There is also the parent’s responsibility to teach children not to do things that are harmful to the society. Parents have a duty to inform children that certain things are not good, and to raise the children to conform, to a reasonable degree, to society’s standards. Where should the line be drawn here between the parent’s interests and society’s?
A) Parent teaches child it is OK to steal.
B) Parent teaches child it is OK to hate people because they’re black.
C) Parent teaches child it is OK to hate people because they’re gay.
D) Parent teaches child it is OK to believe in a benevolent (or malevolent, as the case may be) old man in the sky who knows all.
Is the line between A and B, B and C, or C and D? In my opinion, not teaching a child that something is wrong is the equivilant of teaching that it is right. Age appropriate presentations are not the worst way to teach children how they should be handling the differences between people.
I’ve seen some comments here about parent’s feeling they should be the ones to decide when something is appropriate to their child. To some extent, I agree. But - many parents will NEVER teach their child about these issues. At some point, society, in its own interest, must step in and take over the duty. Is the age at which sexuality is emerging an appropriate age to teach children about sexually oriented issues? Again, in my opinion, yes.
Gary, I’m not quite following your leap of logic there. Your school doesn’t have manditory health or social studies courses, egro the only time any student could be exposed to tolerance homosexuality as part of the curriculum is a “state defined good citizen course”?
(Maybe I should point out that “social studies” is an umbrella term for history, economics, current issues, etc., so I imagine that you do have manditory social studies courses at your school.)
I view myself as a liberal, with no axe to grind, and as unprejudiced on age/gender/sexuality race as anyone I’ve ever met. Honestly - a standard product of middle class upbringing, with a middle class lifestyle. Gay family members, an inlaw of a different colour, and every other possible cliche I could bring to this discussion all to try to show that I really have no issue on this topic…
…other than an absolute revulsion at the idea that parents should not be consulted on a state intrusion into their main responsibility. You accept that parents have a responsiblity for this moral upbringing, and then excuse someone else acting in this field without any prior notice or discussion to the parents. How can you say this?
Or do you think that the parents are only secondary figures in this, and that really it is the state, through teachers or other agents, who have the main say in this? I find it hard to describe just how repugnant I view this idea - state controlled morality, to be determined by committee.
Gary, some sort of Social studies class I would guess.
personally, I think its great tha t schools are getting involved in teaching children about these topics. Many parents would be too embarrassed/uncomfortable to talk about these topics with their kid. Let them learn about it in an equal environment.
This sounds great in reflection, of course. Unfortunately every parent isn’t as responsible, intelligent, nor ethically mature as you are Lib. Or as many of these posters are. You know all those people that beat their kids, go to KKK meetings, have “traditional” christian ethics and morals. You think everybody, uneducated, prejudice and moral has a say in what their kids are learning?
Should those less than responsible and intelligent parents have equal say in how they raise their kids? So we can have more intolerance, prejudice, and ignorance in this world? No thanks, deciding what should be taught to our kids in school, regardless of what individual parents think should be something that should be agreed upon somehow, but saying that Joe schmoe the factory worker, that is an alcholic, beats his wife and children and can’t read beyong a 3rd grade level, has a right to raise his kids how he wants is bullshit.
Harrassment of any kind is unacceptable. You don’t need to learn about GLBT to learn that. There are dozens of examples of harrassment that go on in every school every day.
From the OP.
There is nothing sexual about that? I am not living in some fantasy world. I never said I thought there were graphic demonstrations. I merely said that it is a sexual matter better left to parents or for highschool.
Let’s be clear here, if you don’t mind. Government ought to censor nothing except for coercion. But property owners ought to be free to censor whatever they please. So-called public schools are therefore obfuscatory with respect to such things as censorship. The shots are called by those with the most political clout.
How?
I thought the speaker was merely visiting. Do you mean he’ll be a permanent fixture?
A guest speaker? I think you’re minimizing the serious nature of what underlies a suicidal personality. A savvy quip from a visiting stranger seems an unlikely source of suicide prevention.
Look, Gary , your morality (and mine) was not formed in a vacuum by our parents alone. Moderating and radicalizing influences came from our teachers, our peers, our extended families, our newpaper reading, our TV watching, the guy that yelled at us for crossing Little Creek Blvd against the light when we were eight years old, and so on and so forth.
Our society has a vested, and valid, interest in producing good citizens. You may be an exceptional parent, always raising your child properly, teaching manners and tolerance, correctly choosing when your child is ready to absorb the lesson, but there are many who are not like you. It is most definitely in the interests of our society to pick up the slack.
Neither parents nor society bear full responsibility. If you feel that your child was taught something incorrect at school, then talk to your child about it. Or home school your child. But don’t tell society “Hand’s off”, because it just doesn’t work that way, and shouldn’t.
