This month, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, released a toolkit for educators intended to help guide them on LGBTQ+ issues with their students.
According to the NEA’s “LGBTQ+ Support & Protection” webpage, the toolkit, titled “Defending the Freedom of our LGBTQ+ Students to be Themselves,” gives teachers guides to addressing students by their preferred pronouns, offers LGBTQ+ classroom library book recommendations, and provides art that teachers can display in their classrooms to use as a “tool for change.”
“In English, we have two sets of gendered pronouns: 'she/her/hers' and 'he/him/his' are pronouns that are attached to a particular gender. Men/males have typically been referred to using he/him/his and women/females by using she/her/hers. We likely all grew up assuming we knew someone’s pronouns just by looking at them, or knowing their gender, but that isn’t the case,” the NEA’s Pronoun Guide document states. “In an effort to be more affirming of all, it is important to get out of the habit of assuming pronouns. Plural pronouns are becoming more widely accepted as gender-neutral singular pronouns. It is grammatically correct to use singular ‘they’ to refer a singular person of unknown gender or to a non-binary person who does not feel gendered pronouns work for them.”
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The toolkit encourages teachers to use “gender neutral” pronouns, which includes “they/them/theirs” and terms like “ze/zim/zir/zirs/zirself/zay” and includes six “professional learning” modules for educators to use to learn about “addressing bias around sexual orientation and gender identity,” and “how to create a safe school climate for students and staff.”
In recent years, teachers unions have circulated materials in schools pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity, which Townhall has covered. Last fall, it was revealed that the NEA equipped teachers in Ohio with QR-code badges that direct students to how-to guides promoting “non-binary” gender identities, “queer sex,” and the idea that “transgender men” can become pregnant, among other things.
"Instead of doing the work to teach kids what pronouns actually are, the NEA wants to push very controversial ideas about sex and gender,” Alex Nester, an investigative fellow with Parents Defending Education, told Townhall.
Last fall, Townhall covered how teachers unions across the country refused to return to work after COVID-19 lockdowns despite extorting billions of dollars from taxpayers in order to open schools back up. And, when schools were scheduled to open up, teachers unions in several cities went on strike over issues like air conditioning, class sizes, salaries, among other issues. At the same time, the National Assessment of Educational Progress' scorecard was released showing that students suffered irrecoverable learning loss due to lockdowns. The scorecard showed that students who were already behind in school fell even more behind.
“That's all they're doing here. It's not about inclusion, or caring for kids. If the NEA really cared for kids, they would work to improve test scores and student achievement--not promote political agendas,” Nester added.
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