And now at LAT, "California schools scrambling to add lessons on LGBT Americans."
If this were being introduced when kids are in, say, 5th or 6th grade, I personally wouldn't have an issue with it for my own kids. But as it is, kindergarten or 1st grade, and so on? God, that's almost obscene in its assumptions. It's understandable why parents would object. I recently asked my 10-year-old if he knew what homosexuality was. He didn't have a clue, so I explained it to him. He didn't seem to care that much about it, but the point is I'd prefer it was my wife and I talking about these things with him, especially in the moral context. I would not teach my child that all family structures are equal, for example. My position is that the traditional household with one father and one mother is the most healthy and prosperous for children. Schools will teach kids that all alternative family arrangements are equally valid, and that's a radical curriculum.
In any case, from the article:
At Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in Laurel Canyon, there are lesson plans on diverse families — including those with two mommies or daddies — books on homosexual authors in the library and a principal who is openly gay.Well, yeah. I don't have kids that young, kindergarten or 1st grade, but my youngest would still be introduced to these topics as a 4th grader. I don't think he's ready. He barely knows that much about sexuality at all. We talk about it when he has questions. He's more worried about Beyblades.
But even at this school, teachers and administrators are flummoxed about how to carry out a new law requiring California public schools to teach all students — from kindergartners to 12th graders — about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans in history classes.
"At this point, I wouldn't even know where to begin," Principal Don Wilson said.
Educators across the state don't have much time to figure it out. In January, they're expected to begin teaching about LGBT Americans under California's landmark law, the first of its kind in the nation.
The law has sparked confusion about what, exactly, is supposed to be taught. Will fourth-graders learn that some of the Gold Rush miners were gay and helped build San Francisco? Will students be taught about the "two-spirited people" tradition among some Native Americans, as one gay historian mused?
"I'm not sure how we plug it into the curriculum at the grade school level, if at all," said Paul Boneberg, executive director at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.
School districts will have little help in navigating this sensitive and controversial change, which has already prompted some parents to pull their children out of public schools.
