Parents call police on teacher over LGBT book.

[Kathryn]

I generally think it's good for teachers and other people in contact with a child to be alert to situations where they might suspect that a child is being subjected to psychologically or physically harmful treatment, even if it comes from within the child's family.

Of course, your own situation wasn't a case of abuse, but if a teacher doesn't know a parent well and therefore has no way of knowing this, their perspective might be that they were doing their job and being on the safe side by asking CPS to check. I can see a solid case for the position that it's better to check and find nothing wrong than to not check and allow potential abuse (from the perspective of someone who doesn't have closer information, such as the teacher) to continue.

My point was though that the school called CPS on me for me doing a much lighter version of what the SCHOOL was asking me to allow them to do! It was ridiculous. Don't report me to CPS for doing what you would do yourself, on steroids by the way. No way would I ever hit anyone's child with a board.

 

[metis]

Fortunately I live in a civilized state where schools don't allow corporal punishment, so that particular kind of legalistic paradox doesn't happen.

Same here in Michigan.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Parents file a police report after teacher offers LGBTQ-themed book to her middle schoolers

“The notion that I was putting children in danger because of books ... I knew I couldn’t go back," said teacher Sarah Bonner.

www.nbcnews.com

What can we do as a country to reign in this rightwing redneck rampage against liberty, rights, equality, justice, science, education, etc.? It's a serious problem that will see our nation become a 3rd world theocracy if not resolved.

Let's ask a simple question: is teaching children about frogs "grooming" them to become amphibians? Does exposing them to Mozart guarantee they'll become musical prodigies later in life? Does teaching a Christian (or a Muslim) child some physics guarantee they'll become atheists and science mavens like Neils Bohr? Of course not -- who would be so stupid as to believe that?

Now look, I'm not an educator, nor a child expert -- I don't know what the right age is to start teaching children the correct names for their body parts, or what to expect during the oncoming puberty, or about love, sex and the right to say "no." But what I do know is this -- that whatever age is correct for each of those lessons, when you get to love, sex and the right to say "no," that age is also the right age to let them into the big secret that most boys will be attracted to girls and most girls will be attracted to boys, but not all of them. Because they will soon know people who fall into those categories -- and they might be members of their own families! -- and wouldn't it just be better for everybody if they were well and intelligently prepared to deal with it

Just as teaching a child about frogs isn't going to make them want to be one, teaching a kid learning about their own budding sexuality that some boys like other boys is NOT going to make them hanker to be one of them.

When, oh when, will Americans grow the heck up?

 

[Jimmy]

Some U.S. citizens need to grow up as some Canadians need to as well. Some people in all countries need to grow up unfortunately.

 

[Esteban X]

Parents file a police report after teacher offers LGBTQ-themed book to her middle schoolers

“The notion that I was putting children in danger because of books ... I knew I couldn’t go back," said teacher Sarah Bonner.

www.nbcnews.com

What can we do as a country to reign in this rightwing redneck rampage against liberty, rights, equality, justice, science, education, etc.? It's a serious problem that will see our nation become a 3rd world theocracy if not resolved.

You say that like it's a bad thing. But seriously, I think the situation has already gone too far to be resolved.

 

[Esteban X]

Honestly, I think that junior high kids should read about astronomy, physics, geography, history, etc...

I don't think homosexual intercourse is a good topic to educate kids of such a young age.

Would you rather they get the schoolyard version. There are age appropriate resources, educators should be aware of them.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You say that like it's a bad thing. But seriously, I think the situation has already gone too far to be resolved.

Fortunately that's rarely been the case, and it certainly wasn't with Nazi Germany or the USSR.

 

[ChristineM]

Would it be wrong to teach children about heterosexual love and romance?

Who says heterosexual love and romance isn't taught. It is however never griped about by the right wing believers in "ignorance is bliss"

Sex ed, like all education, should be comprehensive, not just the cherry picked bits to suite a certain bigotry

 

[wellwisher]

I think that junior high kids, on the verge of puberty, need a certain education of their developing sexuality.

