EDtalk LIVE: Maryland school district says parents cannot opt children out of gender identity les…

Yes, we are. Okay. Jill Simonian here. We're calling these lives now ed talk, education talk. I believe that's what we're saying. Cam is running all of the behind the scenes equipment for me, but you won't be able to hear him today because, um, because you're just stuck with me and that's, that's the way we like it. Right? So, uh, welcome, welcome, welcome. If you're tuning in live for the first time, I'm Jill Simonian from PragerU Kids. We like to keep you informed about all the latest headlines, as many as we can. That is, uh, popping up about education happening around the country, things that us parents and, uh, quite frankly, teachers need to be aware of, uh, because we are in a situation where our education system has been hijacked. And that's no surprise for all of you who tune in regularly. Big headline today. Let's get into it. Maryland school district says that parents cannot opt children out of gender identity lessons. Now let me tell you this, all of us at PragerU Kids, those of you who know me, you know, I'm one of the personalities that that is the face of many of our PragerU Kids shows, uh, particularly for our youngest learners, but we have PragerU Kids shows from kindergarten through 12th grade that you can subscribe to for free. All of us on the PragerU Kids team who continue to work on these shows that, uh, that, that, that aim to teach our children truth and knowledge and our system of government and what our rights are. Every time any of us, and I'm a parent, but anytime any of us parent or not see headlines like this, today's headline is from the blaze. Maryland school district says parents cannot opt children out of gender identity lessons. Anytime we see headlines like this, our heads want to fly off our bodies. And it is so frustrating and infuriating and tragic because raising children and being able to direct the education of our children is a fundamental right. And let's take a look at this article so we can see what in the heck is happening in Maryland. If you are from Maryland, I want you to weigh in. I want you to share what might be happening in your neck of the woods. If you are a part of this particular school district, this is the Montgomery County public schools. And I'm going to read you the part of this article. Parents with children enrolled at a Maryland school district were outraged, rightfully so I might add editorialize after the district announced that it would not allow students to opt out of gender identity lessons. Now this happened in a March 23rd email. The Montgomery County public schools informed parents that it would no longer notify them about gender identity lessons happening in classrooms in an effort to promote. And here we go with the magic buzzwords again, an inclusive environment in an effort to promote an inclusive environment. The district stated that children could not be opted out of curriculum that involved gender identity. Let's continue on with this article from the blaze MCPS. That's the school district expects all classrooms to be inclusive and safe spaces for students, including those who identify as LGBTQ plus or have family members in the LGBTQ plus community. The district stated a broad representation of personal characteristics within curricular or instructional materials promotes this desired outcome. Therefore, as with all curriculum resources, there is an expectation that teachers utilize these inclusive lessons and texts with all students. So here's the thing, and I want to go to the exact email that the district sent out so that you and I can view this together. Um, the article goes on to say while children are now required to complete, while children are now required, there's that word required to complete gender identity lessons. They may still be removed from sexual health education. The district explained. So as a mom of tweens of this, you know, my children are of this age demographic where this type of curriculum would deliver to them regarding reproductive health, all, you know, all of those topics as a mom, it makes zero sense to me that a parent could opt their child out of the reproductive portion of instruction, but not opt their reproduction. You know, there, there's no other way around it. You human beings reproduce by a certain way, right? And there's, there's no other way around it. And that's the truth. And that's the facts. And that's the end of the story. So it makes no sense to me that as a mom, I could opt my child out of that reproductive health portion of the instruction, but not opt my child out of a gender identity lesson that perhaps goes beyond goes against my particular religious belief based on what is said in the Bible as we are a Christian family. So again, things that don't make sense under this veil of inclusivity. I want to go right now to the email that the school sent out because as we all know, it's one thing to read an article and we absolutely love the blaze, but I want to see the source material. And I encourage all of you parents and teachers to always do the same thing. Whenever you hear about something happening in your district or in your community, please, please go to the source material, the actual email that was sent out to the actual declaration that was made, you know, whatever the source material is go to it and read it for yourself to make sure that you know, details were not lost in the shuffle because we want to be give people the benefit of the doubt, right? Right. We want to be tolerant, right? Right. Here's the email and this is the website www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org. This is from Montgomery schools in Maryland, the state of Maryland. Here's the actual email they sent out. So here we go. I'm going to read it right here and I already found it as is standard practice. When planning for instruction, teacher schools are encouraged to utilize a variety of resources to continue to promote an inclusive environment as outlined in the MCPS core values and board policy. They linked to the board policy. I won't click on it. Their students and families may not choose to opt out of engaging with any instructional materials other than family life and human sexuality unit of instruction, which is specifically