Absolute madness.
“Teacher” Yoselis Ramos
From The Daily Mail: Parents of seventh and eighth graders at Monroe Middle School in Tampa, Florida, were furious Monday after a teacher asked their kids to mark down their gender, sexuality, disabilities, religion and other details – in a Spanish class.
Spanish teacher Yoselis Ramos handed out an English-language form titled ‘How Privileged Are You?’ that asked children as young as 12 to describe themselves and their identities, WTSP reported.
One section asked children to declare whether they were ‘abled,’ ‘mentally disabled’ or ‘physically disabled’ – another, on gender, asked them whether they were ‘genderqueer.’
One upset parent was Regina Stiles, whose daughter brought the sheet home because she wasn’t happy with the lesson. ‘She has ADHD and apparently the teacher said, “There are some kids in this class that have ADHD, and ADHD is a mental illness,” and that’s why she circled that,’ Stiles told WTSP. ‘To me ADHD is not a mental disability. It’s something she has,’ says Stiles.
A section on ‘Gender’ asked the students if they were ‘Transgender,’ ‘Cisgender’ (meaning their gender identity matches their biological sex) or ‘Genderqueer’ (meaning they reject gender norms). ‘She’s 12. Some of these things should be taught at home,’ Stiles said.
Other sections of the form were ‘Race,’ ‘Skin color,’ ‘Religion,’ ‘Sex’ and ‘Sexual orientation.’
Several parents complained to the school’s principal, Peter Megara, who launched an investigation that is now being handled by the district. Ramos has been taken out of the classroom while they look at the issue.
Stiles told USA Today that Megara had called and left messages with all the parents whose children had received the form.
Hillsborough County School Spokesperson Tanya Arja told WTSP that students were not required to hand in the forms, and that the project was entirely Ramos’s work and not part of the school’s curriculum. ‘This is not a district form, this is a teacher-generated form and it was without principal consent and at the district level we do not collect that information,’ Arja said. She added that Ramos was trying to teach the children about issues of inequality related to the literature they had been reading in their Spanish classes.
This is Ramos’s first year at the school district.
DCG