Founders Memorial School in Vermont has decided to replace traditional gendered terms such as “boy,” “girl,” “male,” and “female” with gender-related language like “person who produces sperm” and “person who produces eggs” in its fifth-grade science and health curriculum, according to a local ABC News affiliate.
Principal Sara Jablonski outlined the change in a letter to the families of students, emphasizing the school’s commitment to aligning their curriculum with their equity policy.
In the letter, Jablonski explains the new terms: “Person who produces sperm in place of boy, male, and assigned male at birth,” and “Person who produces eggs in place of girl, female, and assigned female at birth.”
The goal is to use “person-first” language to promote “inclusion” and respect for all students, regardless of their so-called “gender identity.”
A few months ago, The National Desk (TND) reported on a transgender science teacher from Denver, Sam Long, who advocated for similar gender-neutral language during a Department of Education-sponsored virtual event, the report noted.
Long stated that such language acknowledges “that not all women produce eggs and also not all egg producers are women.”
Long also emphasized the importance of language in education, saying, “We’re teaching students that language matters. We’re not just talking about imaginary people.”
However, this change has been met with criticism from some teachers and parental rights activists, who argue that inclusive language should not take precedence over scientific accuracy.
Erika Sanzi, the director of outreach for nonprofit Parents Defending Education, expressed her concerns to CITC: “This language is dehumanizing in any context but for a health unit for 5th graders about puberty and reproduction, it’s a dereliction of the duty to educate students about reality. This shows the ideological capture of an elementary school.”
Carole K. Hooven, a Harvard Human Evolutionary Biology professor, shared her observations on this trend with Fox News: “Over the last five years or so I have noticed a change, it’s been gradual, but this kind of ideology has been infiltrating science.”
Hooven continued, “There are male and female and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce, like, do we make eggs, you know, big sex cells, or little sex cells — sperm — and that’s how we know whether somebody is male or female.”
