Schools, Diversity Initiatives, and Parental Rights
There's an inherent tension in public education.
WaPo (“Montgomery students can’t opt out of LGBTQ storybooks, judge says“):
A federal judge Thursday denied a request to let Montgomery County parents pull their children out of the classroom when books with LGBTQ characters are read aloud.
Several Muslim and Christian families sued Montgomery County Public Schools in May, saying the use of LGBTQ storybooks forces religious parents to either forgo their beliefs or depart the public school system. They asked to allow their children to opt out of such readings before the school year begins Aug. 28, at least on a temporary basis while litigation over a permanent exemption proceeds.
Judge Deborah Boardman of the U.S. District Court for Maryland in Greenbelt said in a 60-page opinion that the parents failed to show that the no-opt-out policy would “result in the indoctrination of their children or otherwise coerce their children to violate or change their religious beliefs.”
“With or without an opt-out right, the parents remain free to pursue their sacred obligations to instruct their children in their faiths,” Boardman wrote. “Even if their children’s exposure to religiously offensive ideas makes the parents’ efforts less likely to succeed, that does not amount to a government-imposed burden on their religious exercise.”
Last year, the books in question were not mandatory in every class. They accompany a new English language arts curriculum, as entries on a list of recommended readings teachers can draw from as they wish. The list contains titles including “Love, Violet,” a story about a girl who develops a crush on her classmate and contemplates how to create a card for her for Valentine’s Day, and “My Rainbow,” the tale of a mom who makes a colorful wig for her transgender daughter. Montgomery County school officials have said the books are age and developmentally appropriate; they disallowed parents to opt out of the books in March.
Eric Baxter, an attorney representing the religious parents, said the decision was “wrong on multiple levels,” since courts have recognized that “indirect pressure on parents or students to abandon their religious beliefs is sufficient to trigger the First Amendment.” He said the school board has “admitted it is trying to disrupt students understanding … it’s trying to disrupt heteronormativity and cisnormativity.
Baxter is clearly right on that score. While I’m skeptical that there’s a 1st Amendment right of parents to opt their children out of parts of public school curricula they dislike, there’s zero doubt that there’s an agenda at work here to “disrupt heteronormativity and cisnormativity.” More on that later.
The better argument, and the one that occurred to me immediately, is this:
“In our view, it’s absurd that the school board is allowing high school students to opt out of the same material when it’s presented in their health ed classes, but not elementary school kids when it’s presented during story hour,” Baxter said in an interview. He said he will appeal the decision with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
It is indeed weird that there’s an opt-out for basic science classes teaching about human sexuality but not for indoctrination on human sexuality. The reason is that that particular opt-out is required by state law, as it is in most states. Montgomery County, though, is far more liberal than the state as a whole and is on the leading edge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the schools. (Rural Carroll County, by contrast, has gone the opposite direction, striking all “references to gender identity and sexual orientation” from its curriculum.)
Following the Boardman’s decision, Montgomery County Public Schools said in a statement that it “remains committed to cultivating an inclusive and welcoming learning environment and creating opportunities where all students see themselves and their families in curriculum materials.”
Instructions to educators that accompanied the curriculum suggested sample language they might use to answer students who objected to the teachings: “I understand that is what you believe, but not everyone believes that. We don’t have to understand or support a person’s identity to treat them with respect and kindness. School is a place where we learn to work together regardless of our differences.”
This would seem unassailable. But, of course, the teachings go beyond “be kind.”
A July report from the same reporter (“How the fight against LGBTQ+ books in Montgomery County became a national issue“) gives more background:
For the past few months, hundreds of Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents have called on Maryland’s largest school system to restore an opt-out provision for books that feature LGBTQ+ characters.
These new advocacy groups in Montgomery County say they prize inclusion. They align with the school system’s general diversity and equity efforts in their children’s schools and laud Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight for a speech she delivered against hate. They have pushed for underrepresented groups like themselves to be reflected in the school’s curriculum and accommodations for their religious holidays and practices.
They say elementary school students should be able withdraw from lessons featuring books that can lead to conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity— topics they say should be handled by parents at home. Some parents describe the books as “sexual content” and point to “Pride Puppy,” a book for pre-K students about a dog that takes off from his family and gets lost during a Pride parade. At the end of the book, there is a “search and find word list” that encourages readers to look for objects throughout the picture book like an “intersex [flag],” “leather,” and “underwear,” which parents have objected to. The list also contains objects like muffins, a recycling bin and ripped jeans. The scavenger hunt also directs studentsto look for people like noted LGBTQ+ rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, whom parents targeted for her occasional sex work. Three families have also filed a lawsuit against the school system.
“None of us are anti-LGBT; none of us hold any hatred toward them. We recognize they have a different value system,” said Raef Haggag, a parent of a rising second grader in the school system and former computer science teacher. “We want to be able to introduce our children to these sensitive topics which are intertwined with our faith in a very sensitive way.”
There’s a certain irony to groups simultaneously pushing for DEI efforts that recognize their differing religious practices while fighting against those that do the same for others. But that’s the very nature of identity.
I’ve only seen a few examples of the books and most of them strike me as quite unobjectionable, simply recognizing the existence of gay and transgender people without delving into the more “adult” ramifications. I must admit, though, that Pride Puppy goes well beyond that.
Yet another report from the same reporter from earlier this month (“Montgomery County principals concerned over school books with LGBTQ characters“) notes that the objections go beyond some very religious parents:
Last fall, a group of Montgomery County elementary school principals sent a letter to school district leaders with concerns that books new to the language arts curriculum that included LGBTQ characters were teaching young students about sexual orientation and gender identity even though district leaders said they weren’t, according to emails reviewed by The Washington Post.
“It has been communicated that MCPS is not teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity as stand alone concepts in elementary school,” some of the principals wrote in a document sent in November. “However, several of the books and supporting documents seemingly contradict this message.”
The document surfaced last month as a part of an open records request by the Council on American-Islamic Relations that was shared with The Post. Staff from CAIR’s Maryland office have been part of a group of demonstrators calling on Maryland’s largest school district to instate an “opt-out” provision for the books.
“This memo that elementary school principals sent to the school district leaders back in the fall I think is critical from a legal perspective and also a policy perspective, because what they are laying out are all the things that parents have been saying,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s national deputy director.
[…]
Chief among the principals’ concerns was that the books included in the supplemental curriculum were not “appropriate for the intended age group, or in one case, not appropriate at all for young students.” Montgomery schools rolled out the books around October. They are intended as optional texts that teachers can read in the classroom, alongside other texts offered through the school system’s curriculum provider. The books and the school system’s refusal for an exemption have led to numerous protests in the county that have garnered national attention while a broader battle over parental rights and the way schools teach about gender and sexuality is underway.
