An Austin ISD elementary teacher has stirred fresh controversy after she bragged online about showing her fourth-grade students a video “to teach them about drag which also encourages kids to be drag performers.”
In the short video, which begins with the teacher saying she doesn’t care if others disagree with the degeneracy, kids in the classroom are exposed to a male performer’s drag queen antics as he explains to other children on-screen what his lifestyle entails and urges them to adopt it too, saying: “Everybody should try drag at least once. It’s really fun.”
Objectively, none of this was appropriate for a classroom.
It’s unclear whether the fourth graders’ parents knew what their kids were being shown that day. But even if the district did give parents fair warning, it raises a serious question: what choice did they really have?
In Texas, virtually every student, like those Austin ISD fourth graders, are effectively trapped in traditional public schools.
The tiny percentage who aren’t attend the few charter schools plagued with long waiting lists (thanks to the Education Establishment’s efforts to prevent new ones from opening). Others are homeschooled or go to a private school, which both require a significant sacrifice the vast majority of parents are unable to make.
The only other “choice” left for parents is to uproot their family’s entire life, change jobs, and move away from grandma, grandpa and their entire support network, their kids’ friends, and the community they’ve lived in for maybe a decade all to avoid having their child exposed to radical gender ideology.
Those aren’t real choices for most parents. For their kids, there is no other option except to attend the public school dictated by their zip code and sit through “lessons” of highly questionable academic value.
Bonus question: what if parents had objected? If they found out after the fact and brought the issue to the principle, superintendent, or school board, would their legitimate concerns treated with respect or dismissed?
If they are being ignored then the problem with public education is far bigger than most realize and the danger to students far more grave. There is no escape hatch from “you should be a drag queen, too” story time at school. To get any education at all, apparently students in some schools must be subjected to the whims of radical activists posing as teachers.
But there is something the Texas Legislature can do. Next session, policymakers have the best opportunity in living memory to pass legislation empowering every parent to decide where their kids go to school and provide them with the resources to make it happen. This promises to be the single most important fight of the next legislative session.
If the legislature succeeds, then parents will be in the driver’s seat and truly be able to decide whether learning about drag queens is appropriate. If the legislature fails, however, then kids will continue to be trapped in an increasingly degenerate public education environment and exposed to all manner of deviancy.