Students as young as five will be told that ‘everybody has the right to choose their own gender.’
Students across the country as young as kindergarten-age are learning that “everybody gets to choose their own gender” and are receiving kid-friendly lessons on disrupting “Western nuclear family dynamics” as part of this week’s national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.
The activist-driven curriculum for the Week of Action, which kicked off Monday, is based off the 13 “Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles.” Those principles include a commitment to restorative justice, being transgender affirming and queer affirming, creating space for black families that is “free from patriarchal practices,” and “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other.”
Black Lives Matter at School offers kid-friendly versions of the 13 principles designed for elementary and middle-school students.
The Week of Action also includes a list of four national demands: end zero-tolerance discipline policies; mandate black history and ethnic studies; hire more black teachers; and fund counselors, not cops, according to a “starter kit” on the Black Lives Matter at School website.
In the starter kit, New York City kindergarten teacher Laleña Garcia, author of a children’s book about BLM principles, writes that while “discussing big ideas with little people” it is necessary to “consider age-appropriate language so that our students or children can grasp the concepts.” For example, she suggests not talking about police violence with “our youngest children.”
When discussing BLM’s principle of being transgender affirming, Garcia offers the following kid-friendly language: “Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them.”
When discussing the BLM principle of a “Black Village,” which includes the goal of disrupting the Western nuclear family structure, Garcia suggests teaching kids that “there are lots of different kinds of families; what makes a family is that it’s people who take care of each other; those people might be related, or maybe they choose to be a family together and to take care of each other. Sometimes, when it’s a lot of families together, it can be called a village.”
Schools and school districts across the country are participating, including schools in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, according to a list compiled by Parents Defending Education, a nonprofit that fights classroom indoctrination and activist-driven agendas in schools.
One of the schools participating is Centennial Elementary School in Denver, which is hosting a Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action for kindergarteners and first graders. Centennial made headlines in December after it was revealed that the school was planning a racially-segregated “families of color playground night” in the name of diversity and equity.
According to a section of the school’s website answering frequently asked questions about the Black Lives Matter movement, the goal of school leaders is “not to teach children what to think,” but “rather to expose them to different perspectives and opinions so that they learn to value and respect diversity.” It is unclear if Centennial will be offering students perspectives and opinions that run counter to the BLM principles during the Week of Action. The school’s principal, Laura Munro, did not respond to an email from National Review. The school’s website states that, according to the U.S. government, “supporting BLM is not political.”
“While these topics are big, and ones we’re still learning about as adults, we believe it is never too early to start to talk to kids about race,” according to Centennial’s website.
Black Lives Matter at School is endorsed by the National Education Association, and teachers unions in Seattle, Chicago, New York City, and Maryland. The Montgomery County Education Association has urge members to pledge their support for the BLM at School principles.
The Black Lives Matter at School movement started in Seattle in October 2016 when thousands of educators, along with hundreds of families and students, came to school wearing BLM shirts, according to the BLM at School organization. The first nationally-organized week of action occurred in February 2018.