Parents in Wisconsin’s second largest school district were recently informed their children — as young as kindergarteners — would undergo a week of “gender identity” programming where they will learn about a “spectrum” of genders and sexual orientations, according to a Monday report.
An email sent out last week and obtained by the Wisconsin Spotlight notified parents that Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) elementary students will endure a week of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” education as part of a curriculum of the Welcoming Schools program designed to “uplift school communities with critical tools to embrace family diversity, create LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and non-binary students.”
The email informed parents about the lesson plan intended for the week, where the schoolchildren will learn about various “identities,” including “gender identity, sex assigned at birth, and sexual orientation,” as part of the Health and Social Emotional Learning curriculum.
“We will be using our morning meeting time to do read-alouds and classroom discussions based around these topics,” the letter reads. “We will end the week with a rainbow day on Friday!”
In an attached explanatory video, Welcoming Schools Lead for MMSD Jennifer Herdina, a consultant and former elementary classroom teacher, offered an overview of the issues for families to “understand… how we’re talking about gender in our elementary schools.”
The clip depicts a “gender snowperson” graphic used in gender talks with the children.
The upper part of the image represents one’s “gender identity,” which Herdina describes as “how you feel and who you know you are — and that could be girl, boy, both, or neither.”
Beneath one’s “sexual orientation” is displayed — which is “who you love” alongside terms describing various orientations, such as: “gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, [and] heterosexual.”
The bottom portion represents “sex assigned at birth,” or “your biology.”
“Most often we think about our biology just in terms of body parts, but really our chromosomes and hormones also play a factor into our biology of whether we are male, female, or intersex,” the instructor says.
She also highlights “gender expression,” describing it as “how we show ourselves to the world around us,” including through clothing, hairstyles, and various mannerisms.
“Gender expression is different all across the world and even changes over time,” she states, adding that we “now recognize that there are a spectrum of identities” with sex assigned at birth; gender identity and expression; and sexual orientation all existing on a “continuum.”
“We can be anywhere along this continuum in each of these areas,” she explains, as she asks parents to “take a quick moment and think about where you identify on each of these spectrums.”
The reason why such issues need to be taught in elementary schools, the instructor asserts, is because “everyone has a gender” which is “essential to who we are and how we identify,” with “most people” developing their gender “between the ages of two and four.”
“So if we’re talking about gender in elementary schools, by the time they are entering elementary school most kids know who they are, how they identify, [and] do they feel like they are a boy or a girl, both, or neither,” she continues.
“And though they may not have the words for it, they know in their hearts and in their minds how they’d identify,” she adds.
The consultant then claims that within the MMSD alone, there are “many elementary school students who identify as cisgender, as transgender, as non-binary, and the whole spectrum of identities.”
She also assured parents that discussions surrounding gender identity with elementary school children are presented in “developmentally appropriate ways.”
“The way we talk about it with kindergarteners is going to be different than the way we talk about it with fifth graders,” she says.
Conservative activist Scarlett Johnson, a Mequon mother who served as a member of former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch’s (R) gubernatorial campaign team, lambasted the notion of sexual education and gender identity curricula “for 5 year olds,” stating: “We need to FUND KIDS, not woke systems.”
In October, the Madison Metropolitan district — which includes over 30 elementary schools — published a video celebrating “National Coming Out Day” featuring various LGBTQ staff throughout the district expressing support for schoolchildren who choose to “come out” and reveal their true gender and sexual orientation.
The matter comes as woke initiatives seek to incorporate gender ideology and queer theory in the educational system, including the dissemination of sexually explicit, pro-LGBTQ and transgender propaganda in elementary and kindergarten classrooms.
In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an “assessment tool” for teachers and school administrators to measure their commitment to “LGBTQ inclusivity” in the classroom.
The tool asks leading questions about school personnel and their commitment to queer theory, including encouraging sexual education teachers to have gender neutral anatomy, referring to a boy as a “body with a penis” and a girl as a “body with a vagina.”
Actress and education advocate Sam Sorbo has accused today’s schools of “child abuse” while slamming the “craziness” surrounding gender ideology in schools.
“Your children have been stolen from you by a system that seeks their destruction,” she warned as she called on parents to “save your families” by considering “home education” instead.
In this Oct. 9, 2019 photo, Donya Grant, upper right, works on homeschool lessons with her children, Rowyn, 11, left, Mabry, 8, second from left, and Kemper, 14, right, in their home in Monroe, Wash. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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