God forbid we teach our kids

The BBQ Pit
481

This thread is long and I have homework to do, so fogive me if I missed this somewhere (I made it through to page 6, and it wasn’t really mentioned).

I am all for parents having a say in what children are taught, and for sitting down with them, and supplementing their children with more information, and for being willing to HELP educate their children beyond what schools do.

HOWEVER,

Many parents don’t do this. Many parents seem to think that schools will teach everything, and get upset when they find out that little Jimmy in a public school hasn’t memorized the Bible yet, or can’t understand why their child is failing even though they never check for homewrok, or help out, or read to their kids, etc. The good parents are far outnumbered by the bad ones. If some parents can be counted on to provide a child with a pencil and eraser for school, or they never show up to parent-teacher nights, or never volunteer to help in the classroom, or never sign any permission slips other forms that get sent home, or never respond to communivation from the teachers, or never, not even ONCE, throughout a childs entire education, ask how they are doing…if people care that little about their children, how should these kids be raised? Who will teach them right and wrong? Who will give them support when they need it? Who will teach them that its OK to be different, and that it’s OK to have different feelings?

The school, at some point, MUST pick up the slack, and as it is impossible to customize the curriculum to each individual child, its impossible to NOT teach everyone the same thing at the same ages. If half the parents thing 11 is too young, but the other half are fine with it, and even think a subject should be taught at a younger aga, then where’s the middle ground? You can’t pick and choose.

You want better schools? Volunteer. Petition the government for more funding. Become a teacher. Don’t get upset when a school, or individual teacher, choses to teach about something that is a very VERY real fact of life. You are using that school system - if you don’t like it, don’t send your child there. They don’t have time to ask you if you approve of everything, much in the same way that you feel you shouldn’t have to tell the teachers how you teach your child at home.

One of my high school friends (In Quebec, this was grade 7), was beaten up regularly by a group of her old “friends” because she was brave enough to come out at that young age. For a year or two, she struggled, alone in her fight, to be accepted, and in later years in high school, things went well for her. Parents of the bullies were contacted at the time, and NOTHING GOT DONE ABOUT IT. I remember overhearing one girl say that her dad was PROUD OF HER for beating my friend up!!

Go tell my friend to her face that 11 or 12 is too young for her peers to have been taught NOT to beat her up because she was a lesbian. Go on,I dare you.

The teacher made the right decision in exposing the kids to this subject matter. People NEED to learn this, and not enough people are teaching it, regardless of the age involved.

482

Well. No.

The teacher should have followed school procedures for controversial topics. At this point it’s unclear if the teacher was “ignorant” of those procedures…willfully ignored them…or forgot.

Like I’ve said earlier…these are pretty standard steps to follow in pretty near any public school system. Try it out yourself…call up your local school district and find out about their policy for controversial subject matter. Dollars to donuts, it’s probably fairly similar to the one in Tucson.

Lastly, and as a separate matter from my first point above, there seems to be an assumption by many posters in this thread that OF COURSE the presentation by Wingspan will have it’s desired effect.

I wonder if many of these people would ALSO be the same kind of folks who would ridicule a program like D.A.R.E. (which essentially tries to do a similar thing…change attitudes and influence future behavior).

Have there been longitudinal studies about the efficacy of a program like Wingspan…or is the argument that “anything is better than nothing” when it comes to this topic. (much the same argument used by proponents of the D.A.R.E. program)?

483

(Responding a bit late, here.)

Kirky…

Your behavior in this thread (and others) shows that, even if you’re not an asshole in real life, you sure have a spark of assholicness that roars to a raging inferno at the slightest spark.

The problem is that you demand tolerance on the one hand, and then go and refuse to give tolerance to others, at the same time. What do we call someone who does that?

Why? Because I’m not screaming maniacally at the top of my lungs about the plight of gay teens? I care just as much as you do, buckaroo… I care about teens in general. I don’t just focus my attention on homosexuals - poor though their position in life may unjustly be.

I recognize that by foaming at the mouth, the way you do, I’d cause far more damage to the plight of homosexuals than any demonination of Christianity ever could.

484

Does anyone else feel that perhaps this might have the opposite effect intended? That maybe, just maybe, it could potentially make things worse?

Like give kids more ammunition?

