We need to be honest with students by teaching them bullshit

There’s an organization (or perhaps a person) called Gender Inclusive Schools. It has a Facebook page of the same name. I saw people passing around a post from last June:

“Biological sex” is a myth and
the term has no place in the classroom.
We need to be honest with students and teach them about the expansive and variable genders of people who exist in their communities.

People are leaving comments and Gender Inclusive Schools is hiding them all, calling them ignorant and in need of adapting their assumptions to new understandings. All this made me curious about what exactly this organization (or person) is and whether it has any clout and if so how much, and what exactly the source of its or his expertise is. I’d like to know because the organization (or person) says it advises schools on how to gender. I suspect there is no expertise and the org/person is just winging it, aka making it up.

It has a website. Here’s what you find on the home page:

Gender Inclusive Schools provides HRC’s Welcoming Schools Professional Development training on LGBTQ inclusive practices and supports for transgender students. We also offer consultation to school staff and administrators as they strive to proactively create gender inclusive school climates. We specialize in helping schools navigate sensitive conversations, especially when administration find themselves in situations that require new learning.

Based on what?

From all appearances it is in fact just one guy, and he doesn’t seem to have any real expertise at all.

About Me

DAVE EDWARDS (HE/HIM/HIS)

Dave Edwards has served as special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools, a teacher and administrator in several MN public school districts, and is currently the lead instructor in the residency-based Emotional Behavioral Disorders licensure program at the University of MN Twin Cities. He is also a 3rd year PhD student, funded by an Office of Special Education Programs Leadership Training grant.

That’s all nice I guess, but how does it qualify him to set up to tell schools what to do and how to do it?

Maybe it doesn’t matter; maybe he in fact is just one self-important guy with a website but no customers. I hope so. But even if he is I still wonder why people like him feel entitled to do this kind of managing in public schools, especially when he thinks

“Biological sex” is a myth and
the term has no place in the classroom.

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