Kids as Props, Don't Say Gay, Transgender Police, and Teaching Controversial Topics 3/12/22

News round up where Governor De-Santis uses students as props and it backfires. We also look at Florida's  "Don't Say Gay" Bill. Texas and the role of child protective agencies and schools with emerging transgender students. We also examine the teaching of controversial topics.

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Welcome back to Education Matters New York. I'm your host, Wayne Ackles. Welcome back on this snowy March weekend, our regularly scheduled guests had some complications due to the weather and couldn't join us today. And as a result, we'll be doing a news roundup and we'll use the news roundup to talk a little bit about teaching controversial topics in schools. This was something that I hadn't initially planned to do this season, but it seemed to be the time to do it. And so therefore, we're going to get in to that in a little bit. What I'm going to start with is a story that was in the news in the last week, around an announcement that the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis made. And before he made his announcement, he proceeded to scold a group of students that were wearing masks behind him. And he then caught a lot of flack for that. It got me thinking that I think something that often happens when politicians make announcements. Sometimes students and teachers are often used as props at these photo ops. This is one of those times where this, you know, using them as props kind of backfired, because he decided to yell at the at the same people that were supposed to give his message credibility. As I've said, I've tried to stay fairly non-political on this show. And so since I'm an equal opportunity, finger pointer, this reminded me of something that I hadn't thought about until I saw this incident happen. it happened to a former student of mine, who then also became an administrator. And this occurred to her while she was still in the teaching ranks. She was a teacher at Fairport High School that had been recognized at the state level. For the work that she was doing. I forgot exactly what she was recognized for. At the beginning of the speech. The teachers were recognized for their fine work and then are then Governor Andrew Cuomo went into a rant about how awful teachers were and overpaid, etc. the usual suspects. Again, that was just shocking. You know, no one saw it coming. I felt so bad for my students, you know, watching her face during his harangue, it just goes to show that, you know, I understand the need for a photo op. But when you put people in a bad position like that the payback is is pretty intense. And that moment in New York, I think, honestly, is one of the reasons why we see people continue to leave the profession or not get into the profession in droves. Every time someone attacks and borates. That work that we do makes that job a little less appealing, because no one likes to get beat up at their job. And no one likes to get beat up publicly, especially. So that was just something that struck me in the midst of Mr. DeSantis his rant at those 14 year old students. Our first news story takes us back to Florida and to a bill by its detractors. It's known as the don't say gay bill, I don't want to spend a lot of time on each of these pieces of legislation, or in the case of the second story and executive order. But what I do want to focus in on is some of the controversial aspects of these, and what the concern with them from an educator standpoint is, and then also talk about, you know, teaching controversial topics, because part of what the concern is with both of these laws is what the penalty if you will, for a teacher, the teachers, these controversial topics are so the Florida law is again, the don't is the detractors call it the don't say gay bill. And its actual name is the parental rights and Education Act. The heart of the bill that has passed the Florida Legislature is that the classroom instruction by school personnel, or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur and kindergarten through third grade, or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. And that was a quote from the bill that was in Education Week. And I believe they also had some help from the folks from the Associated Press. Now, it's interesting I think, two pieces to this that strike me is the first is the k three component to it. My guess is that there is not A health curriculum or other curriculum in any of the 50 states that actually gets into gender identity or sexual orientation, my guess is that it's probably closer to something like maybe a family dynamics, you know, some families look different, that kind of thing. If there's anything like that at all, I think that was a very calculated place to put that. Because, again, there's there's probably not a lot of that education going on there. The second half of that legislation that makes it a little bit dicey from a legal standpoint, and I think this is where it will potentially get in the weeds. And if there are challenges to this law, or if they are attempted to be enforced, I think one of the things that will become into question is, you know, what is, quote, appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. And I think where districts will fall back on is their approved curricula that already exists around the teaching of these topics, and some of those may be statewide curricula? So you know, we've we've talked about this on the show before is that there's curriculum that's developed district to district, and there are some curricula that are statewide, and many times when it comes to health education platforms, and other things that are taught around health. There might be, you know, tied to a health class, they're going to be a statewide curricula and not, you know, a standalone for particular district. That's not to say that there may not be add ons, etc. But I think that would be something that a district and or a teacher that if they were challenged on this, they could point to and fall back on these battles or about what is okay in society have often fallen at the schoolhouse door. Again, I'll talk more about that when we get to the controversial topics teaching here a little bit later. Our next law takes us to Texas, it's just one is a little bit more troubling for a number of reasons. And I liked the way that Education Week framed the article. With their title Texas educators say they don't want to be transgender police. This was written by Mark Walsh, back on the 10th. So basically, what has happened in Texas is that the governor of Texas, has issued an executive order, he basically says in it, and I have it in front of me. I'm going to read a section of it from this. This was something that he sent on February 22. To the commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and