Largest Teachers Union in America Recommends ‘Gender Queer’ For Summer Reading

The National Education Association (NEA) recommended on Monday that teachers include the controversial book Gender Queer on their summer reading lists.

The book was featured in the NEA’s “Great Summer Reads for Educators!” list that showcased 11 books. Among those books are White Fragility, a book that blames white Americans for using anger, shame and guilt to avoid taking responsibility for racial inequality.

Gender Queer has sparked major controversy among American parents for being in public school libraries throughout the U.S. and has been challenged for its graphic depictions and descriptions of oral sex as well as discussions on masturbation.

This list of books comes after the president of the National Education Association declared that racial and social justice is a “pillar” of the NEA’s efforts.

“For us at the NEA, education justice must be about racial justice, it must be about social justice, it must be about climate justice. It must be about all of those things,” president Becky Pringle said.

“For our students to be able to come to school ready to learn every day–We can never think of education as an isolated system because everything connects to our students’ ability to learn. So, we have to necessarily talk about housing justice, food inequality, and the reality that we all just went through a global pandemic together and of course it was the most marginalized communities that were already suffering from the inequities in every single social system in this country and every country.”