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发帖数: 5637 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 SanDiego 讨论区 】
发信人: spectrum805 (spectrum805), 信区: SanDiego
标 题: LA Times周日头版：如何在一年级教同性恋内容
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Mon Oct 17 13:23:20 2011, 美东)
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gay-schools-20111016,0,
California schools scrambling to add lessons on LGBT Americans
Many 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.
By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
October 16, 2011
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.
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.
The Legislature suspended all adoptions of instructional material through
eighth grade until 2015 to save money. Any new textbook with LGBT content is
not likely to land in schools until at least 2019 because that process
usually takes a minimum of four years, according to a state Education
Department spokeswoman.
The transition should be easier in L.A. Unified, which has been a pioneer in
LGBT education.
The Los Angeles school board passed a resolution directing students and
school staff to refrain from slurs about sexual orientation as far back as
1988. Then, in 2003, allegations of adult school staff members bullying LGBT
students prompted the district to step up its educational efforts,
according to Judy Chiasson, coordinator for human relations, diversity and
equity.
In 2005, L.A. Unified debuted the nation's first chapter in a high school
health textbook on LGBT issues covering sexual orientation and gender
identity, struggles over them and anti-LGBT bias. A section on
misconceptions says sexual orientation is not a choice — a statement many
religious conservatives disagree with.
Those topics, educators say, are clearly inappropriate at the younger ages,
raising tough questions about how to carry out the new law in elementary
school.
So sensitive is the subject that a children's picture book about a same-sex
penguin pair is one of the most controversial books in America today. "And
Tango Makes Three" — based on a true story about two male penguins at New
York's Central Park Zoo that bond, hatch a surrogate egg and raise a baby
together — has drawn the most complaints and requests for removal from
library shelves nearly every year since its 2005 publication, according to
the American Library Assn.
Chiasson said LGBT topics are controversial because people conflate them
with sex — and, for religious conservatives, sin. "People sexualize
homosexuality and romanticize heterosexuality," she said.
The Safe Schools Coalition, an educational support group for LGBT youth,
says the only age-appropriate lessons in elementary school involve family
diversity, gender stereotypes and anti-bullying.
Which is pretty much what happens at Wonderland.
On a recent morning, teacher Jane Raphael invited her two dozen
kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders to sit in a circle and tell
a story about their family. The students described a cross section of
modern-day America: moms and dads and athletic siblings, crazy dogs, a cat
named Lulu, a fish that died, divorced parents, a girl with two mommies.
There was no discussion about sex or gay lifestyles. The exercise simply
underscored that families come in all sizes, shapes and configurations.
Wilson, the principal, said such lessons are about as far as the school
would take any LGBT instruction.
"The issue is never going to move beyond the diversity of family," he said.
"If it were to move beyond that, we would address it as a breach of
developmentally appropriate instruction."
Middle and high schools are a different matter. Sex education begins in
fifth grade, so more specific LGBT instruction is considered appropriate —
and necessary, experts say, as bullying steps up in these years.
That happened at Downtown Magnets High School, where a lesbian student was
beaten up on a school bus in 2005. The school responded by launching an anti
-bullying poster campaign, a Gay-Straight Alliance club, staff sessions
about inclusiveness and a conscious effort by some teachers to integrate
LGBT issues into instruction.
An art history teacher includes portraits of same-sex couples in her studies
. An English teacher has discussed writer Langston Hughes, who is widely
believed to have been gay. And in 11th grade U.S. history, Daniel Jocz
covers LGBT issues, especially during the unit on 20th century civil rights
movements.
Using video clips of Kanye West, Tyra Banks and other celebrities, Jocz
engages his students in lively discussions about language — including the
taunt "that's gay." His students study the LGBT resistance to police arrests
in the Stonewall riots alongside Rosa Parks' refusal to sit in the back of
the bus. And the murder cases of Emmett Till, an African American teenager,
and Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, are examined in the class
segment on hate crimes.
"I'm a history teacher, and this is history," Jocz said. "It's part of the
narrative. You can't remove it."
Students say such efforts have created a safe and nurturing environment.
David Columbus, a senior and president of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance
club, said he remembers being pushed around and called names since he was 3
because he liked Barbie dolls. When he realized he was gay in eighth grade,
he said, he wanted to die and wished he had cancer instead because that was
more acceptable.
At school, however, Columbus said he has thrived under the support.
"This law's going to educate kids about LGBT people, and once you get
education, you'll respect them, and nobody's going to bully them anymore,"
said Jennifer Vanegas, a straight member of the club.
But the new law, which added LGBT Americans, European Americans and the
disabled to groups whose contributions to California and U.S. history should
be studied, has sparked open rebellion from some teachers and families.
Sixty miles east from Wonderland, Calvary Chapel Corona — an evangelical
Christian church of 1,200 congregants in western Riverside County — is an
active opponent. At least seven families pulled their children from public
schools in protest.
"This law teaches children that it's OK to be gay, and that's not my
Christian values," said Bryan Breuer, who withdrew his children from public
schools. "I don't understand trying to force this on my children."
Grace R. Callaway, a public school teacher near Yuba City, said she will
refuse to teach LGBT issues to her fifth- and sixth-graders because she
believes homosexuality is a "destructive lifestyle."
She has also taken issue with a short biography recently presented in her
daughter's high school history class that described John Berry, director of
the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as the "highest-ranking openly gay
federal employee in U.S. history." She and some other religious
conservatives want to remove their children from such lessons as they can do
with sex education.
How administrators plan to handle "conscientious objectors" like Callaway is
unclear.
For now, L.A. Unified, along with school districts in south Orange County,
Elk Grove and elsewhere, has started meeting with staff members to figure
out lesson plans.
"We're looking for places of natural fit," Chiasson said. "We're not going
to shoehorn in something gratuitous just to make a point."
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