In School Efforts to End Bullying, Some See Agenda

Erik Eckholm

Alarmed by evidence that gay and lesbian students are common victims of schoolyard bullies, many school districts are bolstering their antiharassment rules with early lessons in tolerance, explaining that some children have "two moms" or will grow up to love members of the same sex.
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M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times
Mary Decker, left, Michael Gengler and Tess Dufrechou are members of the Helena High School Gay-Straight Alliance, which supported revisions to the sex education and antibullying curriculum in the school district in Helena, Mont.
The Curriculum

The school district in Helena, Mont., revised its new teaching guidelines on sex education and tolerance, after parents criticized them as being too explicit and an endorsement of homosexuality.
Among the original goals:

Grade 1: "Understand human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender."
Grade 5: "Understand that sexual intercourse includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral or anal penetration."

The final version eliminated those goals and added a vaguer one:
Grades K to 5: "Recognize that family structures differ."

The final version also added language emphasizing that same-sex marriage is illegal:
Grade 6: "In Montana, marriage is between a man and woman. Other states allow marriage between adults of the same gender."

But such efforts to teach acceptance of homosexuality, which have gained urgency after several well-publicized suicides by gay teenagers, are provoking new culture wars in some communities.

Many educators and rights advocates say that official prohibitions of slurs and taunts are most effective when combined with frank discussions, from kindergarten on, about diverse families and sexuality.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 7, 2010 1:52 AM
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