The book, “My Rainbow,” — a story about a mother who makes a colorful wig for her transgender daughter — uses the terms transgender and cisgender, but does not explain the terminology, the principals said in the letter. They added that “family life isn’t taught until fifth grade” but the book would introduce those terms to students at a younger grade level. With the book “Love Violet” — a story about a girl who develops a crush on her classmate and contemplates how to create a card for her for Valentine’s Day, the principals wrote that it is “problematic to portray elementary school age children falling in love with other children, regardless of sexual preferences.” The letter details similar concerns with five of the books.
[…]
In the letter, the elementary school principals also highlighted their concerns with a script the school system provided educators to navigate questions and comments that may arise from students. One of the examples includes a student saying, “Being ___ (gay, lesbian queer, etc) is wrong and not allowed in my religion.” In the script, school staff are offered the suggestive response of, “I understand that is what you believe, but not everyone believes that. We don’t have to understand a person’s identity to treat then (sic) with respect and kindness.” The principals’ concern was that the response was “dismissive of religious beliefs.”
Eva Goldfarb, a professor of public health at Montclair State University and researcher on sex education, reviewed the principals’ document and read four of the books — “Born Ready,” “Love Violet,” “Pride Puppy,” and “My Rainbow,” all of which she found to be developmentally appropriate.
“It is about understanding people who students may not know or who may be different from them,” she said, noting that inclusion and acceptance were “exactly the point” of all the books she read.
Even though some education and public healthexperts have found such content is developmentally appropriate for young students, aWashington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in 2022 found that most Maryland voters don’t support public school teachers discussing acceptance of LGBTQ people with elementary school students. By more than 2 to 1 (66 percent to 30 percent), more registeredvoters said it was inappropriate rather than appropriate for teachers to discuss acceptance of LGBTQ people with students in kindergarten through third grade. For students in grades 4 and 5, 40 percent of voters said the discussions were appropriate, and 56 percent said it was inappropriate. However, a majority of Maryland voters do support teachers having those conversations at the middle and high school grades.
The principals also wrote they were worried that teachers had not been trained on the use of the books and the conversations it could spark in the classroom, and that there needed to be “a more robust, inclusive, public-facing process that includes deliberate attempts to include administrators, teachers, and parents as stakeholders.”
Cram, the district spokesman,highlighted how some of the concerns were addressed. Starting in the summer and through the fall, training was provided to reading specialists, counselors and media specialists, he said. There was also a “train the trainer” series in which some staff at schools were trained on how to use the books and then took that training back to their schools to teach other staffers, Cram said. Principals also participated in some trainings on implementing the books.
Obviously, this is not just a Maryland issue. Similar fights are playing out across the country, including in my home state of Virginia.
AP (“Virginia school boards must adhere to Gov. Youngkin’s new policies on transgender students, AG says“):
Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s new model policies for the treatment of transgender students are in line with federal and state nondiscrimination laws and school boards must follow their guidance, the state’s attorney general said in a nonbinding legal analysis released Thursday.
“The Model Policies ensure that all students are treated with dignity and that parental involvement remains at the center. These policies are fully compliant with the law, and school boards across the Commonwealth should support and implement them,” Attorney General Jason Miyares, also a Republican, said in a statement.
The advisory opinion from Miyares comes as a growing number of school boards across the state are responding to the administration’s guidelines, which were finalized last month after a lengthy review and address issues ranging from athletics to pronoun use in the classroom. The guidelines, which under state law are supposed to offer something of a road map for local school districts fashioning their own policies, roll back many accommodations for transgender students urged by the previous Democratic administration. They have won praise from conservative and religious groups and sparked criticism from Democrats and LGBTQ advocates.
Some school boards in red-leaning areas of the state have begun to adopt policies consistent with the governor’s. Others, mostly in blue areas, have said they plan to defy them.
For instance, Fairfax County Public Schools — the state’s largest district — recently told parents it had no plans to change its guidelines for transgender students, which do not align with Youngkin’s.
A similar dynamic, in political reverse, played out under previous Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration. The Department of Education told local districts at the time that they assumed “all legal responsibility for noncompliance” and did not track which divisions were meeting the standards, the Virginia Mercury reported at the time.
There’s an inevitable tension in education, at all levels, as to what gets included in the curriculum. With public schools, which are funded by the taxpayers and mandatory, with some rare exceptions, through at least age 16, that tension plays out in school boards and, occasionally, the courts.
There are those, mostly of conservative persuasion, who argue that the schools should stick to “readin’, ‘rightin’, and ‘rithmetic.” But, of course, even a cursory education needs to go beyond that. At a minimum, adding science and history is necessary—and the teaching of both of those subjects will inherently be controversial. And, as the present controversy demonstrates, even reading can be fraught. For that matter, so can math!
It’s perfectly understandable for parents to object to the schools that they’re paying to fund undermining the value system they’re trying to impart to their children. I remember my dad being quite upset that the schools were propagandizing me against smoking—not because he wanted me to grow up to smoke but because I was constantly pestering him and my mom to quit before it killed them!
As to the subject at hand, while I broadly support DEI efforts in the schools, I share some of the concerns of the principals that they’ll be taught poorly. The subjects are very sensitive and I’m skeptical that non-specialists will handle them well and consistently. At the same time, as with sex education and other sensitive topics, the parents who claim they want to teach their kids these things themselves are generally speaking the ones least likely and least equipped to do so.
Additionally, this will almost certainly lead to yet more sorting and polarization. Parents who object strongly enough to the schools undermining the culture they’re seeking to instill in their kids will either take their kids out of the public schools or move to places more friendly to their culture.
Imagine having a moral foundation that is so weak that a character from a story could disrupt the whole thing.
Imagine having to indoctrinate people as children or else you lose them forever to reason and science and rational thinking.
Religion is like guns. It makes people fearful and paranoid.
@James:
“There are those, mostly of conservative persuasion, who argue that the schools should stick to “readin’, ‘rightin’, and ‘rithmetic.””
Given how salient this position is, I think it could be addressed seriously without implying that those advancing it must obviously be ignorant rednecks. #Crossthread to insufficient STEM-capable labor force, semiconductor fabs, global competition with China, etc. etc. etc.
And these Christian and Muslim parents have their own agenda: to impose heteronormativity and cisnormativity.
Why should their (exclusionary) agenda receive special accommodation?
Would it also be reasonable, for instance, if homosexual parents would be able to have their children opt out whenever books with cisgender heterosexual characters are being read aloud in class?
That would be
prettyutterly insane. These Christians and Muslims are essentially demanding the same thing, i.e., that certain existing groups of people are to be made invisible.And somehow we are supposed to take their demands seriously?
@drj:
The problem with all these (religious) conservatives is always the same: they can’t even conceive of the question “What if the shoe were on the other foot?”
Because they (and no one else) are always the center of the fucking universe. They are so blinded by their self-centeredness that they can’t see that heterosexuality is a sexuality, too.
