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Students at Betty Fairfax High School dropped their masks on Friday to participate in GLSEN’s “Day of Silence.” Across the state, K-12 students were urged to participate in the overtly political activity during the school day.
The decision to drop masks stunned teachers and parents in the District due to the nearly religious adherence to masking on the part of the District’s administration. In fact, Phoenix Union’s administration was so adamantly committed to their masking mandate that they defied a state law last year that prohibited schools from requiring face coverings or the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of in-person learning.
As previously reported, GLSEN claims to promote support for LGBTQIA+ youth, while actually pushing a wide-ranging political agenda, from defunding the police to promoting the belief that gender binary is a white supremacist concept.
According to AZ FREE News, “GSAs originated with GLSEN in the late 1990s. GLSEN, established in 1990, not only promotes the sexualization of children, it intertwines the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in its messaging. In guidelines for promoting inclusivity through a GSA, GLSEN wrote that having black representation in GSA leadership was necessary, and touched on topics like intersectionality, solidarity, centeredness, anti-racism, and white supremacy. It also insisted that GSA engage in social justice activism.
The organization has made clear that its agenda is to inject their ideology “wall-to-wall, K-12” in Arizona schools. To that end, Gender & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) clubs have popped up at schools across the state.
It was GSA sponsor, Jennifer Roberts, a teacher at Empire High School in the Vail Unified School District, that invited students to the school’s library to last week “officially break the silence at the end of the day,” at a mixer event.
To her credit, Roberts reminded students that while they may exercise their First Amendment right to protest, the exercise of that right cannot interfere with the learning environment.
She advised student in her email, “Please know that if you are scheduled to do something that requires speaking in class (giving a presentation) or need to complete work in class (group projects), you will still need to do so. You can return to being silent after you are done.”
However, critics say that a protest in which students are outwardly showing support throughout the day, either with tape on their mouths, arm bands, or name badges with pronoun choices like those provide to students at Empire High, are going to naturally create distractions in school and possibly bring possible scorn on students who choose not to participate.
Parents with students in Cocopah Middle School in the Scottsdale Unified School District were successful in stopping the observation of the “Day of Silence” this year, due to their efforts to expose the recruiting of vulnerable young children into the GSA club on that campus.
Experts say, it is better for schools to eschew controversial and political agendas on school campuses altogether. They point to the tremendous learning loss students across the country experienced as a result of covid mitigation efforts. They argue that now is not the time to engage
“When I left office, Arizona students performed above the national average on all three measures under the SAT test, a national test that the states cannot manipulate: critical reading, writing, and math. Since then, the academic performance of the students has declined precipitously,” said former Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. “This is because leadership has neglected the necessary emphasis on academics, with harmful diversions, such as critical race theory, or, as in this case, promoting transgenderism. Teachers need to be teaching the academics and not promoting transgenderism, racially divisive critical race theory, or other similar diversions. My heroes are teachers who love their subjects, and focus on teaching them, rather than those who see their role as pushing ideological agendas.”
“Parents need to wake up and realize that “public education” is no longer about teaching reading, writing and arithmetic and hasn’t been for a very long time,” said former Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas. “Virtually every subject is being turned into a conduit for Critical Race Theory/Social Emotional Learning, Diversity Equity Inclusion or Comprehensive Sex Education. Education is no longer about thinking; it is about feelings. Ask high schoolers what they think and you will hear how they feel about the issue. If parents want their children truly educated they must get them out of government schools.”
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