(I do think, though, that when I was eleven, if we had seen this, we would have done nothing but sit there and giggle like idiots the whole time. Hehehehe…GAY!!! Ehehehe! He said GAY!!! Oh, then he said SEXUAL!!! Hell, we couldn’t even see the word “Virgin” in our hymnals during Tuesday Masses without getting a serious case of the giggles.)

485

That was my first thought when reading that the pamphlet handed out was called ‘Queer Voice.’ (Disclaimer: I’m a parent of young children who go to public school, though not middle school yet.) First, the push toward tolerance and acceptance of gays and lesbians and then, handing out a pamplet which uses a term that I’m going to outlaw in my house if I ever hear it spoken. In one presentation. I wouldn’t appreciate, one bit, something with ‘queer’ written on it coming home in their backpacks in sixth grade, while I’m (successfully I think) teaching my kids that those who seem ‘different’ really aren’t any different. Am I supposed to be liking or disliking that word?

That’s a lot of after-school discussion fodder for one day, IMO.

486

Hmmm, that’s another thing.

Yeah, how do you tell them then, not to say “queer”?

(Ehehehe…it says ‘queer’…eheheh!!!)

487

Here’s what my state (Michigan) has to say:

Somehow, I think that’s not going to shut up the Diogenes and MrVisibles of the world.

488

Not so long as gay kids aren’t provided with anything remotely like a “safe and positive environment” it’s not.

489

Guin: well, I dislike that word intensely, and an online friend of mine uses it all the time, she’s bisexual…debated with myself one day, “should I tell her how much it bothers me?” Then I thought, “no, because that’s too freaking weird.”

I also think explaining to a child that ‘being gay is ok’ is a job of parents as well as teachers, particularly if it’s your own child…I’m sorry that so many go balls-up on it. That is a tragedy. The proposed solution though, of circumventing parental approval of public school inititatives is offensive to me on several levels: becoming a parent didn’t make me a complete dipshit, and the schools depend on parental involvement for many, many things, it makes no sense to beg for time and effort in these and then slam the door when it comes to the actual teaching. I think they strike a nice balance between what parents/teachers/school board wants in terms of curriculum and initiatives. Well, some parents are teachers too, and some parents are gay; some people may be all three! This might be unthinkable in Fundyville TX, but (and for good reason) I don’t live there.

490

Teaching basic civil rights is a requisite part of developing intellectual capabilities. Teaching that bigotry will not be tolerated in a an academic or work setting is essential for developing their vocational skills. A safe and positive environment cannot be created without demanding respect for all students.

Parents have no more right to interfere with these things than they do to interfere with math or chemistry.

You’ve cited nothing to contradict us.

491

Interesting that you deliberately chose the perjorative term “interfere” to describe parental involvement…(or even parental notification)

492

‘The boy scouts do it,’ seems to be a tenuous argument:

The Boy Scouts are getting chased OUT of the classroom - letting Wingspan back in would just lend them cover. Even the craven Boy Scouts Act of 2001, which forces schools to take our favorite anti gay & athiest group can only insist on before or after hours.

If you then say, OK, what about if Wingspan just wanted to appear in the schools outside of the classroom? Here the existing code agrees with gobear; Massachusets:

The better solution would be to have a Gay Rights club as an extracurricular group. Less groundbreaking and offensive subversion of the parental rights, and IMHO, way more effective in nurturing gay students.

493

I was taught from early on – by parents, older siblings, relatives… just about everyone I had contact with – that homosexuality was just ‘wrong,’ morally repugnant and condemned by none other than “God” himself. Thus, all the discrimination and suffering gays went through was not only amply justified, but encouraged – after all, these are dangerous deviants out to “get you” and upend everything that is moral and right with the world.

The Invasion of The Moral Mutants if you will.

Thus armed, for quite a number of years, I took my homophobia to be just a natural ingredient of my own heterosexuality. As needed a component of what it takes to be a “man,” as providing for the family and wearing pants. Then, in my college years, it didn’t seem to be much of an issue for me anymore – I really couldn’t care less who slept with whom. Besides, I figured the more gays there were, the better the ratio of women available to me. Not exactly profound philosophical thinking, but then again, at that age, I didn’t always think with the right ‘head.’ But a step in the right direction anyway.

