In the latest of a long litany of examples of leftist LGBT aggression, high school students in California are reportedly being disciplined for “misgendering” a teacher. According to reports, two students at Herbert Hoover High School in Glendale, part of the Glendale Unified School District (GUSD), were suspended for a period of five days after describing a teacher by her biological sex, when the teacher identified as transgender. The students were also put through a “restorative justice” program.
The incident itself happened in May of last year, but has only come to light in recent days after the GUSD Parents group publicly called on GUSD to explain why the students were treated this way. GUSD Parents shared a screenshot of an email from Herbert Hoover High School’s former principal, detailing the alleged offense and her proposed solution. The principal wrote, “I suspended two students for five days each today and will be conducting RJ [restorative justice] with students and teacher…” She continued to add, “I asked my teacher how he wanted to handle it, if he wanted me to just teach them about misgendering or would he like me to speak about being trans. He asked me to educate on transgender. … RJ will happen after suspension.”
The practice of “restorative justice” for so-called offenses against gender ideology in schools has been widely criticized. Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, Meg Kilgannon, told The Washington Stand, “This situation is a sad example of what public education in America has become: programming, not education. The values that parents send their children to school with are re-programmed in reverse with wonderful sounding programs like ‘restorative justice.’”
According to criminologist and Australian National University professor John Braithwaite, restorative justice is “a process where all stakeholders affected by an injustice have an opportunity to discuss how they have been affected by the injustice and to decide what should be done to repair the harm. With crime, restorative justice is about the idea that because crime hurts, justice should heal.” The practice is considered a progressive approach to criminal justice, differing from the traditional approach, which asks explicitly, according to American criminologist Howard Zehr, “What laws have been broken? Who did it? What do the offenders deserve?” Restorative justice disregards these questions.
The great Christian author C.S. Lewis predicted such methodology in his 1945 novel “That Hideous Strength.” The villains of the novel, a cabal of scientists and bureaucrats, discuss aspects of restorative justice they wish to take advantage of, dismissing the idea of “deserved punishment.” As Lewis explained, “For desert was always finite: you could do so much to the criminal and no more. Remedial treatment, on the other hand, need have no fixed limit; it could go on till it had affected a cure, and those who were carrying it out would decide when that was.”
Kilgannon issued a warning along similar lines, telling TWS that restorative justice “sounds almost Christian, since Christ came to redeem us all and is Divine Justice.” She clarified, “But it is — in fact and practice — a very dangerous program, nearly identical in form and purpose to Maoist struggle sessions that produced the Cultural Revolution in China. … We simply cannot tolerate this as a nation. It undermines the best and most distinguishing features of the U.S. Constitution.” She also noted that, thanks to its deceptive appearance, ideologically-weaponized restorative justice is infiltrating even non-leftist organizations: “And some elite private and religious schools are falling for this thinly disguised Marxism as well.”
What’s the answer? How are parents to respond to the systematic “re-educating” of their children to accept leftist, Marxist dogma? Kilgannon suggested, quite simply, “We must take our children out of schools compromised this way and put ourselves into them, so the children who can’t leave will not be subjected to these abusive and dehumanizing tactics.” This is in line with advice Ronald Reagan’s former Education Secretary Bill Bennett recently gave to TWS. “When I was Secretary of Education in the 1980s, touring the country and giving speeches, and people asked, ‘Well, what can I do to improve my kids’ education? I want to get involved.’ I said, ‘Run for the school board.’”
Concerned parents have been doing just that. Groups like Moms for Liberty and Mama Grizzly have been pushing back against the LGBT agenda in schools. But the fight will be a difficult one. As Kilgannon noted, “The Biden administration’s Department of Education is hard at work to endorse these practices and even mandate them.” Parents have to be more willing to protect and fight for their children than leftist ideologues are to brainwash them.
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