After all, they have the internet; they're going to see things, and they're going to have questions about themselves and about the world. Where would you prefer they go to find the answers to those questions? Deeper into the Internet into God-knows-what, or a more academic setting?

When individual children begin to ask such questions, it is up to them to seek out out the answers, not be force fed before it is their time to ask. When I was young, young people would seek council from the older teens, since they were somewhere between children and adults, and could understand both sides; pros and cons.

The difference between waiting for the child to ask or force feed them, is similar to the free market notions of demand and supply. With the demand side, the individual customer comes to you to get advice. With supply first, others will mass market and sell before being asked. The goal is group think and conformity, since all will be taught to sing the same jingle, even before they come to their own sense of need; induced fad based need.

Let me give an example. Say you wanted to paint your house. You are new at this, so you go to a store where you can get advice from people who know about such things. This is demand side, at the level of an individual who sense this is their time to paint. If we drive this from the supply side, we will mass market and try to get as many people as possible to paint their houses, even those who may not have need or perceive any need to paint. Hopefully we can get even them to go along, when they see their neighbors with the program, and they start to stand out as different due to peer pressure.

Parents do not like a supply side marketing efforts behind their backs, since they want their children to enjoy childhood. There are limits to how children can be marketed to, with schools over stepping. There is plenty of time to be miserable adults with all the pressure of the rat race. Why force feed adults decision on children? Only the supply siders benefit by marketing group think.

 

[Subduction Zone]

When individual children begin to ask such questions, it is up to them to seek out out the answers, not be force fed before it is their time to ask. When I was young, young people would seek council from the older teens, since they were somewhere between children and adults, and could understand both sides; pros and cons.

The teens that you talked with were probably only slightly less ignorant than you are. They do not have enough education to know how to give an unbiased opinions. Educators do. Educators are also trained at how to relay that information, but many fail. They still have a far lower rate of failure than older teens.

The difference between waiting for the child to ask or force feed them, is similar to the free market notions of demand and supply. With the demand side, the individual customer comes to you to get advice. With supply first, others will mass market and sell before being asked. The goal is group think and conformity, since all will be taught to sing the same jingle, even before they come to their own sense of need; induced fad based need.

Sorry but life does not work that way. We do not have endless money to educate each child based upon when they want to learn. Your approach would require a paid professional per child. Like it or not children have to be educated as a group. That means that some questions need to be answered much earlier than you are comfortable with. Your feelings do not enter into when kids are taught some subjects.

Let me give an example. Say you wanted to paint your house. You are new at this, so you go to a store where you can get advice from people who know about such things. This is demand side, at the level of an individual who sense this is their time to paint. If we drive this from the supply side, we will mass market and try to get as many people as possible to paint their houses, even those who may not have need or perceive any need to paint. Hopefully we can get even them to go along, when they see their neighbors with the program, and they start to stand out as different due to peer pressure.

What the frack?

Parents do not like a supply side marketing efforts behind their backs, since they want their children to enjoy childhood. There are limits to how children can be marketed to, with schools over stepping. There is plenty of time to be miserable adults with all the pressure of the rat race. Why force feed adults decision on children? Only the supply siders benefit by marketing group think.

Yes, because your failed analogy does not take reality into account. All you have is poor reasoning and non sequiturs.

 

[ChristineM]

What the frack?

Plus a funny for the above

 

[fantome profane]

When individual children begin to ask such questions, it is up to them to seek out out the answers, not be force fed before it is their time to ask. When I was young, young people would seek council from the older teens, since they were somewhere between children and adults, and could understand both sides; pros and cons.

The difference between waiting for the child to ask or force feed them, is similar to the free market notions of demand and supply.

So maybe the best solution would be to have books available in the library for individual children to seek answers in.

 

[metis]

When individual children begin to ask such questions, it is up to them to seek out out the answers, not be force fed before it is their time to ask.

So, if a child doesn't ask about math, we shouldn't teach them math?