And because of that, they are utterly incapable of dealing with the notion of equality before the law.
I see. And when do kids start to notice differences in parenting sets? Somewhere about kindergarten.
“Why don’t you have a daddy/mommy?”–the answer to responding to this very basic question–whether the answer is “I have two daddies” “I have two mommies” or “my dad/mom is gone” needs to happen really, really early.
I bristle at the term “indoctrination.” NO ONE is “indoctrinating” these kids. They are learning about the world around them.
Contrast that to our idiotic educational commissioner here in NH, who is trying to add PragerU content to the curriculum.
Press X to doubt
“None of us are anti-LGBT; none of us hold any hatred toward them.”
Now that’s a laugh. (I’m a few minutes late to pick up on that, obvs, but wanted to reiterate)
@Assad: How little changes. From a 1924 ad for a Montana chapter of the KKK:
In the lower right corner, it reads:
@Will: It’s literally referred to as “the three R’s” despite only one of the words beginning with R. It’s an inherently conservative position. And, while I’m predisposed to agree with the idea that the schools should stick to teaching core academic subjects, there’s essentially no politically-neutral way to do it. Which books are chosen to read (as here), what examples are used on math word problems, whose history is taught, etc. are all potentially controversial.
@drj: @drj: @Jen: While I fully concur that not teaching about LGBTQ people in K-12 is also an agenda, the fact of the matter is that’s what has happened for almost the entire history of American education. The norms of the dominant culture have always been advantaged.
@Stormy Dragon: @Assad: I had the same reaction but didn’t see much value in casting aspersions on the motives of people I don’t know. I do think it’s interesting that these are Muslims and Ethiopian Orthodox groups rather than the usual Evangelical Christian suspects.
If kids are in public school, they are generally surrounded by other kids from all kinds of different backgrounds and with all kinds of different personal characteristics. For some parents, these differences are a problem that pretty much requires them to square their beliefs with what their kids are exposed to during the school day, and some of them don’t want to do that, at least not until later. But when a kid comes home and asks, “why does my friend at school have two mommies?” they really have no choice. Lesbian or gay parents are a pretty common reality whether they believe homosexuality is a mental illness, fixable or just the way some people are. For people who believe gay or trans is a sin, I understand it could be hard, but at school, their kids live in the big bad real world, and without some kind of explanation that “different” does not automatically translate to “bad,” they will make it up themselves, which leads to some nasty social problems for people who don’t toe the cis-hetero line. Having raised two LGBT kids, now middle aged, I speak from experience.
@James Joyner:
“The norms of the dominant culture have always been advantaged.”
The problem is, that culture is no longer as dominant, with the number of “nones” likely already close to the number of religious conservatives.
@James Joyner:
Of course. Which leads to bullying, some of which can inflict lifelong damage.
Just because something has always been done one way does not make that way right. Every time there’s a school shooting conservatives make noise about mental health and bullying (because they don’t want to address the gun issue). So, here’s a way to address one aspect of bullying and conservatives are saying “no, not that either.”
It’s utterly maddening.
@James Joyner: so the usual AstroTurf groups that bring these types of suits are using what they see as more “sympathetic” to the left groups to use to bring this suit. I’m just surprised it took this long.
“Impart” is not the right word here. “Indoctrination” is if challenges to that value system are not tolerated from the outside world.
Parents’ rights literally means the parents right to control their child’s life and worldview. It’s messed up when you really stop to think about it – why does the adult’s personal beliefs need to be the child’s as anything other then a gentle suggestion of a way forward? In the land of the free where you can supposedly be anything you want, far too many adults think they own small humans that must grow up to be exactly like them for pure egotistical reasons because they own them. The same parents claiming they have the absolute right to dictate what their kids read because MY KID will be the ones trying to assert grandparents’ rights in 20 years over NC offspring because MY GRANDKID. It’s always and forever about control and domination.
An adult that doesn’t like what their kid is learning from the greater universe needs to understand that’s how life works. It’s your freaking job as a parent to take these things as opportunities to better yourself and your child, not stick your head in the sand and drag them down with you. LBGT+ people exist and if you raise your child to be ignorant and hateful of them, at the very, very least you are setting them up for some colossal social faux pas that can ruin their lives and careers. It will cost them friends, allies, jobs, opportunities and experiences for the rest of their lives. HR is gonna care even if Daddy is secretly pleased.
The adult’s “value system” IS NOT more important then the child’s future…… and that’s the whole problem isn’t it?
That sounds like “It’s normal, therefor OK.”At one point in time slavery was the norm of the dominant culture, then white supremacy and misogyny, then homophobia, etc etc. Didn’t make any of it right.
As far as schools “sticking to the 3 Rs,” that’s a pretty silly stand for conservatives to take. The world is a whole lot bigger than that and the 3 Rs couldn’t begin to encompass all the things we need to teach our children so they can have hopes for a productive and fruitful life.
Schools teach kids many other things than the three Rs. You have to be pretty dim to believe otherwise. Conservative parents are right to be concerned that their kids are being taught it might be okay to be gay or trans or whoever you want to be. These concerns are based on sick fantasies of control, none of which are good.
Ironically, every parent has these same fantasies. No one is like, “I have no problem with my daughter moving to LA with dreams of being a tiktok influencer instead of going to Brown.” Every parent tries builds a world in which their child is curated so that their influencer dreams are put on the back burner (Kardashians aside). But the bottom end of this is the cultural right. Their curation is based on total fear. You can’t expect this culture to survive a collision with reality. You can’t expect your child of putting their dream of being honest about who they really are on the back burner so that grandma isn’t scandalized.
@James Joyner: My wife is a First Grade teacher and really chafes at the idea that she is “indoctrinating” anyone. But I think it comes down to the loaded word, “indoctrination.” She – and all public school teachers – are teaching a set of civic values as much as they are teaching standard English. The fact that a child is raised with different home values is no different than a child being raised with a different home language.
Public school is there to teach what is the consensus of basic public values (whose consensus is up for discussion). Public values in most of the US right now include acknowledgement and respect for DEI-based issues. If it’s important to the family that their child have different values, it becomes incumbent on the family to distinguish for their child that their home values differ from public values just as it is incumbent on the family to teach the child that the home language if it is different from the public language.
I agree that it is interesting when non-Christian, non-CIS families raise these issues because they presumably face the dichotomy of home and public values on a regular basis. For the Christian, CIS families, I think it has more to do with finding out they are no longer the sole arbiters of public values.
Slightly different topic, but Kevin Drum looked at a paper that estimates how many “gender surgeries” are performed in this country. From it he estimates the number performed on minors is about 500 per year. In a country of 330 million. And almost all of them “chest/breast”, not genital. As I’ve misquoted Churchill before, never in history have so many been so pissed about so little.
