A Fairfax County, Virginia mother raised concerns about an assignment that prompted students to analyze an anti-Secondment Amendment persuasive essay sample.
The concerned parent, Darcey Geissler, sent Fox News Digital the essay that made a case for gun control. Responding to the principal’s email about her concern over the assignment, Geissler called the assignment “a poorly written, factually and legally inaccurate ‘essay,’ written by an adult parading as a child, being used to once again advance a political agenda.”
Geissler told the principal directly in an email, “When I was in law school, our first assignment on persuasive writing – a skill necessary to be a lawyer – was on whether or not a misspelling in a deed was sufficient to pass title. Not exactly a sexy or emotional issue. We were not handed Roe v. Wade, the 2nd Amendment, or climate change, even though we were law students with significant education and life experience.”
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“The reason we were not given hot-button issues when first learning to write was because in order to learn persuasive writing, it is imperative that the skill not be clouded by the issue before the skill is learned,” she continued in the email.
Darcey Geissler complained to the school principal, arguing politics played a role in the assignment.
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The lesson apparently came from “Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing.”
A spokesperson for Fairfax County Public Schools told Fox News Digital that the assignment “was given to students as part of a persuasive writing fifth-grade unit.”
“Students were asked to analyze this example essay from the neutral perspective of whether this piece of writing presented a convincing argument or not, and why. The school is working closely with the parent who complained about the assignment, so her concerns are addressed,” the spokesperson said.
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Geissler, who is a family law attorney, told Fox News Digital that the alleged persuasive essay was “not a persuasive essay” and instead an example of indoctrination.
Geissler has six children in her household, including three biological and three foster children. She said that her son was very upset about the assignment because their family supports the Second Amendment.
“I have at least one other parent who’s gone through it and ripped it apart, both factually and for the writing,” she said.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin speaks to members of the press after casting an early ballot September 23, 2021, in Fairfax, Virginia.
(Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Geissler went on to say that schools need to get back to teaching and “get away from woke doctrine.” She also described the area she lives in as “liberal.”
“We need to understand that these are children and as opposed to hiding behind them and trying to get our children to discuss issues that we don’t allow adults to discuss at parties. When was the last time you went to a party with mixed political views and said, ‘Hey guys, let’s talk about gun control, let’s talk about religion,'” she said.
“Adults are unable to handle these issues,” she continued. “And so now as opposed to adults being required to talk about them, we are standing behind our children, using them as puppets and using them as a shield to take the attack. They are not equipped to handle these conversations. The school is not even providing balanced support for this.”
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on the learning of kids across the U.S. was revealed through national test scores released last week that show sharp declines in math and reading.
Math scores saw their largest decrease ever, while reading scores dropped to levels not seen since 1992 for fourth and eighth graders across the country, according to the Nation’s Report Card.
Bookcase in a library.
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The Fairfax County Parent Association, which serves students in Fairfax County Public Schools, released a statement claiming that the situation in Virginia is “even more dire.”
“Fourth graders—greatly impacted in their formative educational years by consciously poor COVID school policies—saw an eleven-point drop in math scores, and a ten-point drop in reading scores, the largest declines in the nation,” the group said. “Make no mistake, FCPS, the largest school system in the commonwealth, has ‘helped’ to drag us to this point.”
