{"id":89348,"date":"2025-03-06T07:47:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T13:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89348"},"modified":"2025-03-06T08:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T14:09:10","slug":"all-those-thems-and-theys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89348","title":{"rendered":"All Those Thems And Theys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Another day, another DFL policy to turn black and white into a rainbow of grays:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanexperiment.org\/on-the-horizon-non-binary-pronouns-in-3rd-grade-classrooms\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Center of the American Experiment<\/a>) \u2014 Starting this fall for the 2025-26 school year, Minnesota\u2019s public schools will be required to teach third graders how to use non-binary gender pronouns in writing sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Minnesota Department of Education\u2019s new&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/files.americanexperiment.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/2020-Minnesota-K-12-Academic-Standards-in-English-Language-Arts-ELA-022224-updated.pdf?v=1740504206\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) standards and benchmarks<\/a>&nbsp;were adopted in 2023 and are scheduled for full implementation at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revisor.mn.gov\/statutes\/cite\/120B.021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Reviewed and revised on a 10-year cycle<\/a>, Minnesota\u2019s ELA standards and benchmarks are organized into three strands: 1) reading, 2) writing, and 3) listening, speaking, viewing, and exchanging ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under the writing strand, a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/files.americanexperiment.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/2020-Minnesota-K-12-Academic-Standards-in-English-Language-Arts-ELA-022224-updated.pdf?v=1740504206#page=37\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">third-grade benchmark<\/a>\u00a0requires students to \u201cuse nouns (collective and irregular plural), verbs, frequently used adjectives and adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns (including reflexive pronouns and male, female and\u00a0<em><strong>non-binary gender pronouns<\/strong><\/em>) [emphasis added] in simple and compound sentences authentically in writing.\u201d (3.2.1.3)<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>If it&#8217;s a day ending in &#8220;Y&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Know the part that annoys this English major?<\/p>\n<p>There was a time &#8211; like, in the past decade &#8211; when referring to someone whose gender you didn&#8217;t know, or where the gender was immaterial to the discussion, as &#8220;they&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0 In common usage, it was a perfectly acceptable third-person pronoun &#8211; a &#8220;Neutral&#8221; one, for those of us who speak gendered European languages like German, French or Spanish.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s a poiltical and social statement &#8211; for <em>both<\/em> sides.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s almost like they&#8217;re <em>trying\u00a0<\/em>to make human communication impossible, or reduce language down to the bare minimum needed to express compliance.\u00a0 Almost like the quacking of ducks&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Oh.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"1984 by George Orwell - Appendix - The Principles of Newspeak\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/o3w36mYkmKI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another day, another DFL policy to turn black and white into a rainbow of grays: If it&#8217;s a day ending in &#8220;Y&#8221;&#8230; Know the part that annoys this English major? There was a time &#8211; like, in the past decade &#8211; when referring to someone whose gender you didn&#8217;t know, or where the gender was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,37,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-battle-for-the-language","category-language","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89349,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89348\/revisions\/89349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}