We’ve heard a lot in the past few months about schools working to make their environments safer spaces for children. Across the United States and in other countries, we’re seeing stronger anti-bullying measures and the enormous success of the “It Gets Better” campaign, which works to combat anti-gay societal ideologies. Now, a group in England is pushing for action that is more pointedly inclusive of a diverse array of sexual orientations. The group Schools Out, an equality-focused organization based in the United Kingdom, is launching an initiative in February for LGBT history month to provide optional lesson plans for schools that demonstrate how they can raise awareness about the important role of non-heterosexuals in the world.
The lesson plans suggest, for example, that in math class, teachers could communicate statistics information using a word problem about the census findings on the number of gays and lesbians in the population. Or, in health class, they could engage in conversations about non-traditional family structures, such as same-sex parents.
A representative from Schools Out, Sue Sanders, said that implementing the suggested lesson plans can show students who are questioning their sexuality that they’re not alone. The initiative is designed as a sort of pro-gay advocacy tool. Sanders said to The Telegraph:
All we are attempting to do is remind teachers that LGBT people are part of the population and you can include them in most of your lessons when you are thinking inclusively.
Announcement of the initiative—which, I should stress, is optional—prompted some scathing, outraged media responses. One of the most forward and talked-about came from Melanie Phillips at The Daily Mail’s website. She wrote:
This gay curriculum is no laughing matter. Absurd as it sounds, this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the camouflage of education. It is an abuse of childhood. And it’s all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very concept of normal sexual behavior.
While Schools Out’s plan isn’t legislative or mandated, it reminds me of a bill proposed in December in California that would require public-school textbooks to be written to contain information about the LGBT movement. The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state senator Mark Leno, explained why he thought the bill was necessary in a press release:
Our collective silence on this issue perpetuates negative stereotypes of LGBT people and leads to increased bullying of young people. We can’t simultaneously tell you that it’s OK to be yourself and live an honest, open life when we aren’t even teaching students about historical LGBT figures or the LGBT equal rights movement.
I think that the lesson plans are important—if we learn about the civil rights movement or women’s suffrage, then why are we not also formally learning about the LGBT rights movement? And if we learn about how communists were targeted in the Red Scare, why not also learn about the simultaneous Lavender Scare, where gays were targeted as threats to national security? And, while less essential, educational institutions could certainly use references to gay people where appropriate, in the same way that story-form scenarios and word problems should include references to blacks, Asians, or women where appropriate.
But I think the approach that Schools Out, Leno, and some bloggers are using is the wrong way to pitch this idea of teaching more about the LGBT rights movement. The role of textbooks and lesson plans is not to advocate for an end to bullying, and it’s not the responsibility of a math class to teach tolerance to a high schooler. That isn’t the argument that should accompany California’s bill or the U.K. initiative.
Instead we should be arguing that education should be an “objective” look at global history, and as most history classes stand now, they are curtailing crucial elements of history featuring LGBT people (or, in more cases, treating them as so inconsequential so as not to merit any academic lessons). Textbook writers shouldn’t be required to portray gay people in a positive way. But they should be required to disseminate truth and contain full, factual histories. That includes informing grade-school students about the gay rights movement. So why don’t LGBT supporters drop the argument that these plans would reduce bullying and just let the logic of raising well-informed children speak for itself?
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About Adam Polaski
Why not also teach children about the excesses of feminism (academic charlatans, valeri solanas, etc.), societal misandry and reverse discrimation.
Ever notice how often women refer to gay men as a “waste” because they are not any utility to women?
I agree that the historical battles gays and lesbians have had to wage in the 20th century up to now is worth teaching to the present and next generation.
The Stonewall Riot, the assassination of Harvey Milk, the outrageous “death to gays” campaigns that are currently going on in Uganda and other African countries may be lost without the inclusion of historical facts in these matters in the curriculum.
Otherwise it would be like no one remembered the passive resistance rather than violence that M.L.K. Jr. applied. The example of communicating one’s differences, being willing to stand up to violent authority and then finally to educate the ignorant is inspiring and valuable education in itself.
I firmly believe that if we fail to learn the lessons of the past and teach them to the next generations, we must fight through them and relive them in order to learn them again.
I don’t know any feminists who view gay men as waste.
The only women I know who do that are vehemently anti-feminists… they drink of patriarchy Kool Aid.
Discrimination is only possible when one party has greater power than the other. There is no ‘reverse’ discrimination in the way that you mean.
I agree with this article 100%. The Gay Inc. approach has more to do with making LGBT people “feel” better about their continued status as oppressed people, rather than actually teaching LGBT people and our straight allies how to change the material conditions which allow for our second class status. I don’t want gay kids to know that “Harvey Milk was a gay elected official who was assassinated.” I want gay kids to know that “Harvey Milk began his political career as a Republican backing Goldwater, but through his own experience and political education, he came to see that LGBT people can change their own lives and their own world for the better. Like MLK and Malcolm X, he was assassinated for this radical perspective. And again like MLK and Malcolm X, his image has been appropriate by today’s mainstream groups to distort his message and his teachings.”