I’d keep the tykes at home away from school and tutor them myself, I’d breed a little liberal army in the woods.
Wow – two cases of “we’re not talking about the same thing” in one thread!
First, there’s separate issues in “should a school schedule a presentation without parental notification and possible consent?” and “should a school attempt to expand the consciousness of students on an issue like this?” I’ve noted a couple of posts that seemed to assume disagreement with one was disagreement with the other; not necessarily.
Second, what is “sex”? People start sex education in one sense in pre-school, where the kiddies learn that “Mrs. Jones is not Mr. Jones because she’s a lady” and you don’t use “he” when talking about Heather, because she’s a girl. A gay person is a gay person, with his or her problems, joys, disappointments, and concerns, when he is creating a website on subways or participating in SCA (to take two resident examples). A transgendered individual is still transgendered when she is researching biographies (to take another).
If it is “condoning a gay lifestyle” to say that someone can have same-sex attraction and be living a civil and decent life doing one of the above, then if that offends you, yes, you are bigoted. If you’re opposed to too-early exposure to the details of sexuality and sexual activity, we may have something to say to each other. There is a difference.
Eidolon, my apologies for the erroneous assumption, which was simply based on what you had posted in this thread to date. However, I submit to you that, on the presumption that the testimony of gay people that it is not something they chose to be but something they are is honest and valid, then you do have gay students in your class right now – they just haven’t achieved the psychosexual maturity to be openly (or closetedly) gay in the adolescent/adult sense. But they have a sense of who they’re going to be later in life, just as we all did as kids – and they will need to deal with the facts of their sexuality and much of society’s abhorrence of it. Not a critical issue for you, but one worth keeping in the back of your mind when such incidents do come up.
Because there are, you know, boy parts involved. Or possibly girl parts.
Innie: It’s not just the wanting sex from people of the same gender that makes people gay. It’s the talking and the cuddling on the couch and the sharing of feelings and everything that you do with people (presumably) of a different gender. It’s the liking and being interested in and falling in love with.
IANAH, but I have read ATGGI-IV, and that’s the impression I got.
Yes. Because, see “uneducated, prejudice(d) and (im)moral” (I assume that’s what you meant) are waaaaaaaaaaaay too poorly defined for me to be convinced that they mean anything beyond “I don’t agree with them”.
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Yes.
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Yes. The price of free speech (including the parent’s is that sometimes people will say things you don’t like. I, as a Jew, strongly support the right of Nazis like our St*rmfront “friends” teach their kids to be Hitler Youth because I can easily see other would-be do-gooders saying that something I believe in isn’t appropriate.
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So, you believe that “the masses are asses” and only you, from your lofty, enlightened perch can bring light to a troubled world?
Heh.
I encourge you to promote this view as it’s just one more nail in the coffin of state-delivered public education. The more stuff like this that people here, the more likely vouchers are. And the sooner the better, I say.
I have three children. My youngest is now 12.
I will decide what’s age appropriate for my children. Not the state. Not “tolerance” junkies. Me. No one else. What might be enlightening and helpful to one child could be confusing and damaging to another, at that young of an age. But I guess that’s OK in the interest of being PC. Give me a break.
If my 12 year old had been exposed to that without my express permission I would have raised such a hue and cry as you had never seen.
Now, I’m not against it in principle. If it were offered to my high school aged children, I’d fully support them participating. They have the ability to understand the concept, and without that you can’t expect a child to have empathy, or feel less alienated, which I’m assuming is the whole point.
I’m the parent. Such issues as sexuality and religion are the family’s domain, not the school’s. If the school is offering such a program, they’d better run it by the Big Boss.
I’ll make the call.
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I sincerely and fervently hope that you are never faced with a “young child” ( your words ) of 13 or 14 wondering just exactly how she got pregnant because sex education wasn’t “apropriate until high school”.
Now, you may claim “I am/will/did talk to my kids about sex”, and thats fine and dandy, but many, I might even dare to venture, most, parents don’t or won’t.
11-13 is the timeframe when kids are developing sexual identities, and the first time they really come up against peer pressure about sex, and as such the perfect time for education aimed at bigotry and homophobia to help explain what is happening in a more coherent, logical and useful manner than on the streets.
Eidolon909
The problem with using “fag” as an insult, weather the speaker fully understands what it means or not, is that such use implies that a “fag” is a bad thing to be. Period. It is that simple. Would you sit by and think “Oh, it’s just a meaningless insult” if you heard a kid calling another kid a nigger, or would you attempt to find out why the kid was saying that, and explain what the word means and why it is wrong to call anyone that?