Learning and Gender Identity

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One of the biggest problems facing our youth today is one of identity crisis—often in respect to one’s gender in some cases.  Identity is a core focus of the biblical message, as Genesis 1:27 sets the stage that, “So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”  Sexual identity is from the beginning.   Genesis 5:2 summarizes it all where it says, “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” The name “Adam” in the Hebrew means “mankind,” and this includes both the male and female equally!

Notice the gender identity distinction from the very beginning, “male” and “female.”  Sexual identity is born into and also learned by people, but we are observing that the politically correct, progressive thinking in American contemporary education is increasingly seeking to erase any distinction between male and female, creating a pattern of gender confusion.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the father of modern philosophy and who invented analytic geometry, is noted for his statement, “I think. Therefore, I am,” which is basic to identity.  But not only does Descartes affirm his own identity, but does so in context of the knowledge of God.  Descartes saw his own identity as dependently related to his concept of God whom he argues exists from three directions: the Cosmological-ontological argument, the Conservation of existence argument, and the Existence is a perfection argument. Yes, basic to Descartes’ knowledge of himself, his identity, and evolving from it is his knowledge of God.

Descartes said, “I think. Therefore I am,” but basic in this is also what he said that he has the idea of “a substance that is infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, all-powerful, and by which I myself and everything else, if anything else exists, have been created,” which is God. He regarded himself to be a faithful and devout Christian, saying that one of the purposes of the Meditations, which he wrote was to defend the Christian faith.

Without question, we can observe a constant attack against seeing God as our Heavenly Father, as we understand Him to be in Christianity, attacking in things such as: banning of prayer; forbidding the teaching of creationism or even God as using evolution as a possible method of his creation, the censorship of Christmas themes; the use of textbooks that hide religion’s role in the country’s history; the outright impugning of the religion; and, increasingly, attempts to insinuate the study of Islamic history into American classrooms while ignoring other religions, while seeking to erase the gender identities of the students.

In the bible we read about how Moses found his real identity, how although he was born a Hebrew slave, he overcame and found his identity to become a great man of God.  Born into slavery as a Hebrew in Egypt, back when Pharaoh sought to kill all Hebrew male gendered boys, he by God’s providence was delivered after his mother set him in the Nile River afloat in a waterproof basket.  Pharaoh’s daughter found him, and took him as her own, so that he was educated and reared in the finest environment in Egypt.

However, when Moses observed an Egyptian mistreating a Hebrew slave, he killed the taskmaster.  This caused Moses to have to flee to Midian where God led him to come to know his true heritage as a Hebrew and to lead him to go back to Egypt to lead the Hebrews to freedom. Moses realized his identity from his relationship to God.

Robert S. Eubanks in his book Credentialed to Destroy talks about classroom techniques that render students confused and defeated. It is type of academic slavery.  Instead of gaining confidence in their ability to function effectively, the children learn they are incapable. The goal seems to be to break down each child’s spirit, in the hope of creating a group mentality. It develops a group mentality without real personal identity. Socialists might like that outcome, but this is very much in contrast with what 2 Corinthians 5:17 points toward that: “Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new,” which entails a new mind and identity in Christ.

Eubanks goes on to write: “The destruction to the ability to think well or read or know much was intentional. If not by the actual teacher or principal, then by the education professors who taught and credential them to push destructive theories in the classroom actually designed to prevent fluent reading. To impair logical thought. To reach inside the student’s psychological makeup to alter values and beliefs and attitudes. Even feelings…. This declared idea of deliberately using the school and classroom to create profound frustration hoping to create cognitive dissonance was a betrayal of trust then. It is a betrayal of trust now.”

Eubanks states that one education theorist admitted that her technique “was designed to create a reciprocal dependency within the classroom. She did not want a reading technique or practice that would reinforce self-sufficiency.”  The point seems to be to sabotage both intellectual and spiritual development. The school systems in this respect seek to develop drones and clones, robots, people who have all the traits you would expect in slaves, submissive to the powers that be, the progressive and politically correct that a leading American educational achievement in secondary schooling continually downward.  Look at the results of the past forty or so years!

A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions,” but to use “gender inclusive” ones as in their guideline, “Gender Spectrum”, #2  says, “ Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys & girls,’  ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’  and similarly gendered expressions to get kid’s attention.   Instead say things like ‘calling all readers,’ or ‘hey campers,’ or ‘could all of the athletes come here.’  Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet at the rug.” This was part of curriculum to “provide education, training and support to help create a gender sensitive and inclusive environment for children of all ages.” (“School Told to Call Kids ‘Purple Penguins’ Because ‘Boys and Girls’ Is Not Inclusive to Transgender” By Katherine Timpf – National Review Online).

The “Gender Spectrum” situation of the Nebraska school system was set up to make sure transgender people would not feel the effects of discrimination.  Gender identity disorder is classified as a medical disorder known as gender dysphoria that relates to people who feel uncomfortable with issues regarding it, the stigmatization of transgender individuals. But is it right to seek to neutralize genders in the classroom out of the fear of hurting a person’s feelings.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a movement toward gender inclusivity in public schools: In 2013, a first boy who identified as a girl was granted permission to use the girl’s restroom at his Colorado school.  Also in 2013, a California school determined which students would use the restroom by their gender identity, not biological sex. September 2014 a Minnesota school passed rules for students to be able to play sports based on their gender identity, not their birth. Now we see that our government has made is so that most school restrooms might become unisexual!

In the Psychology Today, July 19,2010 article, Ray Williams wrote, “Our male identity crisis: What will happen to men?” it says: “In a post-modern world lacking clear-cut borders and distinctions, it has been difficult to know what it means to be a man and even harder to feel good about being one. The many boundaries of a gendered world built around the opposition of work and family-production versus reproduction, competition versus cooperation, hard vs. soft-have been blurred, and men are groping in the dark for their identity… Overwhelmingly, the portrayal of men and the male identity in contemporary western societies is mostly negative. Men today are extensively demonized, marginalized and objectified, in a way reminiscent of what happened to women. The issue of the male identity is of crucial importance because males are falling behind in school, committing more suicides and crimes, dying younger and being treated for conditions such as ADHD more than females.”

Gender confusion it can be argued has a greater negative effect on males than females.

The gender-role behavior of children seems to be strongly influenced by their identification with the males and females in their lives. All children pick up characteristics from the men and women around them, incorporating these traits into their own personalities and value systems. Over time, the combined effect of these many external influence, including variations of androgens and estrogens in each individual may help determine many of their masculine and feminine qualities, but the confusion of gender identity to designate a male to be a female or otherwise, females to be designated as a male is very destructive to true intellectual development, and this is not wise to see our schools encourage sick gender identity.

All people have varying mixtures of the male androgens and the female estrogens, but God set it for mankind to be male and female, not part male and part female, nor one with the option of change if you aren’t happy with the way you are created! The wisdom or really the lack of wisdom from the progressive minds confuses gender identification and will lead to great moral breakdowns, more dissolution or confusion of what makes marriage and the family.  This as well is just another movement leading to further deterioration of the Judeo-Christian culture from which our land developed.

Our prayer to God is that public education sees the foolishness of removing God from public education, for He alone can resolve this problem!

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Avenue, Lavonia, Georgia 30553,  706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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