US school district directs teachers to lie to parents about their childrens wellbeing

Not at all. I am saying that the parents have the highest right to decide what is in their child’s best interests - higher than you, me or anyone else. I can’t also be saying that I have the highest right to decide what is in their best interests. Those would be completely contradictory statements.

It’s obvious that parents’ decisions are the default and come before yours. They are the ones who are responsible for the child and bear some relevance to their life. If parents think that X is not in the child’s best interests and you think that it is, why on earth should it be your opinion that gets enacted? Who even are you? By the same token there are millions of other strangers on the internet who would disagree with you and think that X is not in the child’s best interests; why not take their opinion?

Of course they do. Sending a child to a school is taken as implied consent to be involved in lessons, activities and other things. A parent also has the right to revoke that consent at any time.

A school cannot say “this child will do Chess Club whether the parent likes it or not”. The maximum they can do is say that “chess is compulsory for students at this school, if you don’t want your child to do it you will have to take them out of this school”.

I think this is the key issue here. For some religious conservative parents they see "curing their chid of their sickness" to be in the child's best interests, despite such treatment being universally condemned by medical, psychological and social experts (and illegal in some countries).

The sentence "the parents have the highest right to decide what is in their child's best interest" is itself a decision ion what is in the best interests of other people's children. After all, someone saying "the school have the highest right to decide what is in their child's best interest" is also a decision in what is in the best interests of other people's children. You are deciding what is in the best interests of the children: what their parents think. As I said, you're doing exactly the same thing I'm doing.

Being responsible for the child is not the same thing as having full control over everything the child does or is. Who are you to decide that parents should basically own their children as slaves? This is the sort of attitude that toxic parents have, that their child must obey everything they say, do everything they want them to do and be everything that they want them to be. I saw this at school with obsessive religious parents (and even some non-religious parents) and it's absolutely appalling. It's essentially abusive. Parents should be responsible for their child's safety, they should not have absolute control over every single thing their child does or who their child is.

Insofar as removing the student from the school, sure, but that's sort of besides the point as far as what we're talking about. If a child wants to attend an LGBT club at school they don't need permission from their parents, and the school doesn't need them to get permission from their parents.

You seem to have been misinformed. Parents do not have an absolute right of control over their children. They are not the absolute arbiter of what is in their best interests. It is the law that decides, and the law has decided that in certain circumstances, people and bodies other than parents assume responsibility. If a parent thinks it is in their child's best interests to be withdrawn from certain lessons, the law overrules them. You may not agree with that, but your objection is irrelevant.

Beating a child for bad grades is illegal, just as beating a child for being trans is. In both cases the school would inform the police/social services. It would seem reasonable to withhold the information in both cases.

Wrong. The school can inform the parents if the child agrees - so the policy does cater for different circumstances. Your proposal, that the school always informed the parents, regardless of the child's wishes, is actually the "one size fits all" policy that could compromise the child's best interests.

It would only be deception if the parent asks if the child is trans and the school says they are not. Simply not revealing something that has not been asked about is not deception. I haven't told you what I had for lunch. That is not deception. If you asked me what I had and I told you I had pizza, that would be deception.

No it’s not. The statement “the parents have the highest right to decide what is in a child’s best interests” is exactly that; a statement on who has the highest right to decide. It is not a statement on what is actually constitutes “the child’s best interests”; that is for them to decide, not me (or you).

This is a complete straw man. Nobody is saying that a child needs to get permission from their parents for every little thing, or that parents own their children as slaves.The point is that a third party (such as a school, or you) can’t come along and say to the parents “my view of what’s in the child’s best interests outranks yours”.

For example even if a doctor wants a child to get vaccinated against COVID but the parents don’t agree with that, then it won’t happen, and it is illegal for the doctor to still do it (no matter how much the rest of us might all agree that the doctor knows better).

But you are again deciding here that whatever is in the best interest of the child is what their parents think is in their best interest.

