Tag Archives: Gender Education

The Root of the Problem … In My Opinion

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If something, anything, is broken you can attempt to fix it. If you’re successful and manage to fix what was broken that’s great. But what if the fix is only temporary or is susceptible to being broken again? That could be an indication that a permanent solution needs to be found, unless of course you like fixing things. There are people like that.

Years ago, when I was still on the farm, I had a good friend who was constantly “fixing” equipment. One day I asked him why he didn’t buy new equipment that didn’t need to be “fixed” all the time. I said, “it’s not like you can’t afford it because you can. So why don’t you buy new equipment?” His response was very simple,

“You don’t get it. I enjoy fixing things. If I buy new equipment, I won’t have anything to fix anymore.”

Fast forward 40 plus years to today and observe the way Washington works. Is there anyone who can point to any act of congress that actually fixed a problem so that it didn’t need to be fixed again and again and again? The answer to that question is not just no … It’s HELL NO!!!

If a bill introduced in congress was really intended to fix a problem, it would have built into it a date certain for the problem to have been not only fixed, but insure that it wouldn’t be needed again. When was the last time that actually happened?

Some bills are introduced with an end date such as FISA but that end date is just that, an end date. It doesn’t actually specify how it is going to fix the problem that it was created to fix. All it does say is that there is a problem and how the problem is going to be identified. With this particular bill, mechanisms were apparently built in to allow it to be abused. So, right now there is more conversation about how or whether to extend it than to actually fix it so that in X number of years it will no longer be needed.

My question at this point is, how did we get to this point? The founding fathers did anticipate a messy system, but I don’t think they envisioned the nearly dysfunctional system that we have today. Is it fixable? I believe so, but it will take at least a generation if not two generations. Why do I think that?

The root of the problem is buried deep, very deep, in our public educational system. The beast that has been gnawing away at the foundation of our system of government for the last three generations at least is the teachers’ unions. The first teachers’ union, the National Teachers Association was founded in in 1857 by Zalmon Richards. In 1870 the NTA merged with the American National School Association, the National Association of School Superintendents and the Central College Association to become what we now know as the National Education Association, the NEA. It was chartered as it is today in 1907.

Apparently Zalmon only served a few years as president. but records indicate that he continued attending the bi-annual meetings. There is more about his conservative Christian involvements than his union involvement.

The other major teachers’ union the American Federation of Teachers is roughly half the size of the NEA with only about one and a half million members. A merger with NEA in was rejected by the members of NEA most likely due to the influence of Albert Shanker who served as president of AFT from 1974 until his death in 1997. The fact that he was an advocate for Charter Schools, called for a national competency test for teachers, merit pay for teachers and more stringent graduation requirements out to tell you all you need to know about why the membership of NEA rejected the merger proposal.

Fast forward 11 years through Sandra Feldman and Edward J McElroy to Randi Weingarten, a name that should send shivers down the spine of any parent. It took a mere 11 years for everything Shanker worked for to be totally destroyed.

On the other hand the moral rot that is the NEA can be traced back, more than likely closer to a hundred years The time it would take to dig all the way back through the records of the NEA to find out just when the root rot that has become the current NEA is incalculable.

Most people probably didn’t pay much attention to the NEA, which is the way they liked it, until COVID-19 struck. I use that word “struck” because that is basically what the teachers whether they were NEA of AFT did. They essentially “struck” when told it was time take off their sweats and get back in the classroom. An entire generation of children was set back in their education by at least one year if not two.

It’s my firm belief that those two organizations are the tap root of the problems we are seeing in our college campus demonstrations and riots. Not all of the demonstrators are college age but a look at the screen of your TV should give you an idea of the percentages. Those people have not been taught to think for themselves. They have no ability to apply critical thinking to what they are being told. I doubt that the teachers themselves who are currently in the classrooms have ever been taught how to think critically.

So, when some Muslim extremist, or fascist adherent gets to the classroom lectern or on a hastily erected podium on a street corner and starts spewing hateful rhetoric about Jews, in this case, they have absolutely no idea how to objectively research the actual facts before they storm out on to the street. They have never been taught real history. They have never been taught civics. I would be surprised if many of them could do simple math without a calculator.