New York State we would call them CPS Child Protective Services. He talks about that a quote number of so called sex change procedures constitute child abuse under existing Texas law because the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is responsible for protecting children from abuse, I hereby director agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures. In the state of Texas, it goes on to say that Texas law, again, I'm quoting from the document imposes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse, including doctors, nurses, teachers, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse. There are similar reporting requirements and criminal payment penalties for members of the general public. This is a little bit more troubling, I think, than the other bill, which I think there is, you know, there's a lot that we could dive into on both of these bills with this particular bill. I think one of the things that that becomes difficult is that these treatments that are being outlined by the governor have been designated by a doctor, the doctor is often treating or is treating something known as gender dysphoria, which is defined by the DSM five the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. For those of you that haven't seen it or heard of it, this is the this is the manual that psychologists and clinicians use and psychiatrist in order to make the determination of what is a mental illness and what's not and it's something that's revised every few years. Things are taken in things or tweaked or things are added gender dysphoria, I actually had to look it up because it wasn't a term I was familiar with to boil it down, I think in adults and adolescents, that is one area of this, but the diagnosis and children, which is it's some fairly specific markers that someone would have to show in order to go through gender dysphoria treatment, having worked with students that were transgender, in my past lives, you know, it's something that is a process that is taken very slowly, very deliberately. That's been my experience anyway. And it's not something that is rushed through that, you know, the moment that a child thinks that maybe I'm not the gender I was assigned, that there's not an immediate rush to hormone treatments, etc. There's counseling, there is a whole process that happens when it comes to gender dysphoria. This is distress that is caused by the Assign gender, the insistence that the other gender is that they want to be the other gender excuse me, for boys strong preference for cross dressing, I'm reading from the DSM five right now, in female attire in a strong preference for cross gender roles and make believe or fantasy play preference for the toys, games activities are typically used by or engaged by the other gender preference or playmates of the other gender strong rejection of typical masculine toys, games, activities, and a strong avoidance of rough and tumble play, or in girls, the assigned gender a strong rejection, typically feminine toys, games and activities, a strong dislike of one sexual anatomy. And I think that one is an important one, and a strong desire for the physical sex characteristic characteristics, excuse me that match one's experience gender, and that lasts second to the last one, a strong dislike of one sexual anatomy, I think is an important piece to this puzzle, because we have all experienced young people that maybe didn't, you know, necessarily play with the toys that are quote, typically assigned to a gender and things like that, the, quote, Tomboy, etc. But, again, you know, this is not something that is casually assigned, at least that's been my experience. And so the distress that comes from that is what would lead to these treatments. But you know, what, the steps that that would entail, you know, if a student disclosed to someone, that they were being treated by a doctor for these kinds of things, you know, I don't know how that leads to a report to Child Protective Services. I guess the only way that I think makes sense in that situation is if that child says that I'm under these, this gender dysphoria treatment against my will, I think that makes for a case, but to just say, I'm being treated by a doctor, a licensed professional for something that is a recognized condition, I think that is very much a problematic stand for the governor and what he's asking the Department of Family Protective Services, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I can see why teachers are nervous about this, we will have to wait and see as to what that looks like going forward. And finally, today, I want to talk a little about teaching controversial topics, and my experience with that, and hopefully give some tips for those that may have to teach controversial topics, or maybe to administrators that might be new and are faced with how to defend how a teacher is teaching controversial topics, some things to look for, and how to give guidance on that because it's it's not an easy task. It's not something that you can do it. People get better with it with experience, but it's always something that you can get tripped up on fairly easily. So as I said earlier, schools have often been the battleground for these issues. I was thinking about this and preparing for today's show. There were two incidences that come to mind. One was very clear protest that it was early in my career and Fairport, I usually arrive to school long before a lot of times others other students especially or other teachers arrived, I remember someone saying, hey there, they're protesting out in front of the school and as our buses were arriving that day, across the street, on a road, there were a group of protesters producing signs and other things and, and yelling about I believe it was abortion and how you know, Fairport was promoting abortion, etc, etc, etc. And that was something that stuck out another one, which was a little less clear that I think it's it actually was a sign of things to come with some of the conspiracy theories that we have out there, we were doing an initiative in Honeoye. This was in the early 90s. Where we were, it was called outcomes based education. And it was looking at, as it says, The outcomes of how students would be graded, it was actually way ahead of its time met with tremendous resistance by largely people that didn't understand what it was doing. I remember going to one of the how to put this a talk that was given on behalf of the PTA leader at the time, it suddenly devolved into a talk of the New World Order and black helicopters and all kinds of conspiracy theory stuff that somehow outcome based education was going to lead to really it was a change at looking at students work as a whole, changing the way that we looked at grading, that was the bottom line. It was a sign of things to come because as these