Consider that MOST TS die from murder/suidice (the murder rate for TS is 16 TIMES that of a normal person). I think it is long overdue that we had someone come into schools and just explain what TS are and say “it is okay to be transsexual.”
You should learn to respect other’s opinions. You should be tolerant of other’s rights. No one has said that respect for others shouldn’t be taught or that hate should.
I have said repeatedly that I think that general respect/tolerance for everyone should be learned at middle school age. You shouldn’t call anyone names or tease people just because they are different. That is what my posts said! Maybe rather then tolerance you should learn to read actual lines.
My problems are two fold. One, the age appropriateness of teaching GLBT subject matter to 6th and 7th graders and if school policies for these things were actually followed. More students at the age of 11 and 12 are teased for being fat, ugly, smelly, poor, over or under developed and being just plain different then for being transgenered. I think that the GLBT should wait for high school and general tolerance is a much better message for younger kids.
I certainly respect the rights of parents to determine what sort of education their children will have.
But it seems to me that if you send your child to a public school, you cede a great deal of that authority to the school system.
The school system has the obligation to teach objective, verifiable, and appropriate subject matter. A school system should not teach creationism, for example, as it doesn’t fall into either the objective or the verifiable.
It’s unclear to me exactly what, if anything, was objectionable about the presentation. Transgendered individuals exist. I doubt that the presentation urged boys to try on female clothing just to see how it feels; it likely presented verifiable and objective facts about the lives and challenges that transgendered individuals face.
So with what I know now, the actual presentation seems harmless, at worst, and likely beneficial.
It is wrong for an individual teacher to take upon himself, however, the responsibilities I described above as belonging to the school system. A public school should beguided by a consensus of the public. This avoids the danger of a teacher bringing in a series of creationist speakers, simply because his own conscience demands that the word of creationism be spread.
So my take is that presentations should follwo whatever policy the school system has; the school system’s policy should be reflective of a community consensus, with input from interested parents, and that parents unsatisfied with the results of the community consensus seek private schooling for their kids.
- Rick
OK, Beeblebrox, that’s a fair objection. I’ll counter it by saying that if the Gideons are allowed to hand out New Testaments and the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts, which are all outside organizations just as Wingspan is, are allowed to meet in schools, then I don’t see why Wingspan doesn’t get to talk as well. Unlike the Scouts, Wingspan isn’t recruiting kids to do anything. Their speaker was there only to talk about tolerance.
I can’t think of a better class for discussing homosexuality. If such a class is provided for that age group, then the subject was appropriate.
I had a homosexual male student, age fifteen, who came to me with his wrists already showing scars. He was crying so hard that he could barely talk. I focused mostly on letting him talk it out and on self-acceptance. I ran into him years later. He seemed to be very self-assured and at ease with the world. I got a big hug and his thanks.
That one life was more important than any parent’s opinion, any school board’s opinion and my career. I know what my priorities are.
Libertarian, why do you allow your children to go to state schools? (No offense intended)
Except that the teacher did have the permissions necessary from the administration. The same as would be necessary for any other group.
Nice job, implying that the sex worker arts festival is featured in the youth group section of the Wingspan website. Very neat little piece of chicanery. The QueerVoice site can be found here; that’s the organization that the pamphlet encouraged the kids to take advantage of, if they felt they needed it. Or are you suggesting that Wingspan was there to recruit? Surely you don’t buy that medieval myth, do you?
Nope, they can’t. And they didn’t. Go figure.
Zoe
I’m not posting to this thread anymore after this, so as not to invite any more anal retentive inspection of the interstices, but I’ll answer your question. My daughter went to so-called public school for most of her education at the insistence of my socialist ex-wife.
Zoe, thank god for people like you.
For the record, the life skills class is offered for sixth, seventh and eight graders.
When I was sixteen, some time after my suicide attempt, I couldn’t take the secrecy and the pressure anymore; I needed to talk to someone honestly, and to find out more about who I was, what I was becoming. I needed some good advice about my sexuality.
I had become chummy with my science teacher, a young woman with a sharp wit and a very respectful way of approaching her students. I figured that she might be able to help, or at least to listen. I stayed after class one day, to work on some extra credit project, and with all the courage I had available to me, I told her that about my sexuality, and that I was really confused about it.
You know what she did?
Wait for it…
She took me to a priest.
Thank god for people like Zoe.
I think that any mention of marriage should be saved for high school.
Marriage is about sex. It is also about having kids- but how do you get kids? Sex!
And I think that kids of that age should not be sexualized. It is my right to decide if I want my kids to be exposed to sexual content in school. Kids of that age don’t understand sexual attraction, and should not be forced to think about sex.
Wait a minute- that is INSANE!
If you believe that kids that age don’t have anything to do with anything sexual, you live a strange, dark, confused world. First off, kids have sexual feelings at a very young age. Want to know something a little mind-boggling? I got off on sado-machisist stuff at four years old! Little girls at least, can and do masterbate- to orgasm- their entire lives. And their fantasies have quite a bit of complexity to them. Now at that age I didn’t know what sex was, I had no clue that touching myself was related to that, and I certainly had no understanding of BSDM. All I knew is that thinking of my friends being punished was a good thing to think about when I rubbed myself down there. And even before I really understood sex, I did understand the strange feelings that I would get around certain people- who I later realize that I was sexually attracted to. Lucky for me, “Your a stupid ugly submissive pervert” isn’t a popular insult for little kids, and you don’t hear a lot about masochist being beat up on the streets just for being who they are. If I did hear those things about such a secret and different part of me, I’m sure I’d have a lot more issues than I do now.
