to respect those. But, legislation that these topics should be taught in publics schools in this manner is giving untrained teachers too much influence over highly impressionable young children, IMO.

 

Oh.

Children tend to repeat at school and other places what they hear from parents. If a student in a school or anywhere says "I don't like LGBT" and if the student actively avoids them, it will lead to all kinds of trouble for the student, including suspension and this bullying will go on the student's record.

Telling your child it is OK to not like LGBT and to avoid them is like a white parent telling their children to avoid certain skin colored classmates at school.

Schools consider "I don't like LGBT people and will avoid them" same as they consider "I don't like brown/black skinned people and will avoid them."

For families whose views and values are so different from that of the public school, it may be a better idea to opt for homeschooling or a private school.

I'll confess that I sometimes feel you are posting such stuff to rile up readers. But then again, I've seen cases of exactly what you have described above. "Without informing parents, child invited to a questionable (after) school club run by teacher" was the reason we met the principal 1-1 for the first time. Principal heard me out and said will look into it. In less than 12 hours, we received a phone call, I didn't pick it up, and the principal left a long apology message along with what steps are being taken to avoid a repetition for any student. Later, I found out that the club had been running in the past years and continued to run after my complaint.

It was not some tame book club, math club, recycle-save the earth club. It was a club for which if they sent home flyers, hardly any parents would allow child to attend. To avoid scrutiny, they ran the club in lunch time, not after school. But my kid told me they attended it during class time too. A few kids were pulled out of class and they had this club in the "forum" between classrooms while classmates were in the regular classroom.

It still can upset me to think of my 10 year old attending that club for almost 5-6 times till I got to know, and got to know by chance.

The video below is from a preschool. But such things happen in public schools too.

 

Be very careful with the r-word. It has long been regarded as a pejorative on par with the 6-letter n- slur for African Americans.

Going to the Principal for this offence by the teacher is like tattling. Tattling Versus Reporting

Such offences by the teacher are best dealt with by talking with the teacher only and leaving it at that. Children will face such comments from teachers over their school years. The teachers spends more hours directly interacting with the child than parents do. Cut them some slack. There will be no perfect teacher whose every statement is fine by every parent. Teachers have minimal discipline options and yet have to teach 20 distracted kids. I recently came to know that our local school has eliminated even time-out in kindergarten.

I like to think of each academic year like hiring cleaners to deep clean the house. The cleaners won't do as great a job as I could. There will always be some things they miss. Yet, when the cleaners drive away, my house is overall brighter than when they arrived.

One has to look at all the options: public school, private school costing $7000 per year, the $10k to $20K reasonable ones, and then the 45K plus at rhymes-with-New-Yorker. : ) Or the lesser known ones like Waldorf.

 

You are not misunderstanding anything. Rather it is a very complex issue where, to use the cliche, no one size fits all. When is the right age for introducing what topics and how should they be introduced is a very subjective issue.

There was an Indian teacher in our local middle school (6th-8th grades). She saw two students boy and girl walking holding hands in the corridor and while walking to their seats. She scolded them in class, in front of all students, and told the entire class said they should focus on studies etc etc. and time enough for boy-girl stuff later in life. Someone complained and the principal spoke with the teacher, told her she can only enforce rules that are in the school handbook.

Coming back to LGBTQ and gender identity related topics, on the surface it can feel unbelievable or "fake" that a child under 10 (for example) has opinion about their gender and so on. To understand it one has to read research and balanced opinion on it. That takes time. The shorter cut is to decide what values we want to impart to our own child, and always be accepting, respectful and tolerant of those who may think differently. A simple example is if a family does not eat meat, how the child behaves when classmates eat meat at the same lunch table.