James is right that the norms of the dominant culture have always been advantaged. And it drives conservatives nuts that those norms are no longer their norms. There are legitimate issues as the schools grapple with a changing world, but the attention paid to this culture war stuff is more a function of a Party officially without a platform grasping for something to campaign on.
@gVOR10:
The reason surgeries are increasing is because more insurance covers it now so this is just the same number of trans people as always but they only now have access to the surgical support they always needed.
@drj:
It really is whiplash-inducing, the speed at which they switch from demanding tolerance of religious liberty to demanding the erasure of any other groups.
Just go through the article and switch “LGBTQ” with “Christian” and see how it reads.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Still, what makes you think that conservatives hope your kid to lead a “productive and fruitful life” let alone that they agree with your definition of what that would entail?
Fundamentally, people usually want to indoctrinate children into the value system they hold and that seems especially true for those who have very strident beliefs. That is as true for progressives as it is for religious people or anyone else. People also want exemptions for things that conflict with their value systems but don’t want to provide exemptions for their own value systems.
The extent to which public education should enable this is up for debate, but ultimately, it’s something education should steer away from for reasons that should be obvious. This goes back to defining what the fundamental goals of K-12 public education are and what should be prioritized regarding limited and valuable education time.
But the reality is that this kind of indoctrination doesn’t actually work in our society, as no one really has total control over what information and experiences another individual will be exposed to, including children.
So my view is this is much ado about nothing and has little to do with educating children. It’s really about adults and the incorrect notions they can indoctrinate children one way or another – and the general culture war.
In this case, a child’s trajectory toward their belief and value systems as adults will not be altered by either the presence or absence of a handful of LGTBQ books read to kids. The extent to which both sides overstate the importance here is telling IMO.
That said, I generally favor the rights of parents to opt their kids out of controversial topics. Or, at a minimum, schools should inform parents when controversial topics are presented so that they can prepare for any questions their kids might ask at home. Of course, parents of young kids can and will do what they’ve always done – just keep the kids home that day or take them out of school for the period when there is an assignment they don’t like.
@OzarkHillbilly:
In my view, the three “R’s” are fundamental skills that are prerequisites for all other learning. If a school is not doing well in educating kids to read, write, and do math, then that’s a major problem that will prevent children from having a productive and fruitful life. And it will certainly greatly hinder their ability to understand the complicated debates around gender.
@Joe:
I like this analogy but would take it further. Parents as non-assimilating immigrants trying to preserve and enforce the old country at all costs while the children are essentially first gen Americans who cannot be exposed to the “corrupting” influences or they will fall away. You must speak only the old language, eat only the old foods, follow all the old ways and traditions and never hang out with friends who might lead you astray. It’s not honoring the family’s culture in a new or changed environment, it’s isolating the kids so they will be exactly like their parents no matter what. The concept of being multi-cultured or third culture by necessity is inherently abhorrent and must be challenged at every turn.
On the 3 Rs, they are important but that leaves out science. How do you prepare kids for STEM majors without science. Just adding science means you add controversy. I think nearly everyone agrees you need history/civics but again you get controversy.
I think Andy is correct and what they are taught in school makes little difference. Wife and I have been involved in high school speech and debate for many years. They all take the same classes taught the same stuff but we have lots of mini-Trumps and mini-Bernie Sanders. What their family, friends and church teach them far outweighs school.
That said, local schools are mostly funded with local taxpayer money. If parents dont want their kids exposed to gay stuff then let them opt out. But that also means parents could opt out if they dont portray gay stuff. I bet it makes schools chaotic and hard for teachers to function but them’s the breaks. Teachers that dont like it should go teach where parents dont have this silly stuff.
Steve
@Andy:
Hard disagree.
This is why representation matters. It’s a real position of privledge to say you can take away a viewpoint from someone and not have it affect them. You don’t know what those books might mean to a young kid who’s still figuring out who they are and what their world is like. Sometimes the smallest thing can make a deep impact in ways someone not in a minority can understand. Ask someone non-white about the first time they read or saw something with a hero who looked like them. Ask a woman about the story she read that really resonated with her from a female perspective. Ask an ally about that story or character who made them look at their LBGT+ loved one and go “oh, I get it now”. Jesus, look at Barbie right now and tell me that some kid in the future is gonna cite seeing it as having an impact on how they viewed themselves and gender.
Stories have POWER – that’s why controlling reading has always been a conservative concern. Taking away simply because you don’t want your kids to be exposed to another viewpoint is cruel. It’s a parent’s job to discuss other viewpoints and help their child understand and navigate them, not just yoinking the literature and pretending it’s not harming the kid by stealing valuable info from them.
@Chip Daniels:
What follows is a bit of a pet peeve of mine – but it also helps to understand how these people think.
These people (the Christians and Muslims) are not demanding tolerance for themselves, because “tolerance” (from the Latin tolerantia) means the willingness or ability to bear something that is unpleasant.
They see themselves as the norm, which means that they don’t expect tolerance for themselves but rather respect and uncritical acceptance of their values.
The superior tolerates the inferior, not the other way around. (And the inferior must always avoid being uppity.)
And precisely because they see themselves as superior (i.e., as the ones who tolerate rather than those who are in need of being tolerated), they are unable to conceive of the question “What if the shoe were on the other foot?”
According to them, the shoe can never be on the other foot, because they are by definition the ones who are morally superior, because God (or whiteness, or WASPness, or landownership, or ancestry, depending on how far back you would like to go).
From this also follows that equality before the law is absurd, because, in their reality, there is no such equality.
So they are not demanding equality, they are demanding a special accommodation that reflects their (to them) obvious superior status.
The judge who ruled against them saw right through their bullshit.
My/our books written back in the 90’s have been credited by readers all grown up and writing essays, with promoting DEI, feminism, anti-imperialism and awareness of mental trauma. They were also horrifically violent, but also occasionally funny. We even get (undeserved) credit for creating a non-binary character and another character who’s been seen as an inspiration to transgender kids.
My books written in the early 2000’s are often credited with strong DEI, defending immigration, gay and lesbian rights, and a rare transgender character in a major role, etc… Also, horrifically violent.
IOW I/we did all the things a DEI advocate could wish, but without dragging out a sledgehammer. If you make the message obvious then it’s no longer about the reader, it’s about you, you, the author, and your desire to be applauded as wise and enlightened and to teach, teach, teach. But you can teach a hell of a lot more by entertaining than by pontificating. The TV show Will and Grace never made the show about teaching tolerance for gays, and yet they did. Rather than demand that Will be allowed to marry another man, just make us love Will. We love good ol’ Will, why shouldn’t he be happy?
I’m not going to call out any book or author, but I have some advice: Write the story, don’t write the message. Write the story well and you never even need to mention the message. And yet, if you do your job properly, the message will be delivered. And it will be delivered without the illiterate right-wing trolls even noticing.
