A Message to Teachers

Containing an Important Correction to The Federalist

Rest assured, I concluded my recent explainer on polio: since the virus spreads via the fecal-oral route, if an outbreak does develop, we won’t all have to mask up again. Mea Culpa. That was before I learned that the National Education Association, our nation’s largest teacher’s union, is promoting how-to guides for children to learn… um, well, let’s just say that if your teacher is in the NEA, and there’s an outbreak of any disease spread through fecal-oral means, you’re gonna need to keep your mask on at all times. Gloves would be a good idea, too.

Teachers, we need to talk. Like pediatricians, you have worked selflessly over generations to care for children and have built up great stores of good will in the community. I’m right there with the community – nobody tops my Anne of Green Gables fandom, and we all know what profession she chose. Nonetheless, beware: even generational goodwill can be squandered. And we’re definitely not in Avonlea anymore.

Let’s just say, if modern-day Anne were reenacting the poems she’s learning in school these days, the film adaption would not be PG

A telling quotation, from the irreplaceable Joy Pullman’s recent story on librarians’ insistence upon sharing pornography with other people’s young children:

Rogers librarian Lesley Knieriem wrote warmly in favor of the book in her response for the review committee: “In a society that is bombarded with hyper gender-conforming messages in advertising, popular entertainment, and politics, when sexual predation of children by family members and religious leaders is on the news every night, when suicide is the major cause of death for young people who identify as trans, a message of acceptance, hope, encouragement, and self-love is literally life-saving[.]”

Let us look past the shopworn use of the National Lampoon theory of suicidality. Let us even ignore the even older – it goes back at least to the Garden – invocation of “self-love,” which is the precise opposite of salvific. Let me draw your attention instead to: “sexual predation of children by […] religious leaders.”   

We all know what the librarian is talking about, right? Rod Dreher has written movingly about the great damage the Catholic Church’s sex scandals caused – not just to the traumatized victims themselves, but to all Catholic laity, and, ultimately, to the institutional Church itself. A once world-spanning power was reduced, in a few years, to a late night TV punchline.  

Not all priests are pedophiles; the overwhelming majority, in fact, are not. But – whether out of fear of reprimand by their superiors, a misplaced sense of loyalty to colleagues over victims, a distrust of the motives of nosy reporters, or who knows what other complex set of self-justifications – that overwhelming majority remained silent about the abuse in their ranks. The higher-ups, meanwhile, actively covered up the incidents, gaslighting their own innocent, abused parishioners and their families for asking questions, instead of attacking the actual perpetrators. Sound familiar?

Teachers, your social studies curriculum is not the Summa Theologica. Your school gym is not the Sistine Chapel. If it can happen to the Church, it can definitely happen to you. Read Dreher again. Now is not the time to close ranks, now is not the time to keep your head down. If you won’t speak up to save the poor, groomed children, at least speak up for selfish reasons, to save what is left of your profession.  

I speak out about genital mutilation, depression-inducing lockdowns, the corruption of the AAP, and other such topics not just because I want to save the lives of innocent children, though I very much do. I am trying to do what little I can, as a random neighborhood pediatrician, to try and rescue some shred of the credibility of my profession. Parents are tuning pediatricians out, they are turning on us, because they see so many doctors peddling sinister lies. This loss of trust is a tragedy; I am trying to let parents know there remain some outposts of sanity in the profession. Sane teachers, I know you’re out there, we need you to do the same.

Speak out. Denounce the groomers among you. Be a safe space for childhood innocence, not an abettor of its destruction. By the time I was in my teens, “altar boy” was a punchline. Don’t let “elementary teacher” face the same fate. 

Thank you for reading, and welcome new subscribers, your support and comments are much appreciated.