It's not a straw man, it's a natural consequence of what you are proposing. You're framing this using terms like "best interests" to make it seem nice and cushy when it's actually not, what you're describing is a situation where parents have complete control over what their child does, who they can interact with, how they can identify, etc. After all, in the event that the school or the child does even the smallest thing that the parents might disagree with, you can always fall back on the 'I have know what their best interests are, not you! You have to respect my decision!' argument. This only leads to one conclusion: that parents have full control over their children, irrespective of what anyone else thinks or wants (particularly the child themself). If someone even the age of 16 isn't allowed to socially transition without their parent's consent then you don't have a child, you have property

No I am not. I could disagree with parents about what is in the best interests of their child. But if we disagree, then their opinion should supersede mine. Whereas you seem to think that if you disagree with the parents, then your opinion should supersede theirs. Why? Of what relevant are you to their child?

You’re confusing “knowing what’s in the child’s best interests” with “having the right to decide what the child’s best interests are”.

Still a complete straw man. We’re not talking merely about a child doing something against their wishes. We’re specifically talking about a third party inserting themselves into the decision about what the child should do, and trying to secretively influence the outcome for their own ends - something which courts are increasingly finding to be illegal.

This has nothing to do with just a child wanting to do something vs. a parent saying they can’t. That is a totally different scenario.

In previous posts the two were synonymous, and I even gave examples where you explicitly said parents have the best interests of their child in mind.

It's not a straw man. The reason we've got to this stage is because of what you're saying here and why you think it's wrong. You care that a third party has inserted themselves into the decision about what the child should do, and you believe that is wrong because what they are doing superscedes the wishes of the parent. This doesn't change anything that I said previously since, in the example we've been using, the school is simply the middle man. The overall implication is that the child should obey whatever the parent wants, irrespective of their own wishes. A school which refers to a child by a different name or gender and does not tell this to the parent would be doing what the child wanted, and to say that parents should be able to stop the school doing this would be to deny the child the right to choose their own name and gender and to have privacy; how could they have these rights if you yourself say that parental consent is required? Apply this more generally and you end up with what I said before: the child as property.

My proposal is not that the school always informs parents. My proposal is that the school simply leaves the issue alone and carries doing their job of teaching.

What they are guided to do at the moment is put the child on a path to social transition and make sure the parents don’t find out about it.

It is also deception if the school starts to socially transition children to a new gender and their policy explicitly requires them to make sure that the parents don’t find out.

So you agree that the school should not inform the parents about what their child may have revealed about their sexuality to the school, if the child does not want them to.

Most of us don’t share your obsession with identity politics, so we don’t spend our time trawling the internet looking for the latest thing to outrage us.

So it is understandable that most of us wouldn’t know that libs of TikTok was a Twitter channel for culture war fanatics with far too much time on their hands.

Oh is that what "libs of TikTok" is?

@Napp why on Earth would you expect anyone here to know this? You think I'm illiterate for not knowing about some Twitter account? 😂

They don’t particularly need to go out of their way to inform parents, especially if the child has asked them not to. But they also shouldn’t be coming up with their own plans of action for what to do about it (i.e. socially transitioning a child to a new gender) and deliberately keeping their actions secret from parents and deceiving them about it.

In some cases there may be concerns about the child’s mental health though. For example transgender people have a very high propensity for considering or attempting suicide. In that case they should make it a point to inform the parents regardless of whether the child wants that or not.

By "coming up with their own plans of action for what to do about it" you seem to mean "accepting the child's request". Which you have already admitted is a reasonable approach in is likely in the child's best interests if they fear an adverse reaction from their parents.


The reason trans, gay and LGBTQ in general are more likely to attempt suicide is because of the prejudice and intolerance they face from society, family, etc - not because they are LGBTQ. If the reaction of their parents is likely to increase this risk, then the parents should not be informed - in the best interests of the child.
However you slice your arguments, they still come out as favouring the parents' beliefs over the child's wellbeing. Remember that the child's wellbeing is paramount in all considerations. The feelings of the parents are some way behind.

The whole point is that the school should not be the middle man. Firstly there’s no reason why third parties should just be inserting themselves into issues that aren’t their business of their own accord, and secondly the school is an agent of the parents, appointed by them, not the child. So it’s even less their place to start deceiving parents with respect to the child.

That bears no relation to the idea that the child must always succumb to parental control. No, this is entirely about the conduct of third parties who just want to push their own agendas and feel that targeting children is an easy way to do it.

Indeed, well theyve managed to make most major news sites by this point.. be it praise or reviling them, 6 of 1 and and all that. However, i called you illiterate for not reading the post before going off on one.