Boston Public Schools Using ‘Black Lives Matter Week’ To Tell Kindergartners They Can Choose Their Gender

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2022/02/04/boston-public-schools-using-black-lives-matter-week-to-tell-kindergartners-they-can-choose-their-gender/

Boston Public Schools celebrated it was the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action this week.

The school district lightened the academic load for the week and offered a list of movies for students to watch that it matched to the 13 guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement, according to an outline obtained by NewBostonPost. The school district put together a discussion guide to go along with the movie. Additionally, there was also an essay contest and a door decorating contest; students who won the essay contest will get a free Black Lives Matter at School shirt and their essay will be published in the Boston Teachers’ Union newspaper. Meanwhile, class winners will have a free field trip in the spring that will have chaperones from the teacher’s union.

Students kindergarten through Grade 12 were expected to participate.

The school district offered a document that it called the kid-friendly version of Black Lives Matter’s 13 guiding principles for early education:  kindergarten and first grade. Those principles include:  restorative justice, empathy, loving engagement, diversity, globalism, transgender affirming, queer affirming, collective value, intergenerational, black families, black villages, black women, and unapologetically black. It defines black villages as “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other.”

The version on the BLM at School web site that the school district calls the adult version says this of black villages:  “We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, and especially ‘our’ children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.”

The school district also told kindergarteners and first graders that they can choose their own gender or a different gender — and that they can be both a boy and a girl.

Here is how school officials laid out the transgender-affirming principle for those children:

 

Transgender Affirming is the commitment to continue to make space for our trans siblings by encouraging leadership and recognizing trans-antagonistic violence, while doing the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk.

Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them.

 

For each of the movies on the list, school officials provide a discussion guide for classes to talk about how some of the 13 Black Lives Matter guiding principles apply to these movies. The school district has a distinct list of movies for each of five levels of development:  early ed (kindergarten, first grade), elementary (Grades 2 through 4), middle grades (Grades 5 to 7), early high school (Grades 8 to 10), and upper high school (Grades 11 and 12).

One movie on the list for early education is called The Princess and The Frog, a 2009 animated film which was the first Disney princess movie to feature a black princess. The black character’s name is Tiana; her best friend, Charlotte, is white. Of them the discussion guide for early education says:

 

Black women

Were things in life easier for Tiana or Charlotte? Why do you think that is (She had more money, she had a dad, she was a princess, she was white, people think she was prettier, she wanted to marry the prince) Tiana is a strong, independent, Black woman and she was able to get her dream because SHE worked hard and never gave up. What is your dream that you don’t want to give up on?

 

Starting with the middle grades (5 to 7), the school district also recommends introducing students to the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action national demands.

They are:

 

  1. End “zero tolerance” discipline, and implement restorative justice

  2. Hire more black teachers

  3. Mandate Black history and ethnic studies in K-12 curriculum

  4. Fund counselors not cops

 

Here is what Black Lives Matter at School says of “zero tolerance discipline”:

 

The use of zero tolerance in public schools stops now. The over-policing, out of control suspensions, and expulsions must be brought to an immediate end. To rebuild our structures, we will focus our resources on restorative justice — the organic appointment of community leaders; mediation and processing; and equitable perspectives on rehabilitation. Ending zero tolerance and focusing our schools around restorative justice will honor an autonomous voice and vision for students, staff and faculty.

 

The essay contest, which is voluntary, asks students to expand on a discussion prompt from the movie they watched in school during the week.

The door-decorating contest tells classes to choose one of the Black Lives Matter guiding principles to represent on the classroom door. The school district says that “Decorations will be judged on how completely the space is covered and how clearly the visuals communicate and celebrate the theme.”

The week, scheduled for Monday, January 31 through Friday, February 4, was cut short Friday when school was cancelled because of sleet and ice.

Boston Public Schools superintendent Brenda Cassellius and a spokesman for the Boston Teachers’ Union could not be reached for comment on Friday.

 

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