(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A Texas school district on the outskirts of San Antonio offered a “Women and Gender Studies” course that claims to take the bias out of language, despite nearly half of the students within the area lacking proficiency in both reading and math.
The course, offered in Judson Independent School District, covers all manner of woke topics—from basic tenants of feminism, to gender ideology, to critical race theory.
According to the Daily Caller, the class quizzed students on the definitions of terms like “safe space” and “patriarchy,” and asks them to take bias out of terms like “mailman,” “policeman” and “sportsmanship.”
“Although these gender-biased labels reflect our past more accurately than the present, they are still used,” the curriculum documents read. “Some will try and tell us that some titles are ‘inclusive’ and can be used for both men and women. This is not true. What would happen if a group of males were referred to as ‘you gals?’ Yet females are called ‘you guys’ all the time.”
The assignment also asked students to think of gender neutral terminology for words declared to be sexist simply because they reference men, such as “mankind,” “tomboy,” and “bachelor’s degree.”
“Language has had to change to reflect the change of the workforce,” the assignment said. “We still have words to describe careers and jobs that we have found hard to change.”
Neutralizing racial terms was another key component of the assignment.
“Patriarchy” was defined as “control with men having a disproportionately large share of power.” The course defined “safe space” as “a place (as on a college campus) intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas or conversations.”
Within the Judson District, a woeful 50% of high schoolers are proficient in reading and 56% are proficient in math.
“Half of the high schoolers students in this district aren’t proficient in reading,” Alex Nester, investigative fellow for Parents Defending Education, a parental rights organization, said “Yet, they’re teaching students definitions of words like ‘non-binary,’ ‘patriarchy,’ and ‘cis-,’ and asking students to make common words and phrases ‘gender neutral.’ Seems like the priorities are a bit off here.”
Judson Independent School District is one of many educational organizations revealing abysmal proficiency scores. Cities like Chicago, New York and St. Paul are all struggling—likely due in part to COVID learning loss, but also because of misplaced priorities of school district bureaucrats.
