Doss Elementary School and Bowie High School received a lot of scrutiny last week, both brought to national attention by Twitter’s LibsofTikTok. Through AISD employee Twitter (post after post after post after post), we saw that Doss Elementary employees are more enthusiastic about Pride Week than a bachelorette party at Ausin’s old Oilcan Harry’s. (“YOLO, BABY! Those classrooms aren’t going to queer themselves! Bobby, come here! It’s gender-fluidity time!”) And Bowie High School basically set up multiple voc-ed nail-tech classes so adults could encourage teen boys to queer-eye their nails and break gender norms (gee, there’s nothing creepy about that. [Editor’s note: turns out there’s something quite creepy about that.😬😳😱]).
Both Doss and Bowie have better test scores (see below) than most other schools in Austin ISD. Does it make you wonder if there’s a race or class issue associated with the employees who are most enthusiastic about AISD’s blowout Pride Week fiesta grande?
Race? Maybe.
And when you wander over to AISD’s Twitter feed (see, e.g., #aisdpride), you see a collection of white women (e.g., here and here) cheering on AISD’s efforts because their hearts are so, so, so big that they want INCLUSION FOR EVERYONE…well, except for the asshole parents who are making it So. Difficult. for them to throw their LOOK-AT-US-WE-LOVE-THE-QUEER-KIDS-PAY-ATTENTION-TO-ME celebration. “Mar-sha, they’re ruining our party and it’s MY FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR. How will kids ever know their authentic selves if they don’t march in the No Place for Hate parade?!? I hate those parents.”
Given that the whiter schools of Doss and Bowie have been at the forefront of this celebration, I suppose there could be a race issue involved. White liberal women do so love to find themselves a cause. Even so, I think you could probably find other pics that show that supporters of AISD’s Pride Week fandango are a racially diverse bunch. (I can’t find many, but I’m sure they’re there somewhere. I just see lots of white and mostly women.)
Class! Definitely.
But I do think there’s a tremendous class issue here. So much money and time spent on Pride Week. Battalions of people worked on bulletin boards, Pride Week packs, class & library decorations, writing lesson plans, buying art supplies—hours and hours and hours. Then there’s the class-time spent parading kids through the hallway, pulling them together for the school photos, sitting in community circle time to read all about batty transgender metaphysics.
It’s a perfect examples of middle and upper-class wokies flaunting their luxury beliefs. Economically privileged school employees (of all races) want to show just how GOOD they are, so they encourage students to prioritize student activism over academic achievement. But guess what? Without academic achievement, those students have no shot at economic privilege. Every second woke teachers spend wasting class time and sabotaging student achievement has devastating consequences for poor students. But AISD teachers don’t care about that they might have screwed-up priorities because party planning is the Lord’s work.
Either way, creepy failure.
But they’re so motivated by their own sense of superiority. Over and over you hear them say, “we just want everyone to feel included.”
Ok, (a) it’s weird that the school singles out kids for a party based on immutable characteristics. “Oh look gay Johnny needs our help, sweeties. HE NEEDS AN ALLY BE HIS ALLY DAMN IT.”
And (b) do you know what really sincerely makes people feel included? Being able to read. If you can’t read, you are hosed. You are an outsider for life.
When economically privileged school employees take their focus off that AISD crisis—the fact that most kids in AISD can’t read—then they are showing that they have no idea what really harms kids. Those employees, especially the ones at Doss and Bowie, who live in nice houses, are showing that they have NO IDEA what’s going on in other schools in their very own district. If they did, they’d be embarrassed by their priorities. (How much time did it take to organize rainbow-t-shirt whole-school photos? They have no shame.)
Think I’m wrong?
Well, here’s a thought experiment: what if we were to ask the parents over at the schools where only 40%, 30%, 20% of the kids can read. How do you think they want the district to spend their kids’ time?
On screwball Carnival Cruise party week (OHMYGODLOOKATUSWELOVEOUR QUEERSTUDENSSOOOOOMUCH) in which teachers are given permission to queer their classrooms or translate into Spanish the concept that sex isn’t binary or talk about how to come out in middle school?
Or do you think those parents just desperately want the district to teach their kids to read?
