Tennessee Law Signed Allowing Parents to Excuse Students From Lessons With LGBTQ+ Content

ralliann said:

I think there is a bright line. While civics would include historical development, the focus is constitutional development within civics.

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You have just smudged the bright line!

Ringo84 said:

Dear principal,

Please excuse Timmy from lessons about LGBTQ+. You see, our skin is tissue paper skin, and we just can't abide people who are different from us WASPs.

Consequently, we will now be living in a bubble so that we are not accidentally exposed to anything that might differ from our little white, Anglo-Saxon protestant world.

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So we can live in your bubble?

essentialsaltes said:

Nobody's suggesting that it is the only topic to be covered. But the law is putting roadblocks to discussing it at all.

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No the law is asking for the value to be established concerning other subject matter being taught. This is not unreasonable.

durangodawood said:

For sure. I dont this this is about special classes on "being gay". And absolutely religious freedom is part of civil rights generally, deserving of a place in civics and history classes. I don think anyone should be able to opt out of this stuff. Thats just dangerous coddling imo.

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In my opinion it is the dangerous coddling against religious freedom that is dangerous. It is the corrosion of civil rights period. That is why an opt out after that study would be good.

durangodawood said:

You have just smudged the bright line!

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No, otherwise everything beyond Today, would be history.

essentialsaltes said:

No, the law requires teachers to give parents 30 days notice if they are going to have lessons with LGBTQ+ content. It has nothing to do with whether it is valuable or not.

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Yes it does. It is asking for relevance to the subject at hand? Value, relevance same diff.

Cool. You go Tennessee. Way go making your state less tolerant.

So who do the parents have to give 30 days notice to when they opt out of being parents if Johnny or Suzy actually end up being LGBTQ?

IIRC a very large percentage of homeless children in the US are LGBTQ because they didn't feel welcome or loved in their own homes or were disowned for being gay.

If parents get so bent out of shape because of a few minutes at school where their children learn that LGBTQ has been around for as long as humans have been around (in order inform all the children and to prevent children from being bullied at school because of their orientation), I wonder how crazy they would be when they learn Johnny likes boys and Suzy likes girls.

MIDutch said:

Cool. You go Tennessee. Way go making your state less tolerant.

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Not less tolerant. Just looking for good education. Who is being intolerant here?

MIDutch said:

So who do the parents have to give 30 days notice to when they opt out of being parents if Johnny or Suzy actually end up being LGBTQ?

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Why should they?

MIDutch said:

IIRC a very large percentage of homeless children in the US are LGBTQ because they didn't feel welcome or loved in their own homes or were disowned for being gay.

If parents get so bent out of shape because of a few minutes at school where their children learn that LGBTQ has been around for as long as humans have been around (in order inform all the children and to prevent children from being bullied at school because of their orientation), I wonder how crazy they would be when they learn Johnny likes boys and Suzy likes girls.

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Most Children from religious backgrounds know these things have been around since the beginning of the creation, so no knowledge deficit there. Why would you concern yourself with how parents feel about anything of a private matter within a family. Educate our kids in reading, writing, math etc. Leave the rest to the parent and any professionals available to them at their choosing.

ralliann said:

Not less tolerant. Just looking for good education. Who is being intolerant here?

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Oh, please. The educational standard in Tennessee is no where near as good as it is in most of Western Europe, or Canada, or Japan, etc. where lessons on tolerance, including tolerance for LGBTQ, are common, and it never will be.

ralliann said:

Most Children from religious backgrounds know these things have been around since the beginning of the creation, so no knowledge deficit there. Why would you concern yourself with how parents feel about anything of a private matter within a family. Educate our kids in reading, writing, math etc. Leave the rest to the parent and any professionals available to them at their choosing.

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Because in the end, society has to pay for all of the homeless children kicked out of their homes because of intolerant parents reciting passages out of the OT.

Unless, of course, you are claiming that ALL fundamentalist, evangelical parents are understanding and loving and supportive when Johnny comes out.

In my experience, it is ALWAYS fundamentalist, evangelical parents who disown gay children.

As for reading, writing and math, if Tennessee can't teach those by 3rd or 4th grade, their educational system is worse than even I imagined.

ralliann said:

So we can live in your bubble?

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My....bubble?

I live in reality.
Ringo

Regardless of your position on LGBT issues, I think it's important for kids to at least know that these issues exist. You can't raise a child by completely insulating them from the world before they go out and join it.

Ringo84 said:

My....bubble?

I live in reality.
Ringo

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Such superiority makes dialogue useless.

Strathos said:

Regardless of your position on LGBT issues, I think it's important for kids to at least know that these issues exist. You can't raise a child by completely insulating them from the world before they go out and join it.

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That is up to the parents, not the school system. parents raise kids not the state.

ralliann said:

Such superiority makes dialogue useless.

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No....you just don't want to discuss an issue you're clearly losing.

Fine with me, since dialogue would be a waste of my valuable time.
Ringo

essentialsaltes said:

Right, so if you were the Superintendent of Schools, you would be reprimanding teachers who felt the other way

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It's not about feelings. You can feel the most important thing to ever happen was the invention of the fork....but you've got a job to do.

Nobody said that. But this law is tantamount to skipping the guys and gals that I've mentioned.

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Mathew Shepard?

That happened while I was in school and we skipped it.

Here's the problem....only so many hours in a day and only so many dedicated to each subject. It's extremely finite. If we're spending time talking about important figures....the one's you've chosen are mere footnotes at best. The only possible exception is Turing. The rest can be left out entirely and with good reason (see the first 2 sentences of this paragraph).

The civil rights movement.

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If I had even a full week to discuss the civil rights movement....I doubt I'd include any you've listed. Their contributions were tiny.

Does that seem cruel? I'd also skip Mumia Abu Jamal...because while interesting, there's a lot more important topics to discuss. I honestly can't count how much would need to be skipped.

I obviously can't speak for every high school....but we're talking about on average 1-1.5 maybe two hour classes.

What would you intend to remove to discuss at length any of these people?

durangodawood said:

Absolutely. Civics is a great context for this. The evolution of our view of individual rights and limits of state power. But there's no bright line between history and civics.

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Civics was the study of our governmental system and its processes.