Conservative parents said they’re looking to exit public schools after an anemic performance by right-leaning candidates in school board elections this week.
FTA:
"The father was placed in handcuffs after recounting the sexual assault of his daughter by a transgender student in a school bathroom and demanding answers.
Smith was later pardoned by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Loudoun County parent Scott Smith was arrested in 2021 at a school board meeting after his daughter’s sexual assault.
“A lot of us thought that that was a turning point,” said another local dad whose child will graduate out of the district this year."
So you know that demands a fact check:
“In May 2021, a male student sexually assaulted a girl classmate inside a restroom at Stone Bridge High School. He was transferred to Broad Run High School for the next school year, where he assaulted another girl.”
Clearly a failure on the part of the school system… But then we get to the right wing talking points:
“After much discussion over whether the perpetrator was transgender or wore a skirt to get into the restroom where the first teen was attacked, the report found no evidence that the attacker identified as female or gender fluid. It found no evidence that he wore a skirt or kilt that day, and no witnesses reported seeing him in a girl’s bathroom or trying to get into one.”
The assaults definitely happened, but not in the way dad describes them as happening.
Of course the NYPost fails to include such a useful and relevant bit of information.
Of course the NYPost fails to include
such a useful and relevant bit ofinformation.deleted by creator
Is it possible to blacklist sources?
I have an extension on Firefox called Bye Rupert that automatically blocks sites controlled by Rupert Murdoch. I have it set to allow such pages to load in a private window, if I want to see them for some reason, but I have to make a conscious decision to visit the site.
You mean on the community level or the user level?
If the former: yes, but it might be difficult to do without a lot of people wrongly calling it censorship of legitimate journalism and starting a whole thing…
If the latter, I don’t know but now that you’ve put the idea in my head I’m gonna try and find out…
I’d take either but I’d think blocking on a user level would be possible.
I mean why not twist your daughter’s assault to support your bigoted narrative? I’m sure she’ll never resent lying about the circumstances of her assault to serve her father. Being used by men, after all, is the highest calling of a woman.
I wish I was surprised, but all I feel is disgust and an abundance of not surprise.
We REALLY need a word for being shocked and appalled without being the least bit surprised. Happens to reasonable people all the time nowadays…
Just reminds me of the Iago quote from Disney’s Aladdin:
“Oh there’s a big surprise! I think I’m gonna have a heart attack and die from not surprise!”
I think of that Iago quote all the time. I was definitely channeling it here.
Distraught?
Nah, less sad, more angry
Visceral
The perp is probably a straight white boy. if he was a poc the dad wouldn’t have changed story.
The perp is
probablyastraightcisgender white boyAs pointed out above, the claim was fully investigated.
Imagine your daughter is sexually assaulted and your first impulse is to get excited about using it as an excuse to smear trans people. What a fucking ghoul.
So test scores for public schools are gonna go up, then.
The bullying drops as well.
Those poor kids, it’s bad enough they have bigoted morons for parents.
For sure. My mother suffered brain damage after a heart attack while I was in high school. She nearly immediately became super conservative and scared of everything and everyone that wasn’t white because of Fox News.
So glad that I got to finish my high school education and move away to college and cut contact with her. I can only imagine if I had been younger. Growing up, she was a progressive person who even advocated for easier legal immigration and same sex marriage when it was super unpopular to do so.
Not saying all conservatives have brain damage, but…
Not saying all conservatives have brain damage, but…
There’s definitely a correlation between issues with critical thinking and conservatism.
lol what a garbage article. They’re mad about trans kids using their preferred bathroom.
Classic NYPost garbage
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What whiny fucking children.
Funny and sad that you’re obviously referring to the parents
Wait till you meet their kids :(
Having recently worked in public schools, the parents are worse
It’s been a decade since I graduated high school (and I hate that I’m old enough to say that) but I still remember very clearly that there were more liberal kids with really conservative parents than there were conservative kids with more conservative parents. And then after college, some of those leaning conservative kids became staunch liberals too. Plus, most of us were upper middle class, so we had quite the sample size too.
By and large, kids are more liberal than their parents, no matter how much their parents try to shelter and lead them to an evangelical Christian life.
My original thought was that the reason why kids grow up more liberal is because of their teachings and their upbringing/experiences. It’s really sad that things like science are politicized but it is and it’s generally left leaning. My worry is that if conservative parents home schooled their kids and essentially curated their upbringing to be conservative, it would lead to kids that are conservative and when these kids grow up they will perpetuate the cycle.
I think more will be conservative than before, but probably not most of them. They’d have to somehow cut off contract from anyone liberal
Hi. I was one of them. I am a left leaning atheist and live a boring middle class life with my wife and kids. Would you like to do a jigsaw puzzle with us or help me on a, new for us, pasta dish recipe we are trying tonight?
Origins don’t define us. Shit childhoods don’t define us. Crap parents don’t define us.
It absolutely can and does. But very glad you found your way out. So many don’t get that opportunity.
Conservative parents should think about staying in school as long as they possibly can. I mean, they’re dumb enough as they are. Can you imagine if they all dropped out?
I don’t know whether this is a joke about them having to repeat grades multiple times, or whether its about teenage mothers. I’m here for it either way.
That guy looks like a South Park caricature of a Trump voter.
Get the fuck out, then. I don’t like that their children are going to end up being the ones getting punished, but at least not everyone else’s kids are getting punished along with the children of these extremists.
Going to disagree. I would rather they ruin every single PTO and School Board meeting instead of hurting their own children. My parents pulled the same shit on me and I no where got the education level I should have gotten.
