Here’s a good one for discussion:
A group of first-graders in San Francisco took a field trip to City Hall last Friday to attend the wedding of their lesbian teacher. They threw rose petals and blew bubbles. Mayor Gavin Newsom officiated