@KM:
One of the books in question is intended for Pre-K audiences. That’s 3-5 years old. The presence or absence of one book about a dog going to a Pride Parade won’t have the meaningful effect you claim with that age group. Likewise, the notion that it’s cruel to allow parents to opt-out and deny their children the chance to experience Pride Parade wrongly suggests that a single book that is mostly about a dog going to a parade is going to have some major effect on a child’s life or development. It’s not.
I can guarantee all the non-straight commenters who are older than 30 went though a form of indoctrination in school in the 70s, 80s, and 90’s, except it was to indoctrinate us into making us straight. Didn’t work. All that did was convince me I was a freak and I would suffer and die alone. Probably of AIDS. It was freaking miserable. That’s the whole point with this crap.
They don’t want to opt out of learning about LGBT people, they want us to disappear so that they can be comfortable. Our existence and the acknowledgement of our humanity is the real problem. Hell, idiot Carlos Santana ran his mouth off about how we should all go back into the closet. What an absolutely horrible thing to say.
@Andy:
I don’t think you get how important these things are. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, the only views of Trans people were 1. freaks, 2. prostitutes, 3. murder victim, and 4. guest on Maury Povich “Are you a man?” episodes. These books won’t turn any kids LGBT, but they do give LGBT kids hope. Hope they can grow up. Hope that when (not if) they will have whatever they can dream of. Not just murder victim.
Also, I can’t stress enough how important Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are to my community. The absolute tenacity those woman showed is a bedrock for all Trans women. FUCK the NYPD.
@Michael Reynolds:
lol, your “90’s book series” came up and I mentioned, in a roundabout way, that I tussle with you. The look of terror on these woman’s faces was intense. I had to be all, “nah, Daddy’s fine. He’s a giant pain in my ass, but he’s fine.” The effect those books had on them was such that if I was like, “no he’s a terf asshole” they would have cried. The relief was palpable.
@Michael Reynolds: I don’t know how you can write a story about the daily life of a little kid with two mommies without mentioning they have two mommies.
@Andy: Andy, sorry, but this is crap. “Compromising” by disappearing groups these religionists disapprove of is tacitly accepting their disapproval should become state policy.
@Beth:
We have been very lucky with our fans. Toxic fandom? Not even a little. They are as a group just lovely people.
@Andy:
Beth is right. Look, I don’t care if people in books are ‘like me’ but I have to tell you, I could bury your house in letters and emails from kids (or grown-up kids) who feel their lives were saved or given meaning by the little glimmer of hope from seeing characters that made them feel human and normal. I am not exaggerating in the least when I say we’ve gotten hundreds of letters from LGBTQ readers who credit something we wrote with turning them away from suicide.
Discount it a bit for teen melodrama, it is still real and means a great deal more to these kids than I ever imagined. I am more comfortable in my pose as curmudgeon but dude, someone writes you a four page letter crediting you with saving their lives, that is a heavy thing, and my cynicism yields to the realities of their experience.
@MarkedMan:
“Heather has Two Oddly Vague Legal Guardians”
@Beth:
Which is not the case today. The culture is much more accepting today. And that culture is going to have a much bigger effect over time than a couple of books read to young kids who can’t understand the LBGTQ cultural subtexts.
Once you get into the middle school years – which, not coincidentally, is when education on reproduction and sex is age-appropriate – then I think the “representation” argument starts to matter more.
@KM:
Excellent argument. You may want to consult with indigenous activists in Canada, Australia, even the US, on how mandatory schools to acculturate native children worked. Might give you some ideas.
Now I would advocate for school vouchers, but still this is true in areas of diversity
Or as Malcom X said, “Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.”
@MarkedMan:
Easy. Write a story about a kid doing interesting, exciting things, living his kid life, and he has two mommies. Don’t write a book about, HE HAS TWO MOMMIES. Write the story, write the characters, let the readers draw their own conclusions. It’s that last bit that too many writers and teachers and definitely parents don’t get: let the kids breathe and consider and figure things out on their own, don’t force feed them. Jesus, I was force fed the Bible. Guess how that worked out.
One of my standard bits of advice for kidlit writers: for god’s sake don’t condescend. I don’t care how young the reader is, treat them like a human being, a real person, with respect. The writer is not in loco parentis, the writer is not a teacher, the writer does not work for mom and dad, the writer works for the reader. That ten year-old reading your book is your boss, not the other way around.
@Stormy Dragon:
Heather has two “roommates”
@Andy:
What do you mean about “cultural subtext”? We’re not trying to explain to little kids why all the best bars have a sign on the door that says “one person at a time, no exceptions”. Most of what those books are doing is simply saying LGBT people exist. It’s important for kids to know that.
Hell, everytime my partner and I go to school functions for my kids, there are questions about why Girlchild has two moms and one has a deep voice.
What exactly is controversial about my existence?
@Andy:
Also, the only reason the culture is more accepting, and I don’t know it is, but let’s assume. People like me who went through the horror show of the 80’s & 90’s stood up and said, “I’m never letting people go through that again” and wrote kid books, became lawyers, fight with kid-lit authors on the internet, went to PTA meetings.
People started finding out we’re not freaks and then the religionists lost their minds.
@MarkedMan:
That is a mighty large strawman you’ve erected.
The issue in the OP is whether parents ought to be able to opt out their kids from LGBTQ content in pre-k and elementary school, as they can do for sex ed. It is not about removing LGBTQ content from education entirely, much less attempting to “disappear” groups.
My view is that it doesn’t really matter because kids in this age group generally cannot understand the cultural subtext. It will fly right over their heads. At most, it will get them to ask a question to a parent or teacher.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yes, and your books were for the YA demographic, not 3-5 year olds.
What I’m skeptical of is the importance of exposing that young age group to LGBTQ or any other controversial social topic. Note that I’m not opposed to it – I think it doesn’t matter one way or another.
Teenagers are different because they can (hopefully) read independently, and have cognitive and reasoning functions that small children lack. And at that point, parents and schools cannot control what teens read or don’t read because the internet and libraries exist.
@Andy:
The right weaponizes the concept of “sexual content for minors” because they define all references to the existence of LGBT people as inherently sexual. Telling a kid they can have two mommies is “grooming,” but talking about their mom and dad isn’t. I’m not saying you do that, but it’s why you should be very suspicious of any argument about not exposing elementary-school kids to LGBT references on the grounds that it isn’t age-appropriate.
@steve:
It didn’t used to much. Just evolution. But then Republicans decided to add expertise to the list of things they’re agin’.
@Andy:
Are you seriously trying to explain to Beth how she experiences her own identity in society? If only I had half that level of confidence…
@Andy:
3-5 means young, not dumb, ignorant or unaware of differences. 3-5 year olds pick up on more then adults want them too. 3-5 is old enough to understand people being mean to you because you have Mommy and Mommy even if you don’t really grasp why. You can pick up on the hate even if you can’t discern the cause.
