Real Life Experiences in HSE
A parent submission, as told from their perspective and experience-
Unfortunately, our experience with HSES and social justice began early in the '20-'21 school year. Within the first week of school in August, our daughter, who was a sophomore at Fishers High School, received a graded English assignment to choose her preferred pronouns: he/him, she/her, or they/them. These were also to be incorporated on her online school profile page.
When we heard about this assignment, we told our daughter not to complete this regardless of the implications to her grade. Our position was based on three primary reasons.
• First, our daughter is female...period. She does not need to shout this out to the world in general. She seemed somewhat annoyed (as were we) about having to complete this assignment, especially for a grade.
• Second, this was a not-so-subtle attempt to push an agenda and undermine our parental authority. By requiring my child to choose pronouns, FHS was forcing her to accept a world view that we do not hold. All students should be free of the fear of bullying or harassment throughout HSE schools; I do not think that any reasonable person argues against that. However, requiring students to participate in an exercise that is meaningful to a tiny fraction of the population has nothing to do with equity. This is not tolerance; it's a forced choice and a wedge issue.
• Third, this assignment has nothing to do with teaching my child or any other students English skills. High school English students need to learn how to write effectively, construct coherent arguments, and learn from reading and responding to literature. Choosing pronouns supports none of these.
My wife reached out to our daughter's teacher and politely but firmly informed her that this assignment would not be completed and that we expected no repercussions to her or her grade, along with an explanation of why we felt this way. Fortunately, the teacher agreed to not require the assignment to be completed and to not have this impact our daughter's grade.
However, this small victory was tempered, because, based on the teacher's responses, we do not believe that he/she/they understood our reasoning. We believe that he/she/they thought our daughter hadn't yet decided on her gender. In reality, our daughter knows her gender, but doesn't need to choose pronouns to affirm this. The teacher also tried to rationalize that pronouns are an important aspect of literature, so the assignment made sense for an English class.
I realize that the argument for having all students choose their pronouns is so that transgenders will not be singled out. However, this all-or-nothing approach leaves no room for disagreement, and ends up singling out any students who choose not to participate.
Some will likely view the pronoun as a minor issue, and in a vacuum, it might be. But with the world in general and HSES specifically moving as it is, we felt that we needed to draw a line in the sand. And we will continue to do so to help refocus HSES on education first.