Fast forward a few years. I met a really nice, intelligent, funny guy at a gym I worked out in, a guy that I struck an easy friendship with as we seemed to have much in common. Until, that is, over a couple of drinks, he confessed his ‘dark secret’ to me: he was gay!

Hmmm…what to do? I mean, it was ‘OK’ to be tolerant of their lifestyle and I’d actually made some progress from my original justification for ‘gayness’ as written above; I was now at the point where I figured that just as some people are born with different colored skin, so are people that feel attracted to their own sex. So what? But being actual friends with one? Why, what if the guy was attracted to me? After all, he had already casually mentioned that I was a 'good looking guy." How would I handle that? Could I? Moreover, even if I rejected his friendship, wouldn’t knowing that he was gay make me all jittery around him in the confines of the locker room and shower where our budding friendship started? What about the dangers of succumbing to some dark, hidden desire that I might have in me? That thought alone was enough to send waves of panic over me – how positively embarrasing.

Because what follows would take much longer to write than I am willing, because I am now 46 years old at completely and totally at ease with myself, suffice it to say that I went on to have a great friendship with that gentleman for a number of years. That through him I learned more about this one topic than what I’d been told by all other people combined. I even thank him for letting me feel a little of that blind bigotry that had been a constant in his own life – you see, even though my sexual preferences never varied, just by proxy, by being seen with him in any number of places around town (and gasp, I even went with him to a gay club – hey, hetero males love lesbians, remember? :slight_smile: ) the rumors and innuendoes about me got started. It was just startling to realize how people could treat you completely different based on something as trivial in the overall scheme of things, as what you choose to do with your genitals – and mind you, because the rumor fell on its face, I was never subject to 1/100th of what my friend, and likely most other gays, go though…

Anyway, I guess this is just my very long-winded way of saying that I cannot possibly understand what anyone would oppose any kind of program that teaches tolerance towards others. And I would hazard a guess that gays, despite their obvious advances in mainstream society, remain one – if not the one – of the most vilified minorities around.

I for one, would have welcomed any number of lectures such as the one described in the OP in order to overcome all the empty prejudices that I was handicapped (yes, handicapped) with from the start. I am also making sure my 12 year old boy gets it right from the start. And that’s what this debate is ultimately about. Despite the seemingly sensible posts that many have written, this is an issue with no shades of gray. It is about overcoming centuries of myths and outright lies…and isn’t that what schools are supposed to be all about?

494

I don’t mind if parents are notified–as long as they don’t interfere.
Ace, the Boy Scouts are not really analogous here. Wingspan is not espousing any religious views.

495

Diogenes:

They’re analogous in the sense that both groups advocate non-pedagogic viewpoints. Lacking a Straight Affirmation Society that would be more directly analogous, these groups are similar enough for our debate.

Also, this analogy has already been made by Gobear back on page #3.

496

Diogenes:

**
And, interestingly, there hasn’t been a single person in all 10 pages of this thread who disputes the above. Not one.

Also interesting that both you and MrVisible chose to skip the overriding message of the Michigan School Code. I’ll try again:

All the rest of that passage discusses how schools will assist parents toward that aim. There is, however, no way to parse the above-cited sentence so that what the two of you have been saying ad nauseum is justifiable. Or legal, as this is the law of the land, where I’m from.

497

Interesting how you would choose that passage to be the overriding message.

I see the overriding message to lie in the second sentence:

You see, it doesn’t serve the needs of the pupils to deny them information on their sexuality, and then deride that sexuality constantly.

Cooperation between the parents and the schools means just that; the education of a student is best achieved when both parties are involved.

Unless you’re arguing that every single thing the school teaches its pupils needs to be run by the parents for confirmation first, you’d best give me a good reason why any discussion of homosexuality is so heinous as to be unavailable without parental permission.

498

And still, some of you fail to answer my question-what happens if it backfires?

499

Guin, how do you think it could make things worse? Specifically?

500

Well, at the very least, all that happens is the kids just start giggling and saying, “hehehehe…queer” a lot.
Or maybe they use it to say, “Now we can tell who is GAY!”

Or if some parents flip out, and start condemning things, or whatever.

I’m just saying, what happens IF the kids start taking these pamphlets and saying, “Hey, I’ll bet YOU ARE GAY!!!”