LEXINGTON, Michigan—Long-standing Michigan laws have become a new weapon for a group of aspiring education reformers seeking to guard school children in the state against what they call “illegal hyper-sexualization” and other “woke” teachings.
Activists concerned about what they were seeing in the state’s public schools recently formed a non-profit, non-partisan organization they call the Great Schools Initiative (GSI). They aim to help parents keep children from being exposed to teachings about gender change, sexual practices, and other concepts that they believe are harmful.
Co-founder Monica Yatooma, who has no children in a public school, became alarmed when she heard friends speak of things happening at their children’s public schools. Shocking news updates also caught her attention. It sounded like an effort to indoctrinate children in her community’s public schools about sexuality.
Yatooma began researching the websites of school districts in her state, where she saw evidence of programs espousing the teachings of critical race theory (CRT) and “the hyper-sexualization of students through exposure to gender ideology,” she said. “That’s where GSI came from.”
Now, she and others are using the group’s efforts to help parents statewide.
“Our goal is to bring back orthodox education and to improve our schools,” the group’s co-founder Nathan Pawl told The Epoch Times. “Our immediate mission is to protect the safety and privacy of every student and to restore parental control over what their child is being taught in school.”
Human sexuality is “a highly sensitive” subject, Pawl said. “It often implicates family structure, religion, and the maturity levels, both physically and spiritually, of school children.
“Uninvolved parents have let their schools run unchecked for years in the realm of sex education,” he said.
Digging for Solutions
As GSI activists began investigating, they uncovered significant problems in numerous districts.
Group members began attending school board meetings more regularly, hearing stories from other parents, and researching state laws looking for solutions, Pawl said.
