Professor Wants ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Training for Tots, Seriously

Kathleen Elliott, an assistant professor in the education foundations department at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, wants to add an item to the current kindergarten curriculum.

Along with recess and learning the ABCs, she wants little kids to fight against “toxic masculinity,” as noted by Campus Reform.

It’s tough to believe a public university funded by hardworking taxpayers and set in the Midwest is perpetuating these types of values.

But this is precisely what’s unfolding at this college, where the student population hovers around 12,000 and in-state tuition is some $26,000 a year.

In a recently published journal article in “On the Horizon,” called “Challenging Toxic Masculinity in Schools and Society,” Elliot argues that “toxic masculinity supports and is supported by gendered patterns of power that perpetuate broad inequalities, and schools have an important role to play in challenging these inequalities.”

The antidote is the “men’s projects,” this professor says, that are springing up on campuses nationwide and are “designed to provide students with a space for critical self-reflection and dialogue on topics of masculinities, gender construction, and identity,” according to a page on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s website.

Men’s projects want to reconstruct what most people define as masculine.

Incidentally, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has canceled its own men’s project program, yet Elliott continues to tout its praises, suggesting that many “goals and methods can be adopted in K-12 schools.”

“Such programs educate male students on ‘intersectionality and the complexity of masculinity identities” while helping them “challenge simplified definitions of masculinity,'” said Elliot, according to Campus Reform.

LifeZette reached out to the school’s communications department for comment, but did not hear back by publication time.

Elliott’s words are ambiguous, for starters.

“Presumptuous, self-righteous ‘progressives’ have long arrogated to themselves the right to effect ‘cultural change’ by exploiting their taxpayer-funded positions and captive audiences composed of other people’s intellectually and emotionally vulnerable children,” Laurie Higgins, a cultural issues writer for the Illinois Family Institute, from Carol Stream, Illinois, told LifeZette.

“Progressive ideologues are intolerant of dissent. They abuse power with shameless hypocrisy.”

“They exploit their positions to advance an ideology — a set of arguable propositions — that they present as inarguable, objective facts. They transform education into indoctrination. When their ideological victims are young children, the abuse of power is even more egregious,” she added.

Educator Elliott would disagree with that, of course. “By including discussions of masculinity and involving men and boys, schools can build on previous successes in fighting gender inequality that were aimed at girls and young women to effect a broad cultural transformation and help create a more just and equitable society,” she writes.

Related: Science Guy Bill Nye ‘Changes’ the Facts on Gender

Still, Higgins, a mother of four children, calls out Elliott’s actions for what they are — attempts to push the far-Left agenda without an opportunity to refute it.

“Elementary school children are wholly unable to understand the arguable presuppositions that form the foundations of the entire leftist sexuality ideology,” Higgins explained. “High school students are able to understand the abstract leftist presuppositions on gender, gender identity, biological sex, masculinity, and femininity — but ‘progressive’ indoctrinators passing as educators refuse to spend equal time having students study resources that challenge or dissent from leftist ideas.”

https://twitter.com/rios9000/status/100233685519770828

There’s even more to it than that, and parents should be forewarned about what their children might be subjected to in class.

“Progressive ideologues often enter teaching to use schools to transform the moral, political, and philosophical views of other people’s children in order to re-create society in their own ideological image,” noted Higgins. “These ideologues are not committed to diversity of ideas. They don’t honor all voices. They’re intolerant of dissent,” she added. “They censor with brazen temerity. They abuse power with shameless hypocrisy.”

Elizabeth Economou is a former CNBC staff writer and adjunct professor. Follow her on Twitter.