Guin, that’s what is already happening. It can’t get any worse.
Sure, the bullies will still be bullies- but the gay kids will have heard from someone, after years of hearing nothing but negative things about themselves, that they are OK. The hard part is not the bullying, it is the lack of support from authority figures. Go back and read the gay bashing thread we had a few months ago, every single person mentioned the schools, police, etc… taking the bullies side as being the hardest part to take.
BTW, someone compared wingspan with DARE- I never had to get parental notification to listen to their propaganda.
I think most gay students would benefit from knowing that the teachers and faculty were on their side.
Of course, in this particular case, the administration has sent a very clear message about the acceptance of gay students at their school. So I don’t think there’s a chance in hell now that a student will come out unless they are exceptionally brave.
Guin, I don’t think any of that isn’t happening already. Whatever backlash might come from this, I just can’t see how it could make things worse.
On a happy note, Wingspan’s youth center just got on the news for two whole days’ worth of coverage. That’s probably saved a few lives right there. Even if it was the last thing the administration intended.
One of the nice things about fighting ignorance; the louder it fights back, the more information gets out there.
I’ve been reading over this thread, and it surprises me how often the rights of parents are raised, and the rights of children ignored. As MrVisible pointed out before, it’s precisely the children who need to hear the lecture who won’t get parental support.
All students have the right to an education without having to fear for their safety. Any child who has been singled out for violence and abuse for a purely arbitrary reason (real or perceived sexual orientation) is not going to be concentrating well on exams and essays. They will be afraid for their lives. Their opportunity for an equal education – to say nothing of their chance for a long life – has been compromised.
Any parent whose convictions seriously compromise their child’s chance for any kind of future has overstepped their bounds, in my opinion. Children are people, and they ought to have the most basic of human rights – a right to life and an education.
Ideally, parents will compliment and reinforce what the school is teaching. It’s not my job to ‘approve’ everything but there’s really no way I can avoid getting personally involved in what the school is teaching. Inevitable questions arise at home all the time, they are explained to the best of my ability using age-appropriate terms and ideas.
Question this week, from second grader: “Why did people think it was ok to make black people slaves?” I did not bring up the KKK and white supremecy, or even Lincoln or the Civil War. yet. “People used to think they were lesser human beings because of their skin color, and they didn’t have the rights that other people did then. That was wrong. Now everybody knows that all people are created equal, and are basically the same, no matter what might make them look different” and that’s about it. She’s 7. I could have continued all day, gone right into the black vs. white issues and ended with a short explanation of affirmative action, but for obvious reasons I didn’t. That’s enough for now - the concept of ‘discrimination’ and that some people thought it was ok - and I’d be a fool to think I’ve ‘covered’ anything or that that’s the end of it. What preceded this was their learning about Martin Luther King, Jr, which I was aware of by the homework involved. More is sure to follow.
Contrast that with me suddenly finding the “Queer Voice” pamphlet in the bookbag in the future, in which case I might go three different kinds of apeshit. One - I don’t use that word, I doubt 6th graders understand it any better than I…do we call them them ‘queer’ or not?? Two - “Mom, what’s ‘transgendered?’” OMG I had no idea, I needed a review. Three - I’m sorry, do we need an outside agency for the idea that ‘all people are the same underneath’ and don’t go beating up on people who are different, it’s wrong? Can we dispense with hanging labels on these kids for the moment and just deal with people preferring members of their own sex, that that’s ok? Cripes.
So it didn’t look to me like it was done effectively. YMMV.
Well, let me ask you, Tee, what would you do if you found your daughter, at the age of thirteen, making out with another girl in her room? Would you go apeshit then?
If your daughter turns out to be a lesbian, she may need some help and support, from people who have experience in these matters, before she comes out to you, in order to make the process of coming out easier on the both of you. If she’s been exposed to nothing but negative stereotypes of gay people all her life, she may be afraid to tell you about herself, and suffer in silence, hiding who she is from you, mistakenly thinking that you may not love her when you find out who she really is. If she’s gotten good information, and advice on how to go about making sure that the coming-out process is as easy on everybody as possible, then she has a better chance of being able to let you into that part of her life, and she’ll be able to benefit from your advice and counsel on these matters, instead of experiencing a growing rift between herself and her family as her sexuality becomes more important.
If you don’t think that this was handled well, please feel free to suggest a better way to get this information out to the kids who need it. And then, I urge you, work to make that happen.