I’ll grant you that the pre-teen transgendered kid probably doesn’t know why they like dressing up in their moms clothes when she is at work, but they still do it. And they know that it is “wrong”. The know that boys who don’t fit the gender mold get beat up. And they know that they are “supposed to” get married to a girl at some point in their life, not be one. And they know there is something wrong about who they are because they do not fit into the mold. They know this as little children. And they learn to be scared, and ashamed. Even if you do not see this, it is still true.
Gender roles and sexual roles (think marriage) are pretty clearly drawn at an extremely young age, and those that fall outside of those gender roles do suffer at a young age.
But that doesn’t even matter. Because being gay has about as much to do with sex as being married does. Yes, sex is there. Yes, sex is important. But there is so much beyond sex that it’s ludicris to object to learning about GBLT stuff because it is about sex. I figured out that my uncle was gay at a pretty young age, and thoughts of fellatio and anal sex were pretty far from my mind. All that mattered at that point was that he wasn’t going to marry the girl across the street, and he had guy friends that he brought home much like my other uncle brought home girl friends.
And when my parents told me that “fag” isn’t a very good insult, and that I shouldn’t freak out if I see a couple girls holding hands in the park, she was hardly sexualizing me at a young age. She was laying some reality down so that I could better understand the world around me, and that if some of this did end up applicable to me personally, I’d know I could talk about it and I’d know a bit more than that what I’d learned on the playground about girls who like other girls.
And there is nothing wrong with a school doing that. Nothing whatsoever. I see no teaching of morals. I see very little about sex. I see nothing at all that would require special parental permission.
What a horrible, horrible person that teacher was, MrVisible. Crap like that, and being in Texas, was one of the reasons I wouldn;'t even let myself intellectually deal with my sexuality during my time in the hell that was highschool.
Kirk
Gee MrVisible, what are you trying to insinuate? I was wondering how long it would take before the veiled homophobe comments started. How predictable.
"If such a class is provided for that age group, the the subject is appropriate."
Says who Zoe? Perhaps, in my child’s case, I beg to differ.
I’m tired of repeating myself. It’s obvious some of you refuse to respect my right, and everyone’s right, to parent their children as they see fit, and yet you will crow about tolerance and acceptance. How ironic.
I wouldn’t have any problem with this if they were just using the facilities for their meetings, but they did more than that - It was a captive audience
That’s not exactly true. The OP said “Students were also given this pamphlet called “Queer Voice” which encourages youth to get involved in Wingspan programs.” (bolding mine), so it does look like they were recruiting volunteers, though at least it was a pretty soft sell.
However, I see that some posters are saying that the local KGUN9 news is reporting that the Life Skills teacher did follow proper procedures. I was led to believe from the OP that he didn’t. If the teacher did follow proper protocol, then I withdraw my objections.
Incidentally, ten years ago when I was a senior in highschool, Newt Gingrich came to talk to us. He was supposed to talk about how the government worked, etc, etc. Instead the fucknegget spent the whole time telling us how bad this Arkansas Governor was. It was a political speech. I had to restrain myself from throwing something at him for stumping so baldly. What a slimy asshole
Until you insist on going through every other minutia of your school’s curriculum to determine if there’s anything else that shouldn’t enter your sweetie’s ears, there’s no point in bitching about this one, il me paraît.
Actually, what it sounds like to me (from my experience volunteering for, and attending, similar programs) is not that they were recruiting volunteers; it sounds like they were “encouraging youth to get involved” in the sense that they were inviting them to take advantage of the programs offered by Wingspan if they needed to.
I can’t wait to find out what the heck you’re talking about.
Only to someone who does not know what irony means. You are claiming the veil of tolerance for your refusal to allow your children to learn that homosexuals should not be picked on in school. That’s not irony; it’s hypocrisy.
Witch, what are you afraid of? What could the big bad scary gay man teach your kids in a forty-minute lecture that would undermine your years of nurturing? Why should hearing about gay people be any different than the social studies unit on asian culture, or the history of slavery in America? Why do you suddenly need to be consulted on what your kids are being taught when this issue is at stake? And why get so defensive about it?
I apologise for my inability to use the quote feature.
Does that help you out MrVisible?
Actually, Kirk, I think she was a really nice person, and she tried to do her best. She just had no idea how to deal with my situation. No training in the subject, no preparation for the fact that students might ask her about that. She did the best she could.
I just didn’t have anyplace else to go. If there was any teacher in the school who’d even reprimanded a student for using anti-gay epithets; if there was a poster that said counseling was available to students with sexuality issues, if there was a presentation that gave us a means of reaching more resources, I wouldn’t have had to put her in that position.
In truth, I thought the whole thing was hysterically funny. After an insanely awkward lecture from the priest, which consisted entirely of uncomfortable allusions, I found that the sheer absurdity of the encounter gave me enough amusement to go on. But I didn’t get any actual information about being gay until well into college.
No, actually, it doesn’t. I wasn’t implying anything; I was hoping you’d answer those questions, Witch.
Those are valid questions. do you feel the need to have teachers consult you about how they teach algebra and history, too? Or is it only this topic? And why?
Hit the lower right button that says QUOTE, or type quote between brackets, cut and paste the relevant material, then put /quote between brackets.