By Cassandra Fairbanks
The Wellesley Public School system in Massachusetts is encouraging students, parents and staff to anonymously report anyone who engages in “microaggressions” — like using the word “crazy” or mispronouncing a name.
The school system’s new policy for “Responding to Incidents of Bias or Discrimination” included a Google doc where you can anonymously report people who offend you.
The leaked slides on the policy were provided to the Daily Mail by an organization called Parents Defending Education, which they say “fights against indoctrination in American classrooms and activist-driven agendas in schools.”
Examples of the things that they want reported as microaggressions include assigning tasks that reinforce gender roles, mispronouncing names or using the term “China Virus.”
The policy defines a bias incident as “any biased conduct, speech or expression that has an impact but may not involve criminal action, but demonstrates conscious or unconscious bias that targets individuals or groups that are part of a federally protected class (ie. race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, or disability).”
The training slides also say to report people if they make rude jokes online.
Additional examples of micro aggressions that they believe should be reported include a student saying “my principal is so crazy!” or saying that someone’s name is hard to pronounce.
Parents Defending Education President and Founder Nicole Neily wrote an op-ed in Real Clear Education about the policy on Monday.
“Creating the expectation that authority figures can – or should – adjudicate all interpersonal disputes isn’t just denying children the opportunity to develop better interpersonal skills. It’s also a slippery slope to big government, which by necessity must expand to fulfill this new role,” she wrote.
The Daily Mail reports that “potential discipline for students who violate the policy include detention, suspension, or other restorative responses that require them to acknowledge their responsibility and minimize its impact.” Staff members who violate it “would be subject to the disciplinary procedures of their bargaining unit, which might typically include a process of formal warnings and reprimands, suspension, or more serious consequences.”
Non-staff members of the community would be banned from school campuses.
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