LGBT themed flashcards removed from Wake County Pre-K classroom
LGBT themed flashcards removed from Wake County Pre-K classroom
Cards for learning 'colors' all have LGBT themes, including a pregnant man
On Friday, May 27, flashcards featuring LGBT themes were confiscated from a preschool classroom in North Carolina’s largest school district of Wake County.
The cards were allegedly used to teach preschoolers their colors at Ballantine Elementary in Fuquay Varina. The cards featured gay and lesbian couples with children, as well as a card depicting a pregnant man.
A press release from North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore says that Erin Paré (R-Wake) received an email from a constituent that alerted her to the use of the flashcards along with pictures of some of the cards.
According to the press release, Paré immediately contacted the principal of the elementary school, who took quickly investigated, found the cards and confiscated them.
“The principal confirmed that the flash cards were not part of approved curriculum and that she was unaware that they were being used,” the press release says. “The principal immediately took possession of the cards, contacted the WCPSS area superintendent, and engaged human resources.”
“I am grateful that a concerned constituent reached out and that this issue is being addressed in a swift and professional manner by Ballentine Elementary School,” said Rep. Erin Paré (R-Wake) in the press release.
“Schools should only be using age-appropriate materials, and these flashcards clearly do not meet that standard for a pre-school classroom,” Paré said. “I hope schools across Wake County and the State of North Carolina will follow the example of Ballentine and respond swiftly when a parent expresses concern and ensure that materials like this are not being used to teach young students.”
The cards are in the “Progress Pride Flag Rainbow Families” collection sold by ByUsBox.com. The cards are currently sold out, according to the website, which describes them as being laminated and “perfect for baby showers!”
After numerous attempts by phone to reach the seller, a male representative of the retailer responded with “yes” when asked if the card was supposed to depict a pregnant man.
A statement from the Wake County Public Schools System (WCPSS) said that an initial review determined that flashcards “were not tied to the district’s Pre-K curriculum, did not complement, enrich, or extend the curriculum and were used without the Principal’s review, knowledge, and/or approval.”
WCPSS also said the “inappropriate materials” were removed from Ballentine Elementary and the “district is reviewing the matter.”
North Carolina State Superintendent Catherine Truitt reacted and tweeted, “I can think of a hundred other ways to teach colors to pre-school children. Classroom materials need to be age appropriate, and this certainly doesn’t meet the mark.”
The discovery of the flashcards follows an announcement earlier this week of a Parents’ Bill of Rights, which seeks transparency in curriculum, notification of parents regarding health decisions, and other issues.
The parents’ bill of rights is contained in House Bill 755, which also includes a section barring the teaching of gender identity ideology and topics about sexuality to kids in kindergarten through third grade. With these flashcards being used in a pre-k classroom, the bill may see an update to include pre-k.
Democrats and LGBT groups have already tried to label the bill as ‘NC’s Don’t Say Gay’ bill and at least one Democrat, Sen. Michael Garrett (D-Greensboro), has tried to call the bill the “classroom version” of HB2.
On the national level, Biden’s education secretary refused to say if schools should keep student gender transitions secret from their parents.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was questioned about the issue by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) during a May 26 House Education and Labor Committee meeting. Banks repeatedly pressed Cardona on whether he believed schools should keep a student's gender transition a secret from their parents.
Watch the exchange below:
More to the story: Parents have a right to know… Everything.
At the heart of both the NC Parents’ Rights bill and Banks’ questioning is the basic right of parents to know what is happening with their children when they are at school.
And parents have a right to be concerned as districts have a bureaucratic structure that prioritizes itself over its constituents.
Some requests may be complicated, but most are simple - parents want to see a workbook or a survey. When they ask for it, a parent’s request to their specific school often can go unaddressed and instead is passed on to the information black hole of a district-wide communications department.
If that sounds like hyperbole, let me assure you that I speak from personal experience when several years ago I attempted to get my child’s middle school principal to turn over a copy of a social and emotional learning ‘survey’ (it’s really a psych screening inventory) called the BIMAS-2.
A more recent example is out of Maine, where a superintendent told her staff to slow-walk a parent’s request.
“Superintendent Heather Perry told staff in an email last month to “slow the process down” on parent Eric Lane’s request that posters about gender identity be removed from his daughter’s sixth-grade classroom at Gorham Middle School in Maine, about two hours north of Boston,” The Daily Wire reported.
These examples underscore that LGBT ideology and related issues have been and still are being introduced to children in K-12 schools - and without their parents knowing about it until after the fact.
Even Bill Maher, host of the show Real Time with Bill Maher and a comedian known for his progressive views, has openly questioned the giant jump in the number of kids claiming to be transgender.
Maher recently made a key point about how children are being socialized to believe they are trans and how it has become "trendy.”
"Before 1946, only .08% of the population identified as LGBTQ. That number shot up to 2.6% among Baby Boomers. It shot up again to 4.2% with Gen X, 10.5% among Millennials and 20.8% with Gen Z,” said Maher during his opening monologue. “If we follow this trajectory, we will all be gay in 2054."
And he’s not wrong.
Starting around 2011, there were estimates from the Williams Institute showing that around 3.5% of the U.S. population identifies as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Of that 3.5% only about .3% identify as transgender. That’s around 33,495 people in a nation that at the time had a population of around 319 million.
Jumping forward to 2014, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) reported that 2.3% identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual out of 319 million or so people. Of that 2.3%, only about .7% “self-identified” as transgender. That .7% subset translated at that time to about 51,359 people nationwide or roughly around 1,027 people per state.
The same thing can be said for a Williams Institute study published in 2019 that concluded transgenderism is extremely rare; just 1 in every 250 adults (.4%) said they were transgender. The same report also claimed those self-identifying as LGBT is skewing “younger.”
“We’re literally experimenting on children,” Maher claimed, adding that we don’t know about the long-term effects of puberty blockers. “But logic tells you there’s going to be problems,” Maher listed a number of known issues like diminished bone density and infertility. “It’s not a lifestyle decision,” he added.
Maher said everyone should always be mindful of respecting and protecting others but also that “Someone needs to say it – not everything’s about you. It’s okay to ask questions about something very new.” He then segued to the increasing trend of parents putting their young kids on hormone blockers.
“We’re literally experimenting on children,” Maher said, adding there is no way to know about the long-term effects of that. “But logic tells you there’s going to be problems.”
The comedian referred to already known issues with hormone blockers such as bone density and infertility issues and Maher posited “It’s not a lifestyle decision.”
“I understand that being trans is different, it’s innate,” Maher also said. “But kids do have phases. Kids are fluid about everything. If they know at age 8 what they wanted to be, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses.”
He added, “I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God no one scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery.”
Watch the full clip below:
A more to the story endnote
These ideologies are not just in flashcards or “free” resources from the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s the big names in textbooks and curricula like Pearson, The College Board, Scholastic and more. It’s also in the largest association of science teachers, which has jumped on the ‘woke’ bandwagon with “Gender-Inclusive Biology: A framework in action.”
Jonathan Turley reports the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has called for “gender-inclusive biology,” and “the abandonment of terms like “parent,” “men,” “women,” “mother,” and “father.”
“Under the guide, mothers are now referred to as “persons with ovaries” in reference to reproduction cycles while fathers are now “persons with testes,” writes Turley. “Additionally, the association declares the move of various states toward “Sex verification in sports” as an example of oppression.”
The NSTA is the entity responsible for the “Next Generation Science Standards” which were Common Core aligned and adopted in some fashion by every state except for North Carolina and Florida.