3-5 is old enough to understand or else haters wouldn’t be complaining. If it was really zooming by the kids’ head it wouldn’t matter now would it – like every adult joke in a kids’ movie, it would whoosh on by and no harm no foul amirite? They worried though it won’t and the kids will get it…. and not care. Because you have to be carefully taught these things are bad and not normal or else a little kid might breezily just accept Danny can be Danielle or Bill might pull Jack’s pigtails instead of Sally’s and move right to the next thing.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
@Beth:
One of the examples is a book called “Pride Puppy” (which I mistakenly called “Pride Parade” earlier.)
Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:
It’s like thousands of other similar books with the same goal of telling an extremely simple story understandable to young children while teaching fundamentals of reading, like the alphabet.
The cultural subtext is that it’s set in a pride parade and not an MLK parade, Independence Day parade, or some other kind of parade. My view is that the cultural subtext – what kind of parade it is – doesn’t really matter for this age group and that getting bent about as something that is super important is largely a waste of time. It’s like claiming that the same book set in an Independence Day parade will somehow steer kids to be more patriotic.
We adults can understand the cultural subtext of a pride parade – kids that young cannot.
I’m almost 55, so I grew up in the 80’s. If you can’t see a difference between then and today in terms of acceptance and norming of the LGBTQ community, then I don’t know what to tell you.
And yes, the positive changes since then were difficult and important and have seen a lot of success – which is good! It’s important to note that cultural progress on this front that has been achieved thus far is the result of hard work by adults over a period of decades and not from tweaking the reading curriculum for young children in public schools.
The point I’m making here is that tweaking the curriculum as described in the OP just doesn’t matter much, despite how much activists and religious-oriented parents who object believe otherwise.
@Andy:
We don’t mind exposing 3-5 years old to heterosexuality because heterosexuality is more than the mechanics of penis-in-vagina sex.
With that in mind, what is controversial about the existence of LGBTQ people?
And if their very existence (not the kinds of sex they have) is controversial, shouldn’t we do our utmost to remedy that? Out of a sense of basic humanity?
@Andy: I wouldn’t go as far as much more accepting, but I’m with you as far as a little less condemnatory.
@Andy:
Animorphs was for 10-12 year-olds.
Something I read back when we were first starting to procreate. A piece pointed out that contra what we adults believe, we are not the anthropologists learning about the behavior of children. The kids are the anthropologists, and they are studying us with a focus and intensity we cannot match. @KM: is exactly on-point. Including gay, trans characters in books is no more controversial than the generations earlier ‘controversy’ over including non-Whites.
DEI should be the default. It should be assumed. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I get annoyed at hamfisted efforts, because kids don’t need to be taught to accept gay people, they need to not be taught that gay people are anything other than normal.
I write big books with tons of characters. I’ve been asked why I write so many DEI characters, and my answer is because I’m not a fucking Nazi, and to not include gays, Blacks, immigrants, whatever would require me to exclude them. In fact, this was one of my fights with the far left of kidlit which went through a phase of insisting that Whites can only write Whites, etc…
When I was in school, the kids whose parents opted them out of sex-ed were mocked and ridiculed for having crazy fundy parents, and one was beaten up (he replied to the ridicule with Bible verses).
I’m not saying this is the best approach, but kids are vicious. Anyway, the opted-out children learned that their parents were freaks who were forcing them to be humiliated.
@Andy:
Then what’s the damn problem?
If the context doesn’t matter or won’t be picked up by the child then there’s no issue with the book existing since – as you pointed out – it’s like thousands of other books. Why are you arguing it can be excluded then? If the only thing that makes it “controversial” is something the kid won’t notice what the hell is the issue other then hurt parent fee-fees?
When it comes right down to it, it’s never about the kids. It’s not about being “age-appropriate” or whatever nonsense save-the-kids brings in. It always comes down to the adults having a temper tantrum and using their kids as a socially-acceptable shield for their bigotry.
@Stormy Dragon:
That is an entirely incorrect and uncharitable reading of my comments. Quite obviously, the OP and the discussion are about school curriculum, not the experiences of any single individual.
@KM:
On the contrary, kids 3-5 years old are generally stupid, ignorant, and selfish. The notion they will suddenly not “hate” certain people because their teacher read “Puppy Pride” is sophistry.
Kids that age do need to be taught to be nice because it doesn’t come naturally. Teaching them to be nice, however, requires direct action by adults to correct bad behavior and explain to them in very small words that they have to share toys, that hitting is bad, and that being nice to everyone is good.
@Andy:
That culture was created in part by books. You’re praising the building and denigrating the bricks and mortar.
At first blush, I’m not sure kids need to be learning about Pup Play that young, but if we are trying to teach children about consent… Pup Play might actually be more explicable than just about anything else. It’s really just playing pretend.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think parent get inured to the intelligence and perceptiveness of children, kinda like you stop smelling something after a while. They’re so used to having to be in charge or dealing with the vagrancies of daily life they forget how smart we as a species are from a young age. As social creatures, we soak up everything around us to provide context. We see even if we don’t comprehend. It’s all there in the background and a million tiny links build on themselves to form who we are. Adults who think they are hiding things from children don’t do as well as they think. Hiding money problems? Kid picks up on trouble despite not understanding credit cards. Hiding abuse? Kids understand hurt and bullies and cruelty and “bad people”.
The kids are alright. Adults are the ones to mess them up.
@KM:
Where am I arguing it should be excluded?
Yes, I’ve been saying the parents who object to this are wrong for the same reasons – they think the question of exposing kids to these books is a hugely important one. I disagree and think it isn’t important. I would tell them that they shouldn’t worry about Pride Parade or the others.
But by the same token, I would tell all the strident progressives here pushing back the same thing – a few parents opting out is not a big deal.
Yes, another thing I’ve been saying. Adults are trying to argue (on each side) that this is a super-important big deal for reasons that have little to do with children’s education. The reality is that it isn’t a big deal. It’s just another dumb culture war fight.
@drj:
The reality is that teaching children topics related to sex, gender, and sexuality is controversial. Hence why just about every school district in the country requires permission forms before middle-schoolers learn the science of human reproduction.
Pointing that out such things are controversial is just an observable fact, not matter how much one may wish otherwise. If this wasn’t controversial, there wouldn’t be several articles written about a school district none of us live in, nor would there be lots of strident commentary on blogs and other fora.
@KM: There’s an ironic aspect about “immigrant parents” trying desperately to hold on to Ye Olde Home Culture 10, 20 years after they immigrated and making sure that their offspring carry it on. In most cases, if they moved back to Ye Olde Home Country to protect their children from the nasty wicked Western Culture, they would have their own culture shock. Their own culture (of India, Bangladesh, China, whatever) has already developed and moved on.
As the old statement has it: “Panta rei.” Everything changes. And that includes culture.
