MANCHESTER, Conn.

Schools in Connecticut aren't doing as well as they once did teaching reading, math and the other academic basics, but they seem to be finding more time to address sexual subjects. The latest examples come from an elementary school in Granby and a middle school in Southington, where “Pride Month’’ videos were shown to students. News reports said the video shown in Granby involved transgenderism, and after it was shown, feminine-hygiene products were distributed to the boys as well as the girls in the audience.

The intent of these exercises is to discourage disparagement and bullying of students who are different or are suspected of being so. But the sexual aspects of these exercises raise questions of propagandizing, age-appropriateness and the pre-emption of parents.

That's why the exercises may be both too explicit and too narrow. For people are different in many ways apart from sexual orientation and gender identity -- different in race, ethnicity, religion, politics, and so forth. So why the emphasis lately on sexual orientation and gender, if not for propagandizing? Where are the tolerance-supporting videos about the many other differences?

Kids can be both cruel and cowardly. They are easily pressured into joining campaigns of bullying. But no lecture on sexual preferences or gender dysphoria is necessary to dissuade them. Instead kids can be instructed simply to behave decently toward their classmates -- to be polite and kind in school, to recognize that people have the right to their personal lives, to keep to themselves their judgments of those personal lives, and to understand that they will be disciplined sternly when they violate these standards.

Discipline long has been lacking in public education in Connecticut, even for the most disruptive students. Parents continue to complain that their children are bullied by classmates and that school administrators do little about it. If disparagement and bullying of students now are also chronic in regard to sexual orientation and gender identity, schools need more discipline, not more videos, propaganda, or distribution of feminine hygiene products to boys as well as girls.

xxx

Besides, Pride Month itself is a misnomer if, as Connecticut has presumed for more than 50 years, sexual orientation is largely innate, a matter of heredity and environment that, while nobody's business but one's own, is nothing to be proud about either, insofar as no one does anything to earn it.

Sometimes courage may be required for being candid about one's sexual orientation or gender identity, but that's a different issue. What should be celebrated here is not sexual or gender identity but the personal freedom the United States affords, its declaration "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

There is already a national holiday recognizing that. It is coming up in three weeks, though schools seem to be teaching less about it than about sexual orientation and gender identity.

xxx

Another misnomer is about to be celebrated: June 19, or Juneteenth, which is erroneously portrayed as marking the end of slavery in the United States toward the end of the Civil War, in 1865. In fact the date notes only the arrival of Union troops in Galveston, Texas, whereupon, in accordance with President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation 2½ years earlier, Gen. Gordon Granger declared the freedom of all slaves in the rebellious state.

But slavery continued in the country for another six months after Juneteenth -- remaining legal in New Jersey, Kentucky and Delaware -- until ratification of the 13th Amendment, on Dec. 6, 1865.

So if a special holiday is needed to mark the end of slavery, the proper date is Dec. 6.

It might be called Freedom Day and used to teach about slavery and the long and heroic political, religious, and military struggles to get rid of it. Such a holiday might teach about inequalities that remain today and can be traced back to slavery.

Instead the one thing people will learn from Juneteenth is false.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net). He’s a former managing editor of the (Manchester) Journal Inquirer