But letting them “ruin every single PTO and School Board meeting” means “letting them ruin every child’s education.”
That would be true if they had power, which they don’t.
Exactly. It just means school board meetings will suck for the normal people, then after the open comments time, they can get the real work done.
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And that will correct the wrong how exactly? Besides even if I did it isn’t like they have any money.
By holding them accountable and forcing the community to admit what happened to you did in fact happen and is wrong.
Which will be vitally important for other abuse victims.
Also, you were abused. Denial of access to education is abuse.
Does anyone not know that religious people pull their children out for home “schooling” and/or send them to private religious schools that don’t teach much outside of religion? Like is this news to anyone on the planet earth?
A lot of people don’t know or care.
Fine.
For all six of you who don’t know please be aware that the religious do this sorta thing.
Good. That’s the way choice is supposed to work. If you object to your kids getting indoctrinated or whatever, your remedy is homeschool or private school not trying to force everyone else’s kids to fit into your worldview.
It drives me crazy here in Florida, it’s easy to homeschool, so much support from the state and clear rules about evaluations. But no, these absolute racists (autocorrect of facist but if the shoe fits…) want to force all the kids to follow their rules. That’s bullshit.
I have plenty of problems with the local schools and have homeschooled some of mine off and on when I couldn’t find a good fit for them but one of the nicest things about public schools is the kids’ complete indifference to gender or preferences. These kids are so nonchalant when someone who was a girl last year is a boy this year or whatever, and the raging homophobia that was part of my high school experience (people getting beaten up for being different in any way) is just gone. Not that there aren’t fights and drugs like at any school but the kids overall are nicer and not so beaten down.
Hey, this is not a dig at all, but the reason autocorrect is bothering you is that “fascist” has an extra S in it.
Also I completely agree with you on all counts.
If you object to your kids getting indoctrinated or whatever, your remedy is homeschool or private school not trying to force everyone else’s kids to fit into your worldview.
Sounds like you live in Florida so you’re closer to it than most but, doesn’t this point to it not being about what their children are exposed to?
To me the whole thing smacks of control, not concern for their children. I don’t doubt some (many?) of these parents are honest in their beliefs but with what you pointed out, wouldn’t it make the most sense to homeschool?
I’m maybe way off base it just looks to me as an outsider like these parents were more interested in controlling what all children are taught and now they’re taking their ball and going home, so to speak.
It’s been quite a ride here. I grew up here when the US was at the bottom of the world rankings for education and Florida was 49th in the nation, the absolute nadir of public education - I literally had no teacher for half of sixth grade, and in elementary we had one science teacher for the whole school so got science only once a week. I really felt like it was being in jail, they didn’t teach much. Did eventually get an education in college, and read a lot growing up, outside of school.
It was the Republicans who broke it, with their Back to Basics nonsense but the Republicans who fixed it in my county, by putting in school choice & magnet schools, some of my kids went to an environmental education charter, some to IB, one to a performing arts magnet, there were a variety of schools to choose from and most all the charters nonprofit collectives not for profit outfits. My kids got great K-12 education, a few years homeschooled, 4 years private for one of them, but the first 3 out were overprepared for college, they found college easy. All had input into what high schools they wanted to apply to, got to feel like they were participating not in jail. Now the youngest is a junior in high school and I swear to God they are trying so hard to break it back to what my schooling was like. Throwing away all the progress allegedly because they are afraid kids will encounter challenging ideas and come to conclusions that don’t fit the parents’ religious beliefs or something? Yes my older ones read challenging books, Beloved, Brodek, hard to read and important books.
I don’t understand these parents at all. I think if you put kids in school you agree to the curriculum. Stand back and let the teachers work. If you don’t want to do that then find a different school or homeschool. Trying to change the school to fit your kid is wrong, especially here where there are other options.
IF there was not school choice, like back when I was in school, sure, I would advocate for my kid inside the school but not by trying to pull all the other kids down to some lowest common denominator. Only by working to get accommodation for ability or disability, or if they had a bully teacher maybe see if they could be in a different class.
Sorry, long rant but yes it’s about controlling other people not their own kids, it has to be. They got all the sort of free market school choice and now are mad because most of it didn’t turn out to be Christian academies where the sleeves and hemlines are long and all creativity suppressed. Because almost nobody wants that for their kids.
They want to ruin public education and have it pay for private school so no one’s child might learn anything they seem progressive. That’s been the game plan, that’s what DeVos was working on - underpaid teachers and a stifling censorship environment causing teachers and students to leave public Ed is by design.
I was going to say, this is not new. As long as they don’t get to take their kid’s tax dollars with them, good fucking riddance.
Oh shut the fuck up already with this horseshit.
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“I’ll be damned if I let my boy learn!”
We gotta get some real regulations for homeschooling in this country.
Ya, this is a very needed baseline correction. Let them home educated all they want but the kids have to pass grade level finals tests to graduate, from year to year and if they cant, it’s real school for them.
Nothing new, here in SC several right-wing nut jobs I’ve come across homeschool their kids in order to indocrinate them with the crazies
Not being able to force EVERYONE’S children to learn the same thing as your kids is SOCIALISM! TRUE Freedom is when I get to force YOUR kids to learn what I WANT THEM TO LEARN!
Oh hey that’s the definition of conservatism I like. “No one tells me what to do. I tell others what to do.”
It explains most conservative positions.
“Nobody tells me what to do. Unless it’s a rich religious daddy dom politician.”