@Michael Reynolds:
Do you have any examples of books for kids that young that do this well, and which are beloved classics?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything for kids that young that have any complexity to them at all. There is no background anything. Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus is literally about a pigeon, and doesn’t have room for the official non-pigeon bus driver to be a transgender woman or gay man or whatever without devoting a two page spread to it with big pictures, etc.
(It’s easier to include brown people, since they’re just brown. But queer folks don’t look different, and if we are avoiding offensive caricatures…)
Stuff for kids that young is painfully dumb and obvious. Either it’s all very, very wrong, or there’s some reason that it is so obvious — children are half formed larva, covered in snot, barely able to comprehend anything. I’m pretty sure you have to spoon feed things to those filthy buggers.
How is a book like Heather Has Two Mommies different from a book that is about a white kid going to their Mexican-American friends house and discovering that they are basically the same as her except they call their cat a “gato” and have tacos for dinner?
Because I’m positive we got that second book when I was in school (the teacher gave us tacos afterwards, and I remember tacos!).
It’s the basic “exposure to other people’s life” book that is common at that age. Except without tacos at the end. And preachy as hell.
@Gustopher:
My wife has a book called CRENSHAW. It’s about a kid who has a giant cat as his imaginary friend. It’s also about his dad losing his job and the family having to sell their stuff and live in their car for a while. Somehow the words, ‘economic inequality,’ or, ‘socialism,’ never come up. And yet a kid sitting on a cot in a homeless shelter will understand that they are not alone. I don’t know that the book is a beloved classic, but it’s sold surprisingly well and been featured for a number of one school reads, even one town reads.
It’s not hard at all. Two men of the same age sit next to each other on the bus, one holding a baby. At age 3 you don’t need the backstory, you just need to not be shocked and horrified at the thought that two dudes might raise a baby. You also don’t need to explain blowjobs.
@Andy:
The reality is that schools are teaching about gender and sexuality all the time — there’s a constant backdrop of cisgender heterosexuality in just about every book one reads (or has read to them) in school, with the exception of Thoreau’s Walden Pond*.
And that teaches that anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into those boxes is a freak who should never be mentioned.
——
*: if put into context, Walden Pond is all about traditional gender roles — his mother dropped off food and did his laundry the entire time he was there staring at the ripples on the water or whatever. May have even tidied things up.
Two last points, then I have to work.
1) It’s like we’re trying to stop kids reading books. WTF is the matter with people? We say we want kids to read, then we do everything we can to discourage it. Let kids read what they want to read and they’ll read a variety of things and then, surprise (!) figure it out all on their own.
2) I wish far right and far left would both fuck off out of kidlit and let us (the writers) do our jobs, because on balance we tend to know WTF we’re doing, and all these noisy activists don’t.
@Andy:
This is demonstrably false.
Teaching kids about heterosexual relations is not controversial at all. Teaching kids about gender identity is not controversial at all – as long as it’s traditional gender norms.
As a parent, I can assure you that kids get taught this stuff all the time. It’s non-stop.
The problem is that you are unable to see that “mommy and daddy had a baby” and “Petey will be great at football and Mary likes to take care of her puppets” have no less to do with sexuality and gender than any of the “controversial” books that caused these religious fruitcakes to lose their shit.
Which means that this:
is a cowardly cop-out.
These things aren’t naturally controversial (because young kids supposedly should never have to learn about sex and gender – which is a principle absolutely no one adheres to). Rather, we make these things controversial because some people dislike certain sexualities and certain gender expressions.
And if we (as a society) made these things controversial, why can’t we collectively unmake these things controversial?
Because it’s upsetting to some? To you? Well, the status quo is also upsetting to some if you’re not straight and cisgender.
“It’s perfectly understandable for parents to object to the schools that they’re paying to fund undermining the value system they’re trying to impart to their children.”
Is this true for everything that tax dollars support? Or only teaching practices that conservative parents object to?
Whole argument is so passé and 20th century. Children today, even little children, are more clever and aware than some think. It’s the parents who are dumb, clueless, and hopelessly out-of-date.
It wasn’t books that made millennials and Zoomers so liberal, it was Al Gore’s Internet. The rise of the world wide web — opening up narrow lives to cultures and knowledge beyond all horizons and restrictions — was the inflection point. In the 21st century, kids have 24/7 internet access via cell phones, and via friends with cell phones and friends who can break parental controls on cell phones.
So book banning rightwingers are a day late and several dollars short. Kids can probably find copy of these banned books on their phones — and content that is actually sexual (and worse). Ever heard of Twitter porn? Our kids have. Until I see Republican attacks on rightwing hero Elon Musk for peddling smut to kids, I can only assume the ‘parents matter’ crowd is either stupid or unserious.
GenZ content creators, Instagram influencers, and TikTokers are savvy, persuasive and trend liberal and queer-friendly. Klanned Karenhood thinks removing a book from a school library will stop their kids from being “indoctrinated” with anti-racism and Pride values? Lol okay gurl. Pfft hahaha
@drj:
The norm never thinks of themselves as anything but the basic default of reality.
Going back to the smell analogy, everyone’s home has a smell. Every single domicile has one, period – it’s a consequence of existence yet you don’t notice your homes’ background smell, only new notes to it like dinner, BO or other temporary wafts of scent. It’s called nose blindness and you become accustomed to what you think is home and only pick on changes to that baseline. Go into someone else’s home and you can tell even if the homeowner can’t anymore. Yeah, that couch does reek like cat no matter what the owner says – you’re not crazy, they just can’t tell anymore.
Cishet people can’t smell themselves and thus assure the world they don’t stink, others do. They claim scent is controversial because as far as they are concerned, they’ve got no smell and so the very idea of exposing a child to scent is scandalous. Pointing out their BO offends them deeply because they really and truly believe they’re scent-neutral or exempt somehow.
@Michael Reynolds: But that’s the problem. These people are objecting to books who simply have characters that have two mommies. They are just referenced in passing, “Mommy Jane made spaghetti for dinner.” Things happen. “Mommy Sue tucks her into bed.” (Not verbatim examples, but close.) Raise the ruckus about indoctrination!
@Andy: “But by the same token, I would tell all the strident progressives here pushing back the same thing – a few parents opting out is not a big deal.”
Sure. But it isn’t a “few parents opting out.” It’s a few parents commandeering school board meetings and having books banned so that no one has access to them.
@Andy:
But in fact, it is exactly about disappearing LGBTQ characters from children’s books. Look, you can try to find some middle ground, but the religionists aren’t going to let you. They have gone after children’s books where kids simply have two same sex parents. These people don’t like it because they bring their children to church every week where the leaders are screaming about the decadent perverts living a life of debauchery and sin, and they don’t want anyone showing anything different.
Look, if we were talking about books that explained sex acts to three year olds I’d be in total agreement with you. But that isn’t what’s going on. This is the exact equivalent of Southern TV stations yanking that Star Trek episode where Kirk kissed a black woman, and claiming it was because they didn’t feel an entertainment show should be indoctrinating children on such controversial topics as miscegenation. They were telling their kids that only filthy degenerates engaged in race mixing, and didn’t want anyone showing anything different.
