The Ministry for Traditional Education is a group of concerned parents, grandparents and other stakeholders alarmed by the direction that New Jersey's public-school education is heading and is sponsoring this petition to invoke change.  Public education is intended to prepare students with the skills and know-how to compete in a global workplace, not indoctrinate our children with ideologies that in no way help in this preparedness goal.  With the recent push in New Jersey to take valuable class time to teach children, starting as early as kindergarten, about gender and sexual identity as well as other age-inappropriate sex topics and critical race theory, now typically referred to as diversity, equity and inclusion, New Jersey's educational curriculum is straying even further away from its intended goals and is setting our children up for failure.  Accordingly, we, the signatories to this petition, STRONGLY implore the governor and the New Jersey Department of Education to change course and focus on the basics that helped this State, and America as a whole, grow into the global power it is today and to immediately cease and desist from indoctrinating our children in ideologies that are not aligned with science nor conducive to academic greatness.

Accordingly, we implore those in charge of the education of our children to immediately reverse course on its plan to institute gender and sexual identity and age-inappropriate sex topics into the State's curriculum.  We do not believe such ideologies serve the best interests of the children.  To the contrary, sexual and gender identity does the exact opposite - it causes children to question the very essence of who they are.  Children already incur enough stress as they develop and learn about who they are and how they measure up to their peers.  We should be encouraging our children to discover and foster their unique abilities and talents, not forcing them to question their most basic and immutable characteristic of their gender or teaching them about age-inappropriate sexual topics.

Furthermore, equity goals are preventing students from achieving their full potential.  Public schools have increasingly watered-down standards and expectations to pass students or altered or eliminated programs in the name of equity.  We expect equal opportunities amongst students, not equal outcomes.  Each student possesses unique gifts, and effort plays a critical role in ultimate success, thus different students will achieve different results.  Rather than watering down academic standards or altering or eliminating programs, the focus should be on finding ways to elevate ALL students to meet the higher standards.  Public schools should push ALL students to achieve their fullest potential and by not doing so, the result will be weakening the next generation and thus the future of our country.

Children should be using valuable finite class time to improve their knowledge and understanding of the basics: mathematics, reading, writing, science, etc.  These are the core essentials any productive member of society must have a handle of; the areas of education that the State's educational curriculum has ALWAYS focused on up until recently.  Suddenly, without any real parental input, approval or consent, the State has unilaterally decided to incorporate what essentially are ideological issues into the realm of education.  In fact, the health curriculum was passed during 2020 at the height of the COVID hysteria when most parents were preoccupied by other pressing matters and weren't even aware this curriculum was being proposed.

We reject the State's health curriculum plans as presently contemplated and the equity concepts that the State is currently pushing on school districts that result in watering-down standards and/or eliminating or altering programs.  We want our children educated, not indoctrinated.  We want and expect our public education system to teach our children how to think, not what to think.  We thus expect you to restore high standards in core subject areas and simply provide all students equal access to the tools or other means necessary to achieve such standards.

In conclusion, we again implore that the State of New Jersey immediately cease and desist from its plan to indoctrinate our children with the gender and sexual identity and age-inappropriate sexual curriculum and remove critical race theory elements from public education.  These concepts have no place in the educational sphere.  Rather, such subjects must be left to the sole purview of the parents, who are the ultimate stakeholders in their children's future.