Keep your children in school
This is just insane! Parents face prosecution over school gay week protest “Parents who took their children out of school in protest at them being taught about gay, bisexual and transgender history could be prosecuted.” GOOD! They should be prosecuted!
Council bosses said the protest resulted in around 30 primary pupils missing school and had “taken action” against parents who pulled took their children out of George Tomlinson School in Leytonstone, east London, but refused to state what sanctions are being taken.
Pervez Latif, a 41-year-old accountant whose children Saleh, 10, and Abdurrahin, nine, attend the school, said his wife Shaheen, 38, was worried they could be taken to court.
He said: “My wife is very concerned she might be prosecuted.
“As yet we haven’t heard anything from the council about whether they are taking action.”
He said he knew of about 30 children who had been taken out of classes during the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Week after parents objected to their youngsters being encouraged to “celebrates the lives and achievements of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people in the community”.
Under current laws parents can be prosecuted for failing to ensure their children attend school.
Apparently in that school district there was a week of education regarding people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. Instruction was apparently geared to “celebrate the lives and achievements” of these people. Right there in the article heading it says they were teaching about the history (historical contributions) of GLBT people. No different from teaching about Black History, or the histories of other people. Right off the top of my head I can think of Michelangelo (for his work in painting the Sistine Chapel), Little Richard (for his contribution in changing modern music).
And here’s a brief list of people who had a significant part of history. They are important for what they did, not for being gay. But the fact that they were gay or lesbian is worth mentioning because young students need to know that being gay is not an obstacle to achieving success in life. Young people in primary (elementary) school are already recognizing they are gay in some ways, even if they don’t ‘connect the dots’ to the sexuality part. I had a serious crush on my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Harold Hamm. I knew in 4th grade (and long before then) that I was “different”. It wasn’t until I was about 13 or so, as I was well into puberty (and hormones!) that I learned there were others who felt what I’d been feeling for years. And, as someone else long ago stated, it was hard to know which was more exciting — to know that others felt the same way, or that there were so many of us there was actually a name for it! The sad part is that I didn’t know this until I’d been feeling this way for as long as I could remember. If a bit of curriculum about the achievements of gay and lesbian people had been available to me in school I would have had several YEARS more of knowing I was okay. Children NEED to know they are okay.
And kids today recognize they are different, and sometimes they recognize they are different in ways that other people do not accept, largely for lack of information. So they NEED to know that other people who were different were able to achieve great things as well.
But you wanna know what REALLY pisses me off in this article? It’s this:
“We were worried because weren’t sure how they were going to teach our children these issues.
“We don’t think it is necessary to teach it for a whole week and the children are so young. It is more appropriate for secondary school.
“Most children that age don’t understand these things. When we took our children out of school we had to explain why - they didn’t know what two parents the same sex meant.”
We weren’t sure how they were going to teach, but instead of communicating with the school, examining the curriculum, and coming to grips with their own fears and prejudices, they kept their kids out of school for the entire week, forcing the kids to miss all their math and reading and other lessons for the week. And the local council is right to prosecute the parents for such dumb behavior. This guy’s fears about the curriculum most likely focused on SEX and how he had to explain (remember that common from the other day?) about having two parents of the same gender.
Awww, poor guy had to explain reality to his kids (who probably don’t care about same-sex couples and probably not old enough to be thinking about the mechanics of sex anyway), and was more afraid of this than about letting his children see that history is FULL of diversity in action — history has a long record of the lives and achievements of people of color, and GLBT folks, and people of all economic classes, and the contributions from people of many religions, etc. etc.
By yanking their kids out of school to miss an entire week of regular instruction, these parents set themselves up to make a MUCH bigger deal out of it. No classroom I remember, especially back in elementary school, spent even a whole day of instruction on ONE topic, much less an entire week. More likely, during whatever regular lessons were at hand, they might have spent 5-10 minutes addressing the contributions of a person to the topic. Like during the art instructions, as the students were coloring, the teacher might mention Michelangelo and other famous gay painters. Or during reading or English lessons, they might mention a famous gay or lesbian author… perhaps reading one of their works.
Certainly they wouldn’t have spent much time discussing the sexuality of it all, but highlighting the contributions to society made by these people. That’s how these curriculums work, by making historical contributions relevant to the lessons at hand, NOT by ignoring daily lessons and talking about how many boyfriends Michelangelo had, or how many women Angela Davis slept with. Nobody cares about such things. What matters is their historical contributions to society.
Shame on those parents who pulled their kids out of school for this week out of fear, ignorance, and prejudice. And Bravo to the council for prosecuting the parents’ actions.
