It’s a sad state of affairs when a school board cuts a parent off from addressing them. Luckily, one mother was rescued by her own son, whose quick thinking saved the day. The impressive and courageous young man went on to hammer the board members with a big reality check.
When a mother attempted to make a second point in her argument before a school board, the school board refused to hear her and rudely cut her off, claiming she had her chance even though she had not used up her allotted three minutes. That’s when her tenacious son, who was a student at the school, saved the day.
We don’t have the entire context or background of the video, but what becomes quite clear is that the mother was attempting to make a point about the new “approved” sexually explicit materials available to students in the library. Examples of such materialsincludea graphic novel that includes “bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction.”
When the mother states she has not used up her three minutes, the school board member cuts her off. “It’s a point, I’m sorry,” the school board membertellsher. “You have one chance in your three minutes.” The mother is speechless and looks totally bewildered at the school board members. That’s when her son comes quickly to her aid and steps up to the mic as his mom relays to him what she was going to say.
“I’m Jacob Benning,” the young man begins. “If you Google [these topics] on our Chromebooks [provided by the school], type on our Chromebook, search on our Chromebooks, it’s immediately flagged. You block us from consuming this content on our Chromebooks because it’s not something children should be consuming in a school environment. Or frankly, at all.”
The young man continues to explain the baffling and troubling situation. “But then you leave it available to us in our libraries for students to freely read,” he added. “That’s a double standard that I don’t think should be in schools. None of this should be in our schools. There’s no educational value to any of this in our libraries. I think you guys understand that.”
The young man clearly becomes the teacher and delivers a big reality check to the school board members. However, immediately after he finishes his comment, one school board member makes it clear that she doesn’t agree with the young man. “The people that are sitting there saying these books can corrupt their children are the ones making our victims feel so ashamed,” she tells the audience full of parents.
“How dare you say that!” one parent responds as the angry school board member yells, “Excuse me! These are my comments!” The audience, made up of parents, is incensed and the school board moves to “recess” the meeting. Sadly, this isn’t the first time a school board has come under fire for making sexually explicated materials available to students under the guise of gender or sex education.
In Oregon, the Salem-Keizer school board made headlines when it allowed a graphic novel to be available to its students starting at 11 years old. It was titledGender Queerand is full of sexually explicit images, dialogue, and descriptions, it wasreported.Additionally,Gender Queerwas “assigned” summer reading for middle school kids according to Chicago parents who madeformal complaintsto their school board.
