SANTA FE, Texas – Parents angered after a high school junior taking a college-level psychology class is given a gender-based assignment.
They’re not the only ones sounding off. The issue has caught the attention of state officials. One state senator saying its illegal.
The assignment is called The Genderbread Person, and on it, there’s a drawing of what appears to a gingerbread man. Those raising concerns say there is nothing cookie cutter about it.
“It made me feel uncomfortable and distasteful,” Shay Cundiff, a 17-year-old Santa Fe High School Junior said.
She says her teacher gave students the assignment in their dual credit college-level psychology course that is in conjunction with College of the Mainland.
“We had to fill out our information on a paper based off of what we identify as and what we’re sexually and romantically attracted to,” she said.
Cundiff says students were also required to write an essay about how they feel about the lesson.
“I didn’t agree with the point of views that are in the paper,” she said.
Before the assignment that was due Sunday, Cundiff says the teacher hadn’t really discussed gender identity, just sex organs. The curriculum caught her and parents off guard.
“We wouldn’t have really known. I mean, she was just going through doing the assignment like her teacher instructed her to do, and unless my wife hadn’t seen what she was writing and started talking to her about it, we wouldn’t have really known,” said Shad Cundiff, Shay Cundiff’s father.
Not only are Cundiff’s parents upset, so is District 11 State Senator, Mayes Middleton.
He mentioned that in Texas, gender modification of minors is against the law under Texas Senate Bill 14, and he believes this curriculum promotes it.
“That is not right,” Middleton said. “I’m looking at it with our State Board of Education members and to me it sure looks like they’re advocating for something that’s illegal.”
Senator Middleton says he was told by a State Board of Education member the curriculum was developed by Planned Parenthood.
As for, Cundiff, she says she plans to stay in the course because the only way to avoid it is if she were to drop it, which means she wouldn’t get the credits she’s been earning.
Yesterday, a Santa Fe ISD official said they do not agree with this assignment, and it is not a part of their curriculum. She said College of the Mainland would be the one to reach out to for more comment, as it was their course.
A College of the Mainland official acknowledged that a complaint had been filed, and said they are trying to determine specifically what happened.
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Deven Clarke
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