Erin Lee, director of Protect Kids Colorado, says public schools there are now required to teach homosexual-related history to students in all grades, starting in kindergarten. The curriculum dates back to 2019, she says, when the state legislature mandated a social studies course.
That wasn’t enough progress for progressives, however: In 2022, the state board of education mandated the curriculum begin with first graders.
“They actually tried to start them in kindergarten,” Lee recalls. “The few parents that showed up to voice concern successfully pushed them up to first grade.”
The goal is to plant “seeds of indoctrination” in the minds of very young children, Lee warns, especially the gender-choosing transgender ideology.
“It's not just here in Colorado,” he says.
Parents in Chicago Public Schools would agree with that comment after the group Parents Defending Education uncovered elementary-level lessons on sex and gender, according to a Fox News story.
A lesson for first graders teaches the children how to “define gender, gender identity, and gender role stereotypes,” the Fox story reported. Farther up the grade levels, a lesson for Chicago fifth graders describes “puberty blocker medications” used by transgender people. That lesson also uses the now-familiar “Gender Unicorn” that is frequently used in transgender-related lessons.
In the Chicago public schools, 31% of elementary students are proficient in reading and only 19% are proficient in math, the Fox story pointed out.
Laurie Higgins, an Illinois-based conservative activist, tells AFN the mandated lessons are not only written with students in mind. The rules and state laws often make it difficult – if not impossible – for disapproving parents to remove their child from participating.
"Making parents come into the school at a certain time, making an appointment with a teacher, and slog through that,” she says. “And then you have to do that at three different schools maybe, three different appointments. I mean, this is impossible."
With the new school year starting, Lee says Colorado parents should consider themselves fortunate if they can afford to pay for private school or can homeschool their children.
“I just cannot emphasize enough,” Lee tells AFN, “that the only safe option for children in this state is not to be in a government school."
