Educator Notices a Pattern Around Trans-Identitifed Youth & Pronouns

NEWS

Lawrence M. Ludlow has written an article about what he believes is an implosion of academic standards and destructive take over of schools by far-left identity politics. The article describing his return to a teaching position in a Suburban school in the American Thinker is called "Worse Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years."

The relevant section here is his quote about gender dysphoria:

Gender dysphoria is the new frontier in virtue-signaling, but we know that young people experiment with new identities – adopting and discarding career choices, hobbies, and friends as they “try them on for size.” But the gender dysphoria fad requires adherence to a stereotyped view – namely that certain behaviors are appropriate only for boys and others for girls. Some children, however, have a powerful need for attention and jump on the latest bandwagon to obtain it. Others want to please “important” adults. Shortly after I was hired, a counselor asked me to address one student with plural pronouns to acknowledge her/his gender dysphoria. This request would not have been an issue for me if the student were an adult. I treat people respectfully as a matter of habit. But this student was too young to make this choice. He/she may have been responding to the issue’s trendiness and had demonstrated more than once an interest in fringe politics and behaviors – typical teenage stuff. I believed he/she was attempting to manipulate adults into playing along – another teenage pastime. Moreover, he/she was bright but did not do her homework or study; he/she didn’t even know what a pronoun was! Since Latin is a highly inflected language, this request would derail the learning process. Finally, it was completely unnecessary since I always called on students by name. No pronouns were needed. My explanation did not please the counselor, but I continued to treat the student respectfully.

This is not the first teacher to say they believe there is a faddish element to trans identification and that the demands for pronoun usage are part of a power dynamic. Some also report there is an environment of fear and hostility around pronoun usage on college campuses.

Some of the examples of this can be found on our website in a section Trans identification wielded to seek special attention/power at school & elsewhere.

REFERENCES:

Ludlow, L. (2019, August 15). Worse Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years. American Thinker. Retrieved from https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/worse_than_ever_government_schools_after_35_years_.html