Lights! Camera! Gender!
Starting Monday, Los Angeles elementary schools will have a weeklong classroom celebration for “National Coming Out Day” with a curriculum to teach children about identity and intersectionality through the city’s most exalted gods: celebrities.
Activities for kids as young as kindergarten include “identity maps,” honoring sullen trans actor Elliot Page, and the carnival-esque contest of guessing nepo baby Willow Smith’s gender identity.
It’s like teaching good touch, bad touch using Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby trading cards.
These razzle dazzle, rainbow-colored plans are detailed in the “Week of Action Toolkit” distributed to grade schools by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education — a system plagued by appallingly low academic performance.
The lone saving grace? There are some adults in the building so disturbed by the five-day — four more than presidents get — initiative that they forwarded it to The City Journal, which published the absurdly age-inappropriate lesson plans.
For the uninitiated, “National Coming Out Day” is on Wednesday, Oct. 11. But the LBGTQ-apalooza kicks off Monday at LA schools with each day of the week dedicated to one LBTGQ+ celebrity.
Monday is “Jazz Jennings Day,” honoring the 23-year-old transgender star whose very complicated childhood social and surgical transition was chronicled on the TLC reality show “I Am Jazz.”
After undergoing bottom surgery at 17, Jennings has had numerous physical complications. The YouTuber also gained 100 pounds and admitted to struggling with mental health. Doubtful this will talked about in the pep rally, though.
That same day, kindergartners and first graders will explore their “lens of intersectionality” with a trusty “identity map” charting their experiences with discrimination and privilege by looking at 12 factors including race, gender identity, sexuality, mental health and body size.
Wednesday is for Elliot Page, the “Juno” star who LAUSD boasts is “the First Openly Transman” to appear on Time Magazine. Kids, if you become trans, perhaps there’s a reality show, magazine cover and fame waiting for you on the other side.
Also on hump day, third graders will play “I am Me” — in which the 8-year-olds will try to guess the gender identity of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s daughter, Willow. Given the endless list of options these days, the poor kids will be fourth graders by the time they land on the correct one.
And while this is LA, these lines aren’t from a movie script. Because you can’t make this up.
On Friday, kids will be encouraged to “Take a Pledge to Be An Ally!” For their efforts, the will received a LAUSD diploma — perhaps the last they’ll ever see — certifying their commitment.
The weeklong festivities come to a close with Carl Nassib Day. In 2021, Nassib, now 30, became the first active NFL player to come out as gay.
Nassib’s career as a journeyman in the NFL is a testament to hard work and grit — but those aren’t the values that make him worthy to these idealogues. They’re only highlighting him because of who he takes into his bedroom.
And what does Nassib’s choice in life partners, or a jarringly complex identity map, offer these innocent, malleable children — sent to school to learn ABCs and 123s but who are instead served ideologies that elude most adults? Absolutely nothing.
It’s a conclusion underscored by the alarming statistics of underperformance in the LAUSD, according to The City Journal. In 2022, 61% of third-graders from the Los Angeles schools didn’t meet the English standards which, the outlet noted, were “watered down [and] equity driven.”
That same year saw only 59% of third graders meet the state standards for math.
Where are the toolkits to ensure kids are learning — really learning —things, like math, science, history and reading so they can advance to the next grade with a basic command of the material? So they can grow up to be functioning adults?
Is it any wonder why parents are raising holy hell to fight for the right of their children to get a quality education.