Starting in the fall of 2017, Washington state public schools will begin to teach kindergartners about gender expression as a result of new health education learning standards that say sexual health is a “core idea” in K-12 education.
In kindergarten classes throughout Washington, one component of the new sexual health curriculum called “self-identity” will teach students that there are many ways to express gender, according to the 2016 guidelines.
According to Washington’s health education glossary, designed to support classroom instruction, gender is “a social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex.” The glossary also defines gender expression as “the way someone outwardly expresses their gender,” gender identity as “someone’s inner sense of their gender,” and gender roles as “social expectations about how people should act, think, or feel based on their assigned biological sex.”
Students in Washington’s public schools will be held learning standards on this topic as they progress through their education.
By 3rd grade, students will be expected to understand that gender roles can vary considerably, and the need to treat others and their gender identities with respect.
In 4th grade, students will learn to define sexual orientation and how friends and family can influence gender expression, gender identity, and gender roles. In 5th grade, they’ll learn how media, society, and culture can influence those same things. Fifth graders will also identify trusted adults to ask questions regarding gender identity or sexual orientation, though it doesn’t define what constitutes a trusted adult.
At the culmination of elementary education around the age of 11 or 12, students will be expected to understand the range of gender identities, gender roles, and gender expression in different cultures. However, the sexual health training regarding gender doesn’t stop there.
Seventh graders will learn how to distinguish between gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, and biological sex, and students will learn how external influences shape attitudes towards these things in 8th grade.
Lastly, high schoolers will learn how culture, society, media, and other people influence our beliefs about sexuality, relationships, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), who developed the glossary of new gender definitions and created the standards, denied that their intentions are to impose certain beliefs on students.
“Standards help students become familiar with concepts that education experts feel are essential for all students to know. Standards are not used to impose belief systems” Nathan Olson, communications manager for OSPI, told the Daily Caller.
There has been pushback from people nationwide regarding schools teaching a “gender spectrum.” Fox News’s Todd Starnes reported last month on Fairfax County (Virginia) School District’s plan to teach the gender spectrum to middle- and high-school students with “the idea that there’s no such thing as 100 percent boys or 100 percent girls.”
That curriculum caused outrage amongst parents.
When asked by a Daily Caller reporter what would happen if a student doesn’t believe that “gender identity” is different from “biological sex,” Olson said, “That would be handled at the school/district level.”
Olson also admitted that “we don’t know exactly what a school would do if a student failed to complete an assignment because he/she opposed the materials being taught.”
Olson expressed that the individual school districts can create their own curricula surrounding “sexual health” as long as they align with the state’s standards.
While Washington State’s OSPI says that they are not trying to push an agenda with the standards that strive to teach students about gender expression, these standards contain concepts that “educational experts” believe are essential. However, those “educational experts” often push liberal viewpoints at students, so it seems as they are indirectly doing so through the state’s new standards.
Also, its interesting that Washington State’s public schools are designating sexual health as a “core idea” of K-12 education. Traditionally, the core ideas of education have been social sciences, English, and STEM subjects. It appears that the government wants future students to learn different things in school than previous students had.