topics and they have different looks and flavors, etc, continue to be battled out in schools, that those fights have become even more difficult. And I think that's largely because of social media. And here's why if someone has a particular point of view on a topic, and then they get on the web, especially through social media platforms, the algorithms are going to steer them toward articles, topics that align to their worldview, so they won't hear another side, they will not see something counter to their argument. It will just reinforce and it becomes a giant echo chamber. And this is one of the more damaging pieces of social media and a lot of research and discussion around that there's a great piece on Netflix, they did kind of Docu drama type thing where they have many of the people who helped design the Facebook platforms and other platforms, and they interview them and then they intersperse that with the experience of a young man who ends up spiraling down a rabbit hole into some pretty dark places. Anyway, the point of that is they talk a great deal about the algorithms and how they direct and redirect you to pieces that will quote, kind of fit your worldview. And that's that's damaging, I regularly try to get news from a variety of sources for that reason. And that was something I often told my students even before the internet, was to check out news from a variety of sources. Don't just listen to listen to commentators, you know, what is being told, at different levels. It's, you know, one of the one of the things also when it comes to some of these issues, often schools are painted as having, quote, an agenda. One of the things that I really appreciated last week's guest, Brian Schmidt, talking about what he's doing with community schooling is he amplify exemplified a lot of what I've seen, what I tried to do ghouls I think generally tried to do, and that is to pragmatically fix issues and issues that our students are dealing with, and create programming that helps students broadly, it's not always perfect, we don't always get it right. But again, the idea is that we're trying to fix a situation that is getting in the way of learning to some degree. And that's where that comes from. So let me get into talking a little bit about teaching these controversial topics. And the approach that I used also some background as a social studies guy. A lot of times I didn't deal with a lot of tangible topics. And what I mean by that is, unlike my current role, and it's one of the things I love about my role as a training coordinator for DDS companies in Henrietta, as a training coordinator, DDS, I'm dealing with very tangible things, the depth of trenches to put gas pipe in the specific gravity of natural gas and how that is related to air and what natural gas does because of its specific gravity, for instance, those are very tangible things, things that we can demonstrate things that we can point to etc. They can touch plastic pipe, etc. I didn't have that luxury when I was a social studies teacher topics like federalism, again, I mentioned the role of guns in our society, those are much tougher things to just point to tangibly or to say that there's a right or wrong answer sometimes to them. When you teach these topics, I think it's very important that the teacher creates a situation for students to ask questions of themselves and to each other, and to create healthy spaces for discussion. Now, one of the things that often happens is that there will be parents out there that do not want their child to engage in these conversations that, you know, they have a worldview, and they want only that worldview for their child to be exposed to. And that's oftentimes where some of these conversations begin, is that it wasn't so much what was said, what often happens, and this has been the experience I've had in some parent conferences, backing teachers, was that the conversation in general is what the parent just didn't like. And it was based on a standard curriculum. That, frankly, I mean, the one that came to mind was one on the political spectrum. And they disagreed with how the political spectrum was portrayed. It was too lengthy of a conversation to get into here. But the bottom line was, is that the parent didn't agree that the conversation should be presented in this way. And it was an established, not only curricular piece, but an established historic piece of this version of the political spectrum is probably the best way I can describe it. When it came to teaching controversial topics, you know, what I can speak to how I approached this. And what I always told teachers to do is, again, not to tell, not to tell a position, but to let students explore those and have those conversations. And that's the goal. Now, what I will say is that, are there times where there are things where I said, you know, this, this is right, or this is wrong, we'll sure discrimination is wrong. Racism is wrong. Those are things that are fairly cut and dry. And I think one of the things where you can create spaces, to have debates, again, are on areas where where there isn't a tangible one answer to the solution. Again, the role of guns in our society, you know, that's a fertile place to have that conversation. You know, how much legislation should there be, you know, is, is the is the answer to school shootings, for instance, arming teachers, that is a topic, I think you can have safely and and work your way through. But again, the idea is to set that up where the students are the ones creating the conversation, and the teacher is there to guide it not telling a perspective, the more research that students do on their own and bring to the table. And I think that's where the teachers have to play a role is guiding that research, because as I said, the algorithms may draw someone in a direction that doesn't give them both sides. And I think it's always important to make sure that students can argue both sides of an argument, especially if it's a side they don't agree with, because that's what keeps us keeps us a democracy, a representative democracy, you know, those things. We've gotten very, very tribal. And it concerns me with the course of our democracy right now that we're having trouble seeing any other perspective. And that's not to say there aren't some goofy perspectives out there right now. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that if we're going to continue as a representative democracy, we need to be able to talk to each other about controversial topics about the role of government, about the role of guns in our society, etc. And on that cheery note, I will wrap up this week's episode of education matters New York. Next week, we will have a host again. Oh, well, we always have a host we will have a guest again, excuse me. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Have a great upcoming week.