First off, there’s no mention of sexual minorities in virtually any text book with the exception of those used in human ecology, women studies, and queer theory classes; and that’s exclusively at the University level. Text books are never a bad place to start to engender tolerance. Something to consider, in the states the textbook industry is driven by it’s largest buyer, Texas; is Texas pushing for queer equal-rights?
Second, we devote specific lesson plans, at least in Canada, to Aboriginal history and encourage cultural inclusivity through them, why not not the LGBTTQ community? Because it risks offending bigots?
Third, this statement, “and it’s not the responsibility of a math class to teach tolerance to a high schooler,” raises a giant flag for me. Of course it’s the responsibility of the math teach. It’s the responsibility of every school worker from the bus driver to the math teach to the superintendent; you can’t silo tolerance to be the sole responsibility of the family life teacher.
This article seems like a pretty clear false dichotomy. There’s no reason that we can’t advocate for the fair treatment of folks who are LBGTQ and also teach the history of the various movements—in fact, it’s unlikely we can do one without the other, in both directions.
You seem to have an idea that learning is about completely discrete pieces of information, as we should/could teach statistics without also teaching something about the world (for instance, how many gay folks there are). Why? It’s likely the case that using real-world examples helps at least some of the kids learn the math.
Curricula! CurriculA!!
I teach at the college level, and I don’t have children, so I may be ignorant of all the developmental education theory about K-12, but the approach to teaching the LGBT movement seems wrong-headed to me. As a historian, I see nothing wrong with introducing students to true events of the past, and I see nothing wrong with studying movements for equality.
What I have a problem with is teaching history strictly as a relentless march of achievements or as the celebration of past heroes.
Even if I’m sympathetic to the social movements being covered, especially if I’m sympathetic to the movements being covered, I don’t think celebration should be the driving force for teaching students about the past. It encourages whitewashing and frankly makes real-life people sound inhuman and boring. You would never know that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a human being who had faults as well as virtues.
I don’t care if it’s complete hooey like Betsy Ross sewing the first American flag or if it’s an inspiring true moment like the “I Have a Dream” speech. If the main point is only to celebrate “the good guys” and their creation of our wonderful society, then that is not really education in the sense of understanding how the world works. I don’t think adding more people to the pantheon of “Great Americans” is the solution. We should be doing away with the Great Individuals paradigm altogether. I spend a lot of my time as a college instructor undoing years of warped social studies education.
I do agree with the earlier poster that said that it’s everyone’s responsibility in the school system to uphold some general social values like tolerance, safety, integrity, all of that. I don’t think a schoolbus driver can allow fighting on the bus with the excuse, “hey, I don’t teach social studies, I just drive a bus.”
Is there anyone on this blog that is old enough to remember the civil rights movement of the 60′s and 70′s? Probably not, but I am. I rode on a bus in South Carolina in 1958. I remember the white stripe on the floor of the bus that divided the blacks from the whites. I spoke to a man on that bus that was afraid to speak to me, merely because my face was lighter than his. I told him I felt it was wrong to be treated that way and that it would change someday. Things have changed a lot since then.
I grew up seeing the hateful signs in the windows of the shops, cafes and gas stations of the south. I collected several of them as they were taken down. I wish I had not lost them to a fire many years ago. They were valuable reminders of a hateful time in the history of this country that should never be fully forgotten.
Now, it’s our turn. We need to learn from the past for once and use the civil rights movement as a template for the future. There has to be a good place to start, and I think that this video will do the job. It was produced by the AMA to teach doctors about the GLBTQ community and our health concerns. Unfortunately, it contains PhD level science that will make most people’s heads explode before they can possibly understand it.
http://media01.commpartners.com/AMA/sexual_identity_jan_2011/index.html
Someone needs to use this video as a starting point and develop a curriculum with an understandable version of the information. Work this into a text book using the civil rights issues for a guide line and go from there.
There are also many people out in the world that screech that the bible says this or that about same sex relationships. Everyday, we see examples of hate groups that use the bible to excuse the crimes they commit. These same arguments were once used to condemn blacks, years ago. Those racial arguments were no more valid then, than the GLBTQ arguments are now.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/09/my-take-the-bible%E2%80%99s-surprisingly-mixed-messages-on-sexuality/?iref=allsearch
Maybe the GLBTQ lessons are taking the wrong course. It wouldn’t be the first time people have forgotten to look back and see what has happened in the past that worked. We don’t need to repeat the past, just make good use of it.
Bullying: It isn’t wrong to teach students that bullying is wrong, irrational, and won’t be tolerated. It is the duty of the school — the teachers and the admin — to directly teach that it is such, why that is so, and to act in a way consistent with that knowledge.
In doing that, one must ask oneself why the bullies bully. This quickly gets to examining their wrong ideas about what they do which leads to how that can be prevented which it should be. There’s no avoiding this.
“Objective’ Only: You’re trying to say that the obvious question — the question of whether it’s ‘ok’ for a gay person to be gay — should not be topicalized in such a curriculum. There’s no way to avoid it. Even if it were, it would still be best to include it.
Comment: What we mean by ‘gay history’ is the history of how gays have struggled to resist and reform the various ways in which straights have made gay lives difficult for no good reason.Obviously, the mind moves to ask itself why straights have, and continue to do this. This quickly moves to a discussion of sex, gender, and morality. This chain of inquiry is unavoidable.