Not a problem. Let me first say that no, I would not go apeshit to find my daughter making out with a girlfriend…come to think of it I wouldn’t decide then and there she was gay, either. Right now I have little girls that tell Mommy everything and I’ll do my best to keep it that way, it’s my ‘first line of defense’ for darn near anything that may surface. School troubles, drugs, sex…
I know it’s important to have a student support system in place in which any student knows there is someone to go to, besides a parent, for help if they need it or to have questions answered. Right now, it looks like this is limited to teachers and a school nurse and some counselors. It makes more sense to me for Wingspan et al (the outside agencies) to educate those people first, in that manner, and have them develop a system by which these issues are handled uniformly (pointing out that bringing a student to a priest might not be helpful, for example, instead call Mr. ___ who will come down for a private talk) and then let the school staff bring it down to the middle-school level, or up to the high school level. Or both. (Sans labels for the middle-schoolers who are at the hypersensitive-to-differences age anyway.) This works well in communities where we all understand that kids beating up on kids for any reason is just bad. Unacceptable. If you’re in a community that accepts harassing students on the grounds of homosexuality, then I’d have to say that you’re bailing out the lake with a thimble here. Do whatever you can, but the ‘labels’ only give more ammunition to those who would use them. JMHO, YMMV again.
Now we have the sentence I cited before, and this sentence, with my bolding. Both indicate the power on all things public educational is vested in the parents.
No, parents aren’t consulted about every aspect of what’s going on in a classroom. However, you can be assured that everything that’s going on in a classroom has been at one point or another approved by (or at least reviewed by) those elected representatives of parents, the school board.
At least where I come from, every textbook that’s used in a school is approved by a curriculum committee consisting of teachers, parents, and community members. And the final say comes on a vote of the school board. Teachers’ classrooms and the lessons they give are monitored - not always, but occasionally - by principals and superintendents, who report back to the school board.
So, if a teacher wants to veer off and do something new that’s never been done at a school, such as bring in a representative of Wingspan to talk - or NAMBLA, or the Ku Klux Klan, or the Boy Scouts, or a local church - fuckin’-A skippy it should be reviewed at the very least by the school building administrators, and reported to the school board. Optimally, the school board would take additional steps to notify parents, other than discussion of the issue at a public school board meeting.
None of that occurred in the case we are discussing.
The point MrVisible and Diogenes don’t seem to get is -** nobody has a problem with an overriding message that no discrimination of any kind will be tolerated in a school system. If you are there, you will respect others - period.**
There’s no need to push any individual group’s ideology or agenda to have that overriding message permeate every aspect of school activity.
Then again, you both have as much as said that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is intolerant and ignorant. And 11 pages later, you still don’t see how wrong you are.
Life’s too short to argue with brick walls, or those who are intolerant of others. Such as yourselves.
Again, you’re right, and that’s a pretty unlikely thing to happen.
I’m just saying, maturity-wise, if they had come to my school when I was eleven, I wouldn’t pick on anyone, or whatever, but I WOULD have spent the whole time giggling with my friends and not taking it seriously.
Or just so tired of hiding and being afraid that when a slur is said the kid responds with: “So? And your point is?”
That’s what happened to me in my senior year of high school. I just got tired of people throwing around the slurs and accusations and finally came out at school in angry frustration.
I dropped out of high school three days later. Word spread around the school like wildfire and the freshmen were harassing and taunting me.
I went to the vice principal, Mr. Highdudis, and told him his options were either to turn a blind eye to me being gone OR I would be in his office everytime someone harassed me.
When he saw that I was serious, we had an understanding. Ileft and took tests before graduation time to get my diploma. I wish I could have done it years earlier to get myself out of that hell pit.
This will happen no matter what. As long as a a stigma exists in this society, there will be at least one who reacts that way to a pamphlet of that nature.
There will also probably be parents who react that way as long as the current stigmas exist.
This does not mean to not distribute pamphlets because of the stupidity and bigotry of a few. There are people out there who need to know that they are NOT alone. They are NOT the only one who feels that way.
Further… on another note from what other posters have said, about sex being taught in the schools…
Well, that would be nice, but is it not universally done.
When we had sex education for a semester in the seventh grade, it was a combination of a plumbing seminar combined with a severely heterosexist view of sex. In the brief time that homosexuality was mentioned, people in the class pointed me out as a “fag”, even though I had no idea of my sexuality at the time.
