French parents pull children from school over 'gender theory' scare

[FarCenter]

France's education chief threatened Wednesday to summon parents who pull their children from school after a wave of absenteeism. The row was sparked by a rumour about sex education classes that could become a new ideological battleground in France.

Thousands of parents in France received a text message on their mobile telephones last week urging them to keep their children from school on Monday. The collective action was to protest an alarming development in French primary schools: the attempt to teach students that “they are not born as boys or girls, but can choose to become one or the other.”

The grassroots campaign opposing teaching of so-called “gender theory” in French schools asked parents to go further by taking their kids out of school one day every month. It recommended this be done with no prior warning to teachers.

...

“The national school system is in no way teaching gender theory. It teaches equality from all points of view, and in particular, equality between women and men,” Peillon said.

Sylvie Fromentelle, vice president of the FCPE, France’s largest parent-teacher association, also rushed to calm fears. “They are trying to scare parents by telling them that [schools] are trying challenge the biological basis of sexual identity,” she said in a note to group members, adding that “gender theory” did not exist within the social sciences or within French schools.

http://www.france24.com/en/20140129-france-sex-education-gender-discrimination-protest-school/

[okaawhatever]

1. Now we know what the right wingers in France have been up to. Just like here they wouldn't

consider using an honest, fact based tactic. Fear and paranoia work on people everywhere.

[geek tragedy]

2. what the hell is 'alarming' about teaching children that gender is

a social construct? It's the damn truth.

[ck4829]

3. I've also seen people who throw hissy fits when you tell them race is a social construct

There is, no doubt, a lot of overlap between those groups in these cases.

They define and think they their reality, themselves, their children, neighbors, friends, enemies, etc. based on what they perceive with their basic senses; having no clue of the role social systems and other abstract concepts play in the belief formation they have and how things came to be.

And when you tell them otherwise and even provide evidence for, they deny it, sometimes very angrily even.

They create a simulated reality for themselves and that's what they prefer.