Wacky Washington – A Snapshot of Education in America

And speaking of education, here we have a sex shop owner/school board member offering sexual pleasure workshops for 9-year-olds!

From Catholic Stand

By Gene Van Son

It’s never a bad idea to do some research before you vote.  Knowing who you are voting for – what they believe in and what they stand for – is a good thing.  And nowhere is this truer than when it comes to local school board members.

I don’t think the residents of Bellingham, WA know the backgrounds of their school board members.  Or maybe they think having the owner of “sex shop” serving on their school board is a fine idea.

In case you missed this story at the Federalist, the headline on the article is “Washington State School Board Director Plans Sexual ‘Pleasure’ Workshops For 9-Year-Olds.”  I was quite shocked when I read this.

How this director, Jenn Mason, got elected to the Bellingham, WA school board is a mystery to me.  Mason is the owner of the WinkWink Boutique, a “sex shop” in Bellingham.

Why the residents of Bellingham would want a sex shop owner on their school board is also mystery.  She was first elected to the board in 2017.  Then she was elected again in 2021.  Members serve four year terms, so she is will be serving on the board until 2025.

Sex Education for 9-year-olds?

What is especially concerning about this situation is that Mason has set up something called “Uncringe Academy.” Her ‘academy’ will be hosting two-day sexuality workshops for children.  One is for children from 9 to 12 years of age.  The second is for teenagers from 13 to 17 years of age.

Among other things the workshops will teach children about:

• Gender and sexual identities
• Sexual anatomy for pleasure and reproduction
• What IS sex? Kinds of solo and partnered sexual activities
• Safer sex practices for all kinds of sexual activities

The National Health Service (UK) says “The average age for girls to start puberty is 11, while for boys the average age is 12.” As such, such a workshop seems premature.  But over and above this, why would any sane parent want a “sex shop” owner teaching their 9-, 10- or 11-year-old child about sex?  And what parent would want their 13- or 14-year-old in such a workshop with 17-year-olds?

Local School Boards

The National School Boards Association says that, “[Local school] Board members are more than policy-makers and administrators; they are advocates for students and their parents and entrusted to engineer a better future.

“The school board sets the standard for achievement in the school district, incorporating the community’s view of what students should know and be able to accomplish at each grade level.”

The local school board is also “the community’s education watchdog, ensuring that taxpayers get the most for their tax dollars.”

But even if a local school board in Washington State is actually trying to be a “watchdog” chances are it is being undermined in that effort.   A professional development Zoom seminar for elementary school teachers in the state of Washington was held on October 28, 2021. It was, according to an article at The Stream, organized and run by the national LGBT activist group GLSEN.”

Disseminating Propaganda

GLSEN stands for “Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network.”  According to GLSEN’s website, “Every student has the right to a safe, supportive, and LGBTQ-inclusive K-12 education.” And, according to The Stream article, “[GLSEN] is one of the main disseminators of LGBTQ propaganda and sexuality materials to schoolchildren.”

The Stream article, authored by MassResistance.org, went on to say, “The focus of the Washington Zoom session was implementing GLSEN’s “toolkit” for elementary schools titled “Ready, Set, Respect!”

“Ready, Set, Respect!” uses the cover of anti-bullying, “anti-bias,” and respect to push LGBT “family structures” and “gender roles” to young children. It provides “tools to support elementary educators with these efforts.” But this seminar went much farther than that. It instructed teachers in how to normalize transgenderism in young children and gave strategies to keep parents from interfering” [italics added for emphasis].

And apparently, Washington is just one of many states that hire organizations such as GLSEN “to instruct elementary school teachers in how to push transgenderism (both “gender” ideology and transgender behaviors) and homosexuality to very young children.”

They are able to do this thanks to the largess of the Department of Education.

The DOE’s Impact

As Patrick Deneen wrote a few years ago at Minding the Campus:

“My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation.

“Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings.”

One could argue that education in the U.S. began its downward spiral in October 1979.  This is year that the Congress created the Department of Education (DOE).  Today the DOE has over 4,300 employees and a budget of over $70 Billion.

As Aaron Smith argued back in 2011, it is time to “End the DOE.”

“Since 1979 the Department of Education (DOE) has steadily grown its empire. The fear that was once shared by Democrats and Republicans alike has become reality: the federal government has seized power from parents and local educators and now exerts unprecedented influence in our nation’s classrooms.”

So what’s the result of all of this expertise coming to bear on education in the U.S.?  The U.S. is in the middle of the pack when it comes to math, science, and reading.

Today the DOE is giving more money to the states than ever before. Unfortunately the money is being used to advance the far left ideologies coming out of the swamp.  And the result is know-nothing students.  But by golly they need to know about gender ideology, transgender behaviors, and homosexuality – from the left’s point of view, of course.

It gets Worse

None of this should come as much of a surprise however.  God and prayer were taken out of the classroom long ago and replaced with moral relativism.

Common Core Standards have been indoctrinating kids for some time now.  It seems there are no longer any moral truths.  This article “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts” should scare every parent with a child in a public school.

The author sums up the situation:

“In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.”

The Moral of the Story

So the moral of the story is simple:  Know who is running your local school board.  And know, too, what your children (or grandchildren) are being taught in school.  Better yet, homeschool your kids or put them in a good parochial school.  Our government-run schools are not making the grade.

As Pope Pius XI wrote in Divini Illius Magistri way back in 1929 (#32),

The family therefore holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.