For generations, schools served a clear purpose: teaching students the fundamentals, literacy, mathematics, science, and history, while helping them grow into responsible, capable adults. But in many classrooms today, that mission is being replaced. Education is becoming increasingly centered around identity politics, especially concerning gender and sexuality.
Instead of focusing on academic excellence, many schools are now devoting significant time and resources to promoting specific views on gender identity. What once might have been a fringe issue is now embedded in lessons, classroom policies, and even the language children are expected to use.
Age-Inappropriate Content Is Becoming Normal
In some elementary schools, children are being introduced to concepts that, not long ago, would have been considered far beyond their developmental stage. Terms like “gender spectrum,” “assigned sex at birth,” “puberty blockers,” and “top surgery” are appearing in school materials. Teachers are asking students as young as seven to state their pronouns or reflect on their gender identity.
This is not just about inclusion or tolerance. It is the normalization of deeply complex and highly controversial ideas. Schools are beginning to treat these subjects not as matters for personal or family reflection but as academic facts to be taught, accepted, and acted upon.
Parental Rights Are Being Undermined
One of the most troubling aspects of this trend is the growing number of schools that actively withhold information from parents. In many districts, policies exist that prevent teachers from disclosing a child’s gender identity changes at school without the child’s permission, even to the child’s own parents.
This shift represents a serious erosion of parental rights. Decisions about a child’s identity, especially those involving medical steps like hormone treatments or surgery, should never happen without parental knowledge and involvement. The classroom should never become a place where children are encouraged to explore life-altering paths behind their parents’ backs.
Confusion Is Being Framed as Courage
Childhood is a time of growth and exploration, but also of vulnerability. Many children go through phases of questioning themselves, their place in the world, and their bodies. That has always been true. But now, those normal moments of confusion are being framed as indicators of being transgender.
This is not neutral support. It is influence. It is a system that often affirms a child’s passing thoughts or feelings without pushing for deeper reflection or allowing time for natural development. In many cases, children are being told that medical transition is the logical next step if they feel even mildly uncomfortable in their own skin.
The Medical Path Is Not Without Consequences
Gender transition is not a simple or harmless process. Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries all carry serious, long-term physical and psychological risks. The long-term data on these treatments, especially when administered to children and teenagers, is still unclear and in many cases deeply concerning.
Yet these interventions are often presented in schools as solutions, not decisions. Young people are led to believe they can choose a different gender as easily as changing clothes. But the reality is far more serious, and in many cases, irreversible.
What Kind of Generation Are We Creating?
By turning gender into a dominant theme of childhood education, we are raising a generation that is increasingly unsure of the most basic aspects of who they are. Children who should be learning how to read, write, and reason are instead being drawn into debates about identity, surgery, and sexuality.
What message does this send? That their bodies are wrong? That they are defined by feelings instead of biology? That permanent medical changes are an answer to temporary discomfort?
We should not be surprised when young people grow up confused and insecure if the adults around them, teachers, administrators, and even lawmakers have spent years encouraging them to question their own reality.
A Return to Common Sense
This is not a call for cruelty or intolerance. Every child deserves respect and support. But that support should not come in the form of pushing them toward adult decisions before they are old enough to vote, drive, or understand the long-term consequences of their choices.
Schools should focus on education. Families should be trusted to guide children through personal matters. And our society should remember that protecting children means giving them time to grow, not rushing them into irreversible decisions.
It is time for a return to common sense in our classrooms. Let kids be kids. Let schools teach, not indoctrinate. And let families, not institutions, decide what is best for their children.