First, I am in total agreement that all educational lessons need to be age and developmental stage appropriate. I also agree that sometimes what a school is teaching and a parent’s beliefs differ slightly. That is OK. I used to teach kids about not bullying each other. Some kids had the courage enough to tell us that their parents taught them to use a lot of the words we were telling them not to use. That is the way of the world. They get to hear societal expectations at school, religious expectations in faith communities and parental expectations at home. We can not help the fact that sometimes those things do not match. It is an age old negotiation we do when we send our kids to school - any school.
We are at a point in history where some want to reconcile these age old balances by mandating what a school can and can not teach about race, sexual orientation and gender identity.
As legal terms, race, sexual orientation and gender identity refer to aspects of our identities having to do with who we are and who we are in intimate relationships. Therefore, we are talking about us all. Everyone of us has a race, sexual orientation and a gender identity. You can’t talk about a mommy, daddy, daughter and son in a children’s book without in some way referencing the parent’s sexual orientation (heterosexual, presumably) and the gender identity of everyone - man, women, girl, and boy (cisgender, presumably). Therefore, to legally ban age appropriate education at any level, would ban all conversation about a person’s gender, signage about gender, gender specific spaces to name a few.
I think that if we can teach about a heterosexual, cisgender family in, for example, a children’s book, then you should be able to include an age appropriate book about a same sex couple with or without children or a gender non-conforming parent or child. Parents and religious institutions are free to explore the idea as they see fit. Like my students were telling me, the rules at home were different than at school around certain behaviors and words commonly associated with bullying.
If we decide to look more at what is meant by banning teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity what is meant is diverse sexual orientation and gender identity - non-heterosexual and non-cisgender. It is not that uncommon today for a young child to have same sex parents or a transgender parent. The young child might themselves be transgender or gender creative. Teachers need to be able to address what arises in the classroom, in an age appropriate manner. Failure to address these questions from young children is likely to create an atmosphere that clearly carves out same-sex parents and gender non-conforming children as, at best, secrets we can’t talk about, and at worst, people to be shunned or excluded. It does just the opposite of banning divisive curriculum. It becomes divisive, just not out in the open where it can be addressed.
But then, maybe that is the point after all.