permitted by Maryland law as such. Here's the other part. Teachers will not send home letters to inform families when inclusive books are read in the future. And again, what are inclusive books? Well, it describes it up here. Gender identity, inclusive books include gender identity lessons. Now the Maryland school district is telling parents this. Since Cam does not have a microphone today, I'm going to try and check out the comments on Facebook. Let's see if I can do it, Cam. I want all of you who are watching on Facebook or YouTube for that matter to weigh in. If you can tell me your thoughts. Let's see if I can. Let's see if I can pull this out. Let's see if I can pull out the comments. Let's see. Okay, we got comments. I'm just going to take a moment. It's things like this that makes me glad I do not have children. Oh, I'm sorry, but I can't say I disagree with you. I'm a liberal says Jamie, but this choice should be a choice that parents can make. Lois says homeschool your kids. Marcia offers a website here. John says liberal lunacy. Let's see. Trina says, when are we going to get back to kids going to school to get an education in things that schools are supposed to teach like writing and arithmetic? I would not allow my kids to go to school if they're teaching gender identity and other antichrist indoctrination and Trina. Yes. I mean that, that's my point. Exactly. When these school districts talk about inclusivity and parents and teachers, listen up. I mean we at PragerU kids, we want to be very, very clear that we are not painting broad strokes about all schools are bad. All teachers are bad. I want to be very clear about that because as a mom, I have wonderful, wonderful teacher friends. My mother was a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher. My sister is currently a teacher, public schools, and I can tell you, I'm not going to speak on behalf of any of them, but there are countless teachers in this country who just cannot understand and are not complicit with any of this. And we appreciate you and know that PragerU kids appreciates you. And values you. And, and you know, in terms of offering our children education based in knowledge to restore the academic knowledge and cultural literacy that our country and children are now severely lacking, we're offering it to all of you for free. PragerUkids.com to educate your system, to educate your children. But I do want to get back to what our latest commenter said about, I do not, you know, I would not put my kids in that, in that situation to be indoctrinated. Remember this, parents and teachers, all of these lessons try to make us believe in this concept of inclusivity. Remember, as people who may be religious, we have the right to be included too. And I urge you to respectfully do not let your administrations, your school administrators and educators and school facilities, do not let them forget that. If inclusivity means to include all, then inclusivity also means to include folks with religious beliefs. That is a right protected in our constitution. And we forget our rights way too frequently. And you know, at PragerU, our mission is constantly to educate, to educate, because if we do not remember what our rights are in this country, as millions of Americans have evidently forgotten, because now we see situations like this happening in Maryland schools, where they say parents are not allowed to direct the upbringing and education of their children. And you have to adhere to these gender identity lessons, even if they might go against your religious beliefs. We cannot, we were not going to have a country left. Oh, I'm getting fired up. I'm getting fired up. Okay. So right there, I just wanted to let you know that it is happening in places like Maryland. We're here at PragerU in California, as we often like to say from the belly of the beast, right? The central place of these strange evil forces. I, you know, I'm not laughing because I think it's funny. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm laughing because I literally don't know what to do anymore. But we often think that these things like this, where parents are strong armed into forcing things that on their, on their children, that, that we do not believe. And we often think these things only happen in California. They don't, they don't. They're happy. It's happening in Maryland. Several weeks ago on my Instagram and on PragerU's Instagram as well, we did a short Instagram video reel about things like this happening in Kansas of all places. Okay. So stay informed, stay active and engaged and remind your school educators that inclusivity truly does mean inclusivity for all. It's a violation of parents' rights. Let me see if I have any more comments before I move on. Let's see. Thank you all who are tuning in. Let me see. This is a lot of BS. Homeschool your kids. Do not let this spread. They want control over the community and the people who live there. They are tired of our Liberty Bell and our liberties. Uh, let's see. Not everyone can homeschool or afford private schools. This is lunacy to indoctrinate our children. It is, it is true. Not everyone can homeschool or afford private schools, not every family. And that is the real tragedy here. That is the real tragedy. But like I said, we are trying at PragerUKids.com to give you the resources to educate your children about our rights, about what truth is so that, um, so that when they see garbage like this mandated gender identity lessons happening in their schools, they can recognize that it is garbage because you would have already inoculated them with truth and knowledge. And those are all the resources that we're giving to you at PragerUKids right now. I want to go to one of our latest PragerUKids releases. Um, remember PragerUKids is free every time. You know, we always encourage people to subscribe to get the shows. I mean, we have, I, you guys, I can't even tell you how many shows we are ranking out week after week after week. We have almost 250 shows on our website for free PragerUKids from kindergarten to 12th grade. Okay. We say subscribe and people always think, Oh, we're going to have to pay to subscribe. No, no, it's free. It's free. It's free. Subscribe just means we'll deliver them to your email inbox so that you don't have to go searching