The parents of those demonstrators bear at least a partial responsibility for the situation. They left the education of their children to the NEA and AFT without paying even a modicum of attention to what was being taught. All they cared about was whether their children were absorbing what they were taught and the proof of that was good grades. I would be willing to bet that 80 t0 90 percent of those demonstrators were “A” students according to the grading system designed by who? You know who.

A stark example of the difference in the effect that educators can have is evident in my own family. My brother, who is 2 years younger than me, and I are both conservative in our political opinions. Admittedly we don’t see eye to eye on various individual politicians, but nevertheless we are products of a more conservative education system and conservative parents. Our sister, on the other hand, is the exact opposite in her political views. She is 14 years younger than me and was educated in a variety of systems including liberal California and Italian systems. That was followed up with 4 years in a liberal college in Colorado. She has been known to threaten to divest herself of her American citizenship when a conservative has been elected as president. I can’t think of a more stark example of the effect of an education steeped in liberal ideology. And she was, by the way, an “A” student.

People like this are so imbedded in our governmental institutions it will take decades to rid the system of their influence. This is all by design.  The design has been crafted by people with one goal and one goal only. That goal is to destroy the best system of government ever created by mankind. Sad to say, but I fear it is all going to lead to a violent disruption of our society and how that disruption ends is, at this point, anybody’s guess.

The one bright spot in the disaster that was COVID-19 is that parents were at last awakened to what was going on in the classrooms they were sending their children to.

From the Horses Mouth … so to speak

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Each and every day there is someone in the news proclaiming to be an expert on gender affirming care. What I have yet to see is anyone who is a long term post-surgical transsexual, with the exception of Caitlyn Jenner, discuss the issues involved in that fateful decision. Now, admittedly I do not watch every news channel, and for a very good reason. Most of them have an agenda and the predominant agenda is based in a push to force a trans-gender ideology on much of the adolescent population in our public schools. I find that tragic.

In the early years of the 21st Century, I stumbled across a mid-nineties article in a medical publication that discussed the suicide rate among transsexuals. The numbers in that article were based on “actual” suicides not “attempted” suicides. There were a lot of statistics listed to shore up the basic findings of the study which the publication quoted. The one statistic that stuck out for me was that the suicide rate among the cisgender community was in the neighborhood 0.25 percent of the study population. In comparison, the rate among the trans community was roughly 10.5 to 11 time higher. Personally, by the time I was in my mid-fifties I had personally only known 2 people who had committed suicide. Within one year of involvment in the transgender community I had four people I knew commit suicide.

Consideration of suicide is something that has never been an issue with me other than to wonder what it would take for me to even mildly entertain the idea. So, when I read about the current rate of youth who have “considered” suicide as a reason for “gender affirming care” in the youth today I have to admit to a certain degree of skepticism stemming from the knowledge that teenagers have a tendency to be a bit dramatic. So, just how accurate is that statistic? Is it based on hospital records or the teenager’s word?

My biggest concern regarding the frequency of “attempted” suicide is the influence that the school personnel are having in the student’s lives. It’s my belief that school personnel have only 2 jobs. The first being to educate children in their care … not indoctrinate them. The second job they have is to keep the parents informed as to the progress their children are making and highlight failings as well as accomplishments. That is not what’s happening today.

Anyone who has followed what I write in this blog knows that I have been beating a drum about the dangers of the NEA for quite some time. It’s a danger that I recognized over sixty years ago when doing debate prep on the high school debate team. Even then I was aware of the fact that our schools and the teachers they employ had in reality more hours a day in which to influence the understanding that children develop than the time their parents have. Recent events regarding gender identity have proven that what I understood then was fairly accurate, without knowing the extent to which the teacher’s unions would go to usurp the rights and influence of the parents. In my mind it’s akin to kidnapping when a teacher who is entrusted with the care of a child goes behind the parents back to push what, in most cases, is surely a temporary fantasy.

What is going to happen ten or even as little as five years from now when that child realized what a horrible mistake has been made? I can’t imagine what the actual suicide rate is going to climb to. Unless I miss my guess, an entirely new form of legal remedies will develop in the form of suits brought against teacher’s union and individual teachers themselves and deservedly so.

