REPORT: School District Teaches Pre-K Through 3rd Grade Students to ‘Break the Binary’, Reject ‘Whiteness’

An Illinois public school district, located just north of Chicago, has embraced a progressive LGBTQ+ gender curriculum that it teaches to young children from pre-kindergarten through the third grade. 

Writing for the City Journal, Investigative Journalist Christopher F. Rufo reports the Evanston-Skokie School District 65 has its students celebrate the transgender flag, break the “gender binary” established by white “colonizers,” and experiment with neo-pronouns such as “ze,” “zir,” and “tree.”

Rufo acquired the Pre-K-3rd Grade curriculum documents, which are part of the Chicago-area district’s “LGBTQ+ Equity Week.” District officials adopted the week last year. 

In a series of tweets, Rufo presents highlights of the Evanston-Skokie District’s lesson plans. 

“The curriculum in the Evanston/Skokie School District is the perfect illustration of college-level Queer Theory translated into early-elementary pedagogy. Parents have a right to be concerned and legislators have a duty to ensure that public schools reflect public values,” he wrote. 

The senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute also offered examples of what is being taught to these very young children. 

“In pre-kindergarten, the children are taught an ‘introduction’ to the rainbow and transgender flags. Teachers then provide the basic concepts of gender identity, explaining that ‘we call people with more than one gender or no gender, non-binary or queer’,” Rufo wrote and also posted examples of graphics being used. 

The contributing editor to the City Journal also shows how the district is teaching its kindergartners that there are “transgender” children. 

“In kindergarten, the teachers explain: ‘When we show whether we feel like a boy or a girl or some of each, we are expressing our gender identity… There are also children who feel like a girl and a boy; or like neither a boy or a girl. We can call these children transgender’,” Rufo revealed. 

“The kindergartners read books that affirm transgender conversions, look at photographs of boys in dresses, and perform a rainbow dance. At the end of the lesson, the students are encouraged to share their own gender identities with the class. ‘Your identity is for you to decide!'” he wrote, offering examples with images along with the book cover from the teaching materials. 

The curriculum then shifts to teaching first-grade students to experiment with gender pronouns. 

“In first grade, the teacher encourages students to experiment with gender pronouns such as ‘she, tree, they, he, her, him, them, ze, zir, and hir.’ The students read gender scripts and the teacher reminds them: ‘Whatever pronouns you pick today, you can always change’,” Rufo wrote. 

Then in third grade, young children eight to nine years old are given a lesson on how they should go against male and female norms or gender binary. 
  
“In third grade, students are told that white European ‘colonizers’ imposed their ‘Western and Christian ideological framework’ on racial minorities and ‘forced two-spirit people to conform to the gender binary.’ The teacher encourages them to ‘break the binary’,” Rufo continued. 

The investigative journalist then notes how the curriculum’s lessons end with one important point. 

“The lessons conclude with an encouragement to reject the system of ‘whiteness’ and write a letter about becoming political activists. ‘Society right now is very unfair,’ reads a sample letter. ‘I see a lot of marches on the T.V. and I even went to a march last summer’,” Rufo wrote. 

In his article for the City Journal, Rufo noted: “For weeks, as the nation has debated Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibits public schools from teaching gender identity and sexual orientation in grades K–3, commentators on the political left have claimed that public schools do not teach this material and have accused conservatives of instigating a ‘moral panic.’ This claim is demonstrably false, and the Evanston-Skokie lesson plans offer additional proof for parents and legislators concerned about gender ideology in American public schools.”

“Queer theory has made its way into public school curriculums for children as young as four. This development should be subject to robust political debate, not denial and dismissal from the political Left,” he concluded. 

CBN News has reached out to Evanston-Skokie School District 65’s Superintendent of Schools Devon Horton for comment.  We will post it here when we hear back. 

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