our website for them. Uh, but they are pretty easy to find on our website. If you go to PragerU.com, there's a tab that clicks you over to the kids section. And this is one of our latest episodes of street smarts and street smarts is a show featuring uncle Sam. You can see him here, but it is a show that features civics education. I mean, you know, just a few moments ago when I'm talking about an overreach into parental rights with this Montgomery school district is doing in Maryland, it's because we don't know our rights. We as parents and teachers need to educate our children about the system of government, about our founding documents, about the rights that we have that are enshrined in law that are fundamental. And here's a few example. I'm just going to look at the, look at the, um, the right column here of all of our different episodes of street smarts, the declaration of independence, the states, a state's rights, the executive branch, the judicial brands, the legislative branch, the constitution, uh, all of these shows, they're about 15 minutes long. Let's take a listen to our latest episode on drum roll, please. Federalism. Now some of you might not know what federalism is because it was maybe lacking in our own education, but let's take a look right now about what street smart teaches and how about federalism ready to be a winner. Yeah, there we go. Federalism is the system of the government in the U S in which power is shared between the national government and individual blank states. Bingo. Good girl. States. There you go. The fun show. Question one federalism is the system of government in the U S in which power is shared between the national government and individual blank. Yeah. All right. Fiona, here's your clue. We have 50 of these in the U S 50 in the U S states. We have 50 states in the U S so you get the idea. So street smarts is a game show for elementary school kids to learn about our systems of government and it's a great fun show. Uh, all of these are on our website for free. This is just one of the, one of the shows we have. This one in particular is for, you know, third, I like to say third through fifth grade, but then it's also good for the older kids as well. Sixth grade middle school because our children are not being taught our rights. Um, any other questions in the comments here? I'm going to scroll. Let me see. Uh, Oh, here's a question from Jim. I listened to her read the policy. I didn't hear it the way she did. LGBT kids if outed were bullied mercilessly when I was in elementary. It sounds like if they try to explain this to the class as a whole, she doesn't want her kids to hear this. If this is against your religious upbringing, when your kids get home, sit them down and explain that it is against your religious upbringing. Jim, I really appreciate this comment because as we see here, Jim did not agree with me. Um, but I appreciate that because that's what our country is about. And I will respond to this in saying, I do believe from the bottom of my heart that everyone on this earth can live in a way that they want to live. Whether or not I happen to believe in it or not believe in it or whether or not anyone else believes in that certain way, we are all entitled to diversity of, uh, diversity of, of our lives of diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, diversity of lifestyle. And, and absolutely, I do agree with you. What I do not agree with is the bullying. Of course, I do believe that everyone should be treated by the golden rule. Uh, I do believe that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. And I do believe that our schools are, are harbor the responsibility to teach our children to treat everyone with dignity and respect, regardless of whether you happen to be religious, whether you happen to be LGBTQ, whether you happen to be both or all of the above treat everyone with respect should always be the underlying message. And it should always be, I don't want to say the underlying marriage message, treat treating other people with respect should always be the, um, the primary message of course. And in a school, we absolutely need to demand that our children teach everyone with respect or, you know, have, or, or, or, have consequences. What I don't agree with is this targeted focus from schools to talk to children about very, very, very complex issues like gender identity that are not grounded in truth that go beyond what a teacher should be talking about with a child without a parent present. Does that make sense? I took a very roundabout way of saying that. What I don't agree with is teachers talking with children about very, very, very complex issues that not everyone agrees on without a parent present. That's the problem I have with it. And the problem to take it to a next level is that the T the schools and the some teachers are opting to do this without even notifying parents. That's the problem I have. I hope that explains it. I really respect and I thank you for your comment and how you left that comment in a very respectful way because I, I, I really do welcome that. And, and all of us here at Prager, you really do welcome comments like that. And I, and I hope that's something that we can continue to do on a real life basis in our own communities and schools. I'm going to leave this live at that as someone who, you know, does happen to be religious. I want to say to everyone watching that I hope you are enjoying this a blessed week. This is Passover. This is also happens to be holy week for Christians. And I want to just encourage all of us to be thankful for the country that we have to be thankful for the rights that we have and to be thankful for our ability to continue to speak up and, you know, educate ourselves about these rights so that we can ensure them for future generations. I wish everyone a very, very blessed week. And I wish all the parents and teachers God's speed. If you are battling a battle at your school or in your community, I just, I, you know, we appreciate you and we are here for you with resources at pragerukids.com to make sure that our children can continue to be educated without, without compromised truths. And I'll leave it at that. Leave it at that. Subscribe to pragerukids.com for free. And I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.