There are those who will say to me that I’m just spewing sour grapes since I didn’t make that irreversible decision until late in my life because I was a coward. Maybe! But, when I made that decision, it was with a background of having lived a life as a boy, a man, a husband and a father, which gave me knowledge that could only come from that experience. I admit there are times that I wonder “what might have been” had I not made that irreversible decision. I also wonder at times what life would have been like had I made that decision then. And I seriously doubt that I am no different from every other post-surgical transsexual.

I have had the privilege of living 2 lives which is something that these children who are being groomed by teachers and sometimes by misguided parents who think they are being loving, will never know. In most cases those parents are not being loving at all. How many of these children who are being secretly transitioned are going to return to that classroom with an AK47 ten, fifteen or twenty years from now and indiscriminately open fire in anger. (and yes I’m aware that the recent case involving a former student at a Christian school appeared to be revenge for having not been recognized as who she thought she was).

The bottom line to me is that we are witnessing a tragic confluence of out of control so called educators and woke ideology. As far as I’m concerned, the first of many lawsuits against school administrators and teachers is long overdue. Gender identity should be left to the individual and the family together with a trained counselor.

So now you have it straight from the horse’s mouth… So to speak.

Thank you Professor Jimmy and Crafton Hills College

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Yesterday was another amazing day at Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa California. Thanks to Professor Jimmy Urbanovich, A.K.A. Speech Teach … I was once again given the opportunity to speak at Crafton Hills College. The reception was, as it has been in the past, even more gratifying than the time before.
 
My experiences with the students and faculty there have continued to add support to my observations about people. The biggest complaint I have had with the LGBT community in general is that they make little effort to reach out to the rest of society to explain what it’s like to be in their shoes. Rather they tend to demand blind acceptance from society and when they meet with resistance, react with even more demands and anger. 
I have found in experiences like the one at CHC, that when I simply share my experience with people as I did yesterday, without an accompanying demand for acceptance that acceptance is the natural outcome. People tend become defensive when demands are made of them, especially when the demand is acceptance of something alien to them or something that they have been led to believe is somehow unnatural or evil.
To further advance my own perspective, I was overwhelmed by the responses I received yesterday, when after my main presentation in the auditorium we adjourned to Professor Jimmy’s classroom for some give-and-take questioning and answering.
There were the usual unenthusiastic attendees who were there simply because their attendance was a class requirement. Those individuals I always seek to find a way to draw out and challenge in a positive way. It’s part of the fun of what I do, but the real reward is from people like one young man who told me afterward that he had not wanted to come, but that a friend had challenged him to show up. This morning I had a lengthy e-mail from him explaining that I had given him a whole new, although uncertain, perspective on his own life.
One young woman, who attended the initial presentation wasn’t even a student, but chose to come to the more intimate session in the classroom even though it meant being late for work. She approached me before the session began to tell me that she would have to leave for work shortly and didn’t want me to think she didn’t want to hear anymore of what I had to say. She was still there nearly 2 hours later and was the first one ask for a picture with me.
Another student, a young man with a very athletic build shared his experience with seeing and individual in his locker room whose appearance was confusing to say the least; looked far more female than male in most respects in body but still apparently male. His concern was that the situation made him feel terribly uncomfortable, which bothered him. He asked me if that was wrong. I explained that his reaction was normal and not to be confused with disgust. He was simply experiencing a natural reaction to a new and unexpected situation. If there was something in the individuals behavior that added to the discomfort it was perfectly appropriate to avoid interacting with them.
These are just three of the reactions I received yesterday and they all point to my original statement above. Simply sharing your own story without demanding acceptance, understanding or approval is a far more acceptable way to gain acceptance, understanding or approval. It’s a far more effective approach with a far more rewarding outcome.
The discussion eventually led to “The Bathroom Issue”. On that I have some rather definite opinions which I shared and which are in line with what I stated above. I think the edict that former president Obama issued regarding transgender bathroom use was much to the same point I made in the second paragraph of this entry. There was no effort made to help people understand and furthermore, by virtue of it’s broad and general nature, it was an open invitation to abuse by individuals with less than noble intentions. And again it was made without regard to different regional moral and ethical standards which is why I personally agree with President Trump’s order to rescind the previous order on the grounds that it is a state’s prerogative issue.
My thanks, once again to Professor Jimmy and Crafton Hills College for the opportunity to share my story and views.