Local reporting on the recent CUSD School Board meeting was disturbing.
The agitated rhetoric seemed contrary to the public’s interest in discussing an important issue for Coronado’s Schools and the taxpayers funding them. Perhaps a different approach is called for:
Premise One: The Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) represents itself as the premier Professional Guild for continuing education for California’s over 17,000 school administrators.
ACSA claims it provides training, information, and resources for those setting policy and supervising day-to-day operations of public schools. Upon this premise CUSD allocates taxpayer funds for CUSD’s representation in ACSA, participation in ACSA training and access to ACSA resources.
Three premises
Premise Two: Examining ASCA’s agenda for its annual conference and its selection of keynote speaker confirms ACSA is no longer primarily a professional education consortium.
Clearly it has become an ideological advocacy organization training members to implement a program to promote a degendered (not degenerate) ideology, obsessively fixated on sexual identity, in all phases of K-12 public education.
Whether CUSD does or does not send staff or teachers is not relevant to the truth of this claim, though not doing so has now been deliberately noted repeatedly in local news, begging this question: Does CUSD reject ASCA’s ideological dogmas?
Premise Three: Advocacy for ideological assertions about human sexuality that run contrary to reality and the sexual ethics taught by most families is not a legitimate function of public education. It conflicts with the purpose public schools serving pluralistic communities.
Honest examination of the May 2023 ACSA Conference agenda and a straightforward review of its keynote speaker’s credentials argue all three premises above are true.
The conclusion follows from the premises:
Conclusion: What CUSD should do
Conclusion – CUSD should: 1) end its relationship with ACSA; 2) prohibit use of ACSA developed or endorsed materials promoting degendered sexual identity in schools. 3) no CUSD staff or teacher should receive training from an ACSA member or ACSA trained surrogate and 4) No CUSD employee’s membership dues to ACSA should be reimbursed from public funds.
The above is what was once known as presenting an argument.
It allows those who differ to respond by disproving one or more of the premises to dispute the conclusion.
Arguments can be offered and discussed calmly, without vitriol.
Being reasonable in public discourse
In public discourse this was once known as being reasonable.
Please dispense with disgracefully lazy, “but experts say” refutation.
Don’t hide from ideas. Deferring to authority is not germane to the argument above, nor is it to ideas promoted in public schools. Coronado citizens are ultimately responsible for the ideas presented to Coronado’s children, not sexual ideologues.
Please, for civility’s sake, let us discuss ideas, not denounce people. Adults need no protection from ideas. Cowardly smokescreens, “-phobic” suffixed slurs, substituting the pejorative “hate” for “disagreement” and suicidal doomsaying do not promote civil discourse, they prevent it. Stop using them. Stop pretending they are valid arguments. They are not.
In 1947, James Halsey, president of the University of Bridgeport, cited an epigram, now oft repeated, in graduation addresses: “Perhaps you have heard the little epigram which goes like this: ‘Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and little minds discuss people.'”
May it be so in our community.
Jon Mosier is Naval Aviator ordered to Coronado in 1996 to serve on the Naval Air Forces Staff. He put down roots in Coronado and never left, serving in San Diego based commands until retirement from active duty in 2008. Jon now devotes himself full-time to community service.
