When ideology captures biology class
And a genetics unit becomes gender theory
In December, several students from Needham High School in Massachusetts reached out to us at Parents Defending Education about a recent genetics lesson their biology class. They sent us copies of the slides that they found especially strange in a biology class.
Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright took a look at the instructional materials and characterized them as “indoctrination.” He is 100 percent right.
What jumped out at me about these slides was the fundamental misunderstanding (willful or not) of biological sex. In addition to being factually inaccurate, they sowed confusion and played into regressive sex stereotypes.
The claim that nearly 2% of the population is intersex is preposterous and deliberately deceptive — the actual number is .018%, or about one out of 5,000. The comparison to redheads is, at best, very misleading. Perhaps most absurd is the implication that biological sex in humans is fluid, or can literally change, because it happens to be true of non-human species like clownfish and tree frogs.
Needham school officials see no problem with the lesson based on the statement they provided:
We are proud of the programs we offer all students and continue to work hard to ensure all curriculum materials and resources appropriately reflect the needs of a diverse student body and the standards, values, and high academic expectations of the Needham community.
It would be one thing if students were learning this content in a gender studies class, a course whose entire existence grew out of an ideology. But these students at Needham High School were promised a biology class. That is not what they got with these slides. And Needham school officials are apparently just fine with that.
This is maddening. It’s *biology* class. There is a clear activist angle here & the school’s dishonesty about what’s going on makes me furious. I’ve been a Democrat my entire life, voting consistently even in midterms, but this has to stop. If they think “gender” is supposedly fluid, just wait til they get a look at how fluid party affiliation can be. I hope some new people are motivated to run for school board in Needham, MA!
The long-term solution is school choice.
Short-term, you sit in on as many classes as possible, demand the teacher justify their curriculum/assignments.