New Jersey standards in force this fall require sexual health and gender identity curricula for second graders.
A New Jersey public school district’s health curriculum forces second graders to learn about genitals and gender identity, according to the district’s guidelines obtained by a concerned parent organization.
Mahwah Township Public Schools proposed its new health curriculum, which includes teaching second-graders “how gender-role stereotypes may limit behavior,” according to the guidelines obtained by Parents Defending Education. Seven and eight-year-olds must be able to “list medically accurate names for body parts, including the genitals.”
The guidance pushes topics such as “gender identity” in the fifth and eighth grades as well.
Fifth-graders must be able to “differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity,” according to the updated standards. The school defines “gender identity” for fifth-graders as a “person’s internal, deeply-held knowledge of their own gender.” The definition of “gender identity” expands in eighth grade. Students are told that “gender identity” is “a person’s internal, deeply held knowledge of their own gender, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth.”
Mahwah Township Public School’s Board pushes for affirming the alleged gender identity of minors without disclosing the information to parents, according to the board’s policy. The board states that there is “no affirmative duty for any school district staff member to notify a student’s parents(s) or legal guardian(s) of the student’s gender identity or expression.” If parents wish to opt-out of the hypersexual health curriculum they must write a letter to the building principal sharing which portions of the curriculum they want their children excused from.
The guidance is some of the first to come from New Jersey’s updated 2020 sex education standards that are required in classrooms by September 2022.
Alongside the sex education practices, the district also plans to implement a so-called “equity audit” to provide teachers with diversity training during the upcoming school year. Erika Sanzi, the director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, said that the district’s plans are “peddling gender ideology to young children.”
“[The district] plans to spend taxpayer money on a consultant that will help them focus on everything except academics and while they claim this prioritization of race and equity will be age-appropriate, one has to wonder who will be in charge of determining that,” Sanzi said in a statement given to the Daily Caller.
Leadership at Mahwah Township Public School blocked the Daily Caller’s email requests.
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