So, in some ways it was not too much different from health films from the 1950s that talked about plumbing, STDs, and of course: your future heterosexual sex experience.
Speaking in clinical terms, the teacher explained about the hymen, and other aspects of sex. Of course, I have no doubt more of a service would have been done if she had informed the straight boys of where the clitoris was, where the g spot is, and how to correctly stimulate it.
Still… through out my school career, homosexuality was rarely discussed in class, and when it was, catcalls from the stupid would go on loudly until the teacher got control of the class back.
I think that while going for parity in sex ed classes is a bit much to expect, honest discussion of homosexuality needs to be in the curriculum, and all students need to feel safe. The majority does not have the right to tyrannize over the minorities in the school.
So, where specifically do you see an agenda or ideology permeating every aspect of school activity?
I can tell you where I find one.
There is this little concept called Compulsory Heterosexuality that assumes all students are straight unless proven otherwise.
Most textbooks, apart from some math textbooks, tell a story of a heterosexual universe with a mention here or there about one or two homosexuals(if they even bother to designate them as being gay).
Heterosexuality and gender identity are taught through behaviours. Boys are often told to “be a man” and to “stop crying.” “Don’t be a sissy” is another direct message sent. It isn’t only gym teachers that I have seen saying these things to students when I was in school and currently when I have to deal with the school system.
Gender is a fluid medium. It is not fixed in stone. But it is taught as if it is by many “educators.” Girls are enculturated to be one way, and boys another. And it is your children’s teachers and educational system that gets the largest chunk of time with them during the week to develop and shape this.
There is an agenda being pushed constantly in school. We just want a little time in that arena to say that there is another view, and it is just as real and valid as the prevailing myths and views being forced down people’s throats.
Oh, it’s not about a stigma-at 11, we’d laugh at any mention of sex or anything that HINTED at it. I told you how we got hysterical at the word “virgin” in the hymnals.
So do I, I assume all people are straight until proven otherwise…had no idea it was ‘pushing an agenda.’ Please explain why it would be offensive to you if I first assumed you were straight.
Btw, this goes beyond acceptance and tolerance and into something else, can’t quite put my finger on it though…
[quotw]Please explain why it would be offensive to you if I first assumed you were straight.
[/quote]
Hmmm, maybe because I don’t think you have any business contemplating my sex life at all? Perhaps because you could simply ask me instead of assuming things about me?
Let’s see… might not only the assumption that students are heterosexual, BUT the lack of discussion of homosexuality be PUSHING AN AGENDA?
I do not look at people and wonder about their sex lives. Well, unless it is a guy I want to ask out and I don’t know if he is gay or not…
And the ad hominem belief that everyone is straight until proven otherwise is why we have to be conscious of visibility issues. We are often an invisible minority.
Of course, when we speak up, we’re pushing an agenda and forcing people to think about sex.
To compare Wingspan with Nambla or the KKK is so out of line and absurd it does not even deserve a response. The Boy Scouts and churches are not analagous because they are pushing religious agendas.
Here is the thing which you don’t seem to get. Wingspan is teaching facts not opinions.
It is a fact, not an opinion, that homosexuality is normal, and that GBLT people have the same legal and moral rights as anybody else. Teaching these facts to children is the one and only agenda of these kinds of presentations.
I think the best analogy yet offered to Wingspan is that of an NRA presentation. If such a presentation taught only factual information about the second amendment, gun laws, and gun safety, then this is completely within the purview of a school’s mission to educate.
A parent should never have the ability to prevent a school from teaching anything which is objectively true and factual.
Very few things are “facts” and ANY use of the word “normal” outside of statistics is opinion. Famous quote “If it can’t be measured, it’s not fact, it’s opinion.”
I agree that homosexuality is “normal”, but I can tell the difference between fact and opinion and that’s opinion. So’s the idea that hetrosexuality is normal, depending on how normal is defined.
For what it’s worth, I think the concept of “normal” is pretty much useless anyway. “Normal” is irrellevant as is “natural”. Don’t buy into the troglodytes semantics: the minute you start debating whether being gay is natural or normal, they’ve won. The issue stops being gay rights/freedoms and starts being a nitpicky quibbly debate about what’s natural and normal.
Any discussion that starts with “I don’t like dem gays 'cause dey ain’t normal” should end with “So what? What they’re doing is legal and none of your fucking business.”
Oh really? Is that because you don’t seem to have support for keeping people in the dark and controlling things so they come to your way of “thinking?”
