What Do We Want To Teach Kids?
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 Boys Art and Entertainment LGBT+ RSOL Politics Science, Technology, Health Current events Deaths by Staff Writer - November , 2021
Children are not homogeneous. This is an indisputable fact. Children come in all shades and colors, shapes and sizes, stages of development and personalities, religions and ideologies, ethnic origins, financial backgrounds, and yes, even sexual orientations and gender identities. Children are a reflection of the society in which they originate. A society where even adults have extreme difficulty peacefully coexisting and yet all these diverse children are sent off to a school building for the main part of their day and expected to, "just get along". Of course, that doesn't happen but teachers and school administrators are sill responsible for maintaining order and a safe environment for all their students. In recent decades, school bulling and violence have become an increasing problem, often with exceedingly tragic outcomes. While perhaps not epidemic, School shootings should never have happened even once. And yet, a number of individual and mass shootings have been reported in the last several years alone. Obviously, shootings are an extreme outcome. It is an outcome that is often produced by the the physical and verbal abuse as well as the feelings of alienation that school children inflict on each other, which often comes in the form of bulling. According to the US government website "Stop Bulling", 12 of 15 school shooting cases in the 1990s, the shooters had a history of being bullied. However, it is not the only effect of bulling. Some of the common effects of bulling include: depression and anxiety, increased feelings of sadness and loneliness, decreased academic and school participation. Bulling is also linked to increased suicide risk especially in sexual and gender minorities including young boylovers, who often don't have the necessary support and feel isolated and alone in their struggles to come to terms with their identities. Sexual minorities experience a disproportionate amount of bullying compared to their heterosexual peers. The 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) show that, nationwide, more U.S. high school students who self-identify as a sexual minority as having been bullied on school property (32%) and cyberbullied (26.6%) in that year than their straight peers (17.1% and 14.1%, respectively). The study also showed that more sexual minority students (13.5%) than straight students (7.5%) reported not going to school because of safety concerns. Students who identified as "not sure" of their sexual orientation also reported being bullied on school property (26.9%), being cyberbullied (19.4%), and not going to school because of safety concerns (15.5%). While young boylovers were not studied specifically, the rates of bulling are likely comparable, as many young BLs self-identify as gay before reaching adulthood. Beginning in the late 1990s, school personnel in cooperation with student groups, and government have been attempting to make the school environment safe and inclusive for all students. Most schools have adopted various strategies for putting an end to bulling. Many of these programs have been initiated and lead by the students themselves. One result of this has been that many school libraries begin to offer books to assist their student readers who maybe struggling with their sexual identity. This in particular has seen significant push-back in may communities in the last few years. Conservative parents and politicians that fear that sexual minorities might be seen as "normal" have began rigorous campaigns and proposed new laws to subvert schools and students efforts to end bulling and promote an environment of harmony and cooperation among student body. The Texas governor calls books 'pornography' in latest effort to remove LGBTQ titles from school librariesin his ongoing assault on sexual minority children in that state. In Kansas City, a parent group succeeded in getting two LGBTQ-themed books were pulled from the library shelves at four high schools. In Tennessee, House Bill 0800 says, "the promotion of "LGBT issues and lifestyles" should face the same restrictions as teaching religion in public school". If passed, the bill specifically says schools can't adopt or use books, instructional materials that "promote, normalize, support, or address LGBT issues or lifestyles." The Waukee, Iowa school board candidate Vin Thaker wants to collect the names of every kid who checks out pro-LGBTQ books, notify their parents, and then make “the person who ordered these titles” defend their choices. On November 6th, Spiked news in the UK ran this story, Keep gender-identity ideology out of schools. Castleview Primary School in Edinburgh had held a "Wear a skirt to school day" in support of Mikel Gomez and the social-media campaign he started called Clothes Have No Gender. It seems, Gareth Sturdy the author of this article wanted to cast doubt that 10- and 11-year-olds were socially aware enough about this issue to ask permission to organize a skirt-wearing day in solidarity. These are just a few examples of how outside forces are attempting to derail any efforts to make schools a better place for all students and promote inclusiveness instead of division. Part of the position of these anti-inclusion radicals is that schools are being used as laboratories of social engineering and that they are teaching children that gender identity and sexual orientation is an acceptable choice. This is simply a repackaging of the same old stereotype that people choose to be gay. In fact, most of it is the same old rhetoric used to encourage hate for sexual minorities that have been used for many years. The use of demeaning words of exclusion like "lifestyle" and "normalize" are prominent themes in their attempts separate students into |
