Remember when school was about “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic?”
Maybe the reason school scores in the U.S. are so poor is that the classroom has become a political battleground instead of a place of learning.
“No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.” It’s not just giving dirty looks that teachers have to worry about anymore. It’s making sure they use each student’s preferred name and pronouns.
The Dallas Express recently reported on the latest Texas school district to approve a policy governing how students’ gender identities and preferred pronouns are handled.
Keller ISD’s school board unanimously approved new rules requiring staff to use pronouns that match the gender assigned at birth as indicated on a student’s official documents. If a student wishes to use a different name or pronoun, his parents must be informed. Parents are also required to provide written consent for any changes to a student’s name or pronoun used in school records and communications.
It’s not just happening in Texas, however. It’s a national battle against the politics of gender identity.
After nearly two years of legal wrangling, the lawsuit of an Ohio teacher who was allegedly forced to resign because she refused to use the preferred names and pronouns of two transgender students is finally heading to trial.
NBC 4 WCMH reports on the latest in the dispute. Here’s the start of the story:
MASSILLON, Ohio (WCMH) — A former Ohio middle school teacher is headed to trial after she resigned for refusing to address two transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns and asked to have them removed from her classroom.
The teacher, Vivian Geraghty, alleged in a 2022 lawsuit against Jackson Local School District her First Amendment rights were violated when she was told to resign from a middle school language arts position. After nearly two years of back and forth, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled this month that forcing Geraghty to use students’ preferred names amounts to “compelled speech” and said the school’s “pronoun practice was not neutral.”
However, the court also decided the case must still go to trial to determine whether her resignation was by force and if the First Amendment protects Geraghty’s unwillingness to call the trans students by their preferred names.
“The court concludes that there are genuine disputes of material face about whether Geraghty involuntarily resigned and, if she did, whether her protected conduct [if there was any] caused her to resign,” the Aug. 12 filing written by U.S. District Judge Pamela Baker states.