Sunday, November 2, 2008
Kindergarteners pledge to be GLBT allies
3 comments
During National Ally Week, a kindergarten teacher, Tara Miller, passed out cards to her students. The children were asked to sign the card to pledge that they will not use anti-GLBT language and will promote respect for GLBT people.Parents, school board members, and teachers alike are furious, claiming that these pledge cards were not "appropriate" for kindergarteners. Because we'll be damned if we teach our children to be respectful of all kinds of people. I wonder if "I promise to never use racial slurs" pledge cards would draw an equal amount of negative backlash. Doubt it.
And, not surprisingly, Fox News has once again succeeded in presenting a biased and one-sided presentation of a news story. Check out the article posted on their website, so intelligently titled "School Claims Up on 'Gay' Pledge Cards Given to Kindergarteners." I challenge you to find one person Fox News quoted in that article who actually agreed with the pledge cards. I know they exist. Instead, the article was filled with people who said things like this:
"[There is] tremendous peer pressure put on children to accept a pro-homosexual philosophy and attitude."
Really? Cause I have yet to see some of this pressure. Instead, I could easily argue that there is far more peer pressure put on children to reject homosexuality and make GLBT people into outcasts.
But no one talks about that.
Posts
November 2, 2008 at 2:29 PM
Parents get upset at those and not ones about race because they feel their 4 or 5 year olds shouldn't know what "sexuality" is, whether it be hetero or homo. Parents do not want their 4 and 5 year olds knowing about sex. That is why they get angry.
Now, before you get all "gar! no you didn't! you must hate gays!" on me, of course kids should be taught equality for all people. There are ways to do that without teaching young kids about sex. Because you know kids are going to ask what "sexual" means with that.
November 2, 2008 at 3:23 PM
There are definitely ways to teach about GLBT people without talking about sex. Children already know that men and women can fall in love and get married, so what's the harm in teaching them that men and men can fall in love or women and women can fall in love? There doesn't have to be any mention of sex. What this teacher was doing didn't involve sex at all. I'm sure she didn't tell the children how gay men or lesbians have sex - she simply made them aware of the fact that it isn't always men and women who fall in love, and not all families consist of one mommy and one daddy.
November 3, 2008 at 1:13 PM
That is the problem- since each of these terms have "sex" right in there, people assume that it's ONLY about sex and thus mentioning it must be lewd and will make their kids perverts. I think this is a good idea, so long as the teacher presented it in an appropriate manner. But there are plenty of parents who would rather their kids not even know what gay means until they met a gay person and act out of fearful misunderstanding.
But why could it have done been a general anti-hate speech pledge? Including GLBT and POC? Surely they're all equally important. But little kids do tend to call things "gay" and play games such as "smear the queer", so...