@Gustopher:
I think And Tango Makes Three is utterly charming. It’s about two male penguins who adopt an egg. It’s also behavior that has been repeatedly observed in nature.
And, it is constantly on the challenged books lists.
@Andy:
How can you just assert this with nothing behind it?
@drj:
In most school districts the only formal curriculum is “sex ed” which is a science class about human reproduction. That requires a parental permission slip and the ability for parents to opt-out in most every school district. And the reason that permission slips are required for that class are so widely required is because a non-trivial number of parents and others think it’s a controversial enough topic to demand that school districts provide an opt-out option.
So your statement that it is not controversial at all, may be true for you – and it’s true for me – but is not true for everyone.
It’s not exactly news that American culture has long had a prudish attitude toward sex – including heterosexual relations, especially when it comes to kids.
We certainly can and I would support that goal. But that requires persuasion which is in short supply these days.
@DK:
Yep, the idea that we can indoctrinate kids through the school system or prevent it is complete folly.
@wr:
On the contrary, in this case, some parents in this one school district specifically want an opt-out provision.
@Andy:
Oh, come on. The issue is LGBTQ storybooks, not formal sex-ed:
Give me one example of a school where an age-appropriate story featuring mommy, daddy and their offspring caused controversy.
Mommy and daddy being blatant heterosexuals, this could easily lead to a conversation about sexual orientation, no? The horror.
Again, it’s not stories that feature sexual orientation, it’s stories that feature the wrong kind of sexual orientation.
These parents don’t want neutrality, they want sex discrimination. Which, of course, is illegal. Which is why they lost.
@Jen: There the queer penguins are the focus. MR is claiming that an early children’s book can have a separate focus, with the queerness just being there, normal and unremarked upon.
I don’t think those books have the space for it.
I am, however, a fan of gay penguin parents, and think they should just be stuck into the background of every book. But it’s more of an Easter egg than anything like representation when it is done that way.
(MR suggests two men and a baby, but that’s just Three Men And A Baby after a tragic accident, or some guy bringing his kid somewhere with his guy friend…)
@Andy: Should parents be able to opt out their kids from any mention of Islam, Spanish-speaking peoples, slavery or the Protestant Reformation?
“We would like to keep our child away from the dangerous and heretical ideas of Martin Luther”
I find it amazing that queer, non-binary, transgender, gay, lesbian, etc. people got the full cisgender heteronormative treatment in school, and very likely also at home, and this failed to affect their identity. And we’re supposed to believe a few mentions of the existence of any alternatives will completely and irretrievably screw up a “normal” child?
The radical Right has staked out a position that even discussion of LGBTQ issues in our elementary, middle, and high schools is ‘grooming.’ It is hard to have a serious discussion with some of these people, many of whom believe that liberals and progressives are pedophiles.
Long ago, way back in the early 21st century, it was the case that ‘it’s the economy’ dominated campaign season. Now ‘it’s the culture wars’ is dominant.
@Andy: “On the contrary, in this case, some parents in this one school district specifically want an opt-out provision.”
On the contrary, in case after case after case, it’s a literal handful of parents demand that books be ripped out of libraries — sometimes not school libraries, but even public ones — because they personally find them offensive.
Really, do you think “it’s only terrible 99% of the time and here’s a case where it isn’t” is really an effective argument?
@Gustopher: Oh…gotcha. I was coming at it from a different perspective of focused content. In the case of the penguins, since there is ample evidence this happens in nature, one could interpret the book as an introduction to how penguins behave in a natural setting and it would be accurate, rather than “pushing an agenda” or whatever is upsetting conservatives these days.
@Andy: @Andy:
I had to stop from responding immediately upon reading your comment because it pissed me off so much.
After reading the rest of the comments, I can only say, “WTF, man.” I could not disagree more strongly with your take. I can damn guarantee you that my 4 year old nephew asking me “Why does Joe have two mommies?” deserves an honest answer. NOT to be lied to nor shielded from the reality of LGBTQ+ folks.
I was a precocious, smart kid. I knew I was smarter than my mom would ever be by age 12. At age 5, I knew the Catholic Church and all it’s teaching were not for me. I was fortunate that when I finally had the guts to speak up to my mom about my concerns, she was smart enough to let me leave the church and never go back. I was 8. Also, due to growing up in a library, literally, by age 8 I knew about sex, gay people, knew all the US presidents by memory, knew all 50 states and their capitals, which I can still recite, and had read full biographies of Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Albert Einstein, Bill Russell, FDR, Teddy R, and too many others to list.
I cried the night Bobby Kennedy was shot, because I was rooting for him in the Dem Primaries. I was 8.
I cried when MLK was shot, because I thought he had a chance of bringing people together. I was 7.
I spent weeks reading all I could about Kent State, to figure out why, WHY, the Guardsmen would open fire. Reader’s Digest, while conservative, had the most detailed journalism on the massacre. I was 9.
Being stuck in a library for 4 hours every single day – Monday-Friday – made school very easy, and it’s no coincidence I sailed through school without ever getting a “B” grade. I was reading adult books by age 7, so your take…. sucks.
Lastly, as DK has stated, trying to control what kids learn is a folly when all of them have the entire World Book Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica**, and the entire rest of the world, in the palm of their hands, with Google and Siri ready to help with a simple query.
**Tell me you’re over age 60 without telling me you’re over 60.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: One thumbs up for pointing out a truth.
@Andy: And if you agree that the 3 Rs are all they should teach, you want stupid children.
FTR: I did NOT say they shouldn’t teach them, what I DID say is that that is not enough. “English muthaphuka, do you not speak it???”
Try telling that to the Florida lege. Or the Texas lege. Or the Mississippi Lege. Or the Misery lege. Or the Idaho lege. Or the…
C’mon Andy, do you live in the same world we do?
I was visiting my Aunt Bobby June and her life partner Maxine back in the early 60s. I and my siblings never thought anything of it.
Andy, put down the shovel. Really. Just put down the shovel.
@Gustopher: Despite the quote where Rev. Luther proclaimed something to the effect that it is better to be ruled by wise Saracen than a foolish cleric,* Luther was a fairly pronounced antisemite, so yes, there are elements of Luther’s teachings students might need to be shielded from.
*Or maybe that proclamation simply proves the rule, your choice.
@Kathy:
Alas, yes. I’ve been at that very meeting at schools at which I taught. 🙁
@Andy:
So, how exactly do you distinguish between “must never mention the existence of” and “disappearing”? Enquiring minds want to know.
@drj:
This is key. The reality remains the if the notion is that “those people” can’t be mentioned until the audience is older, then what are you really saying about “those people”?
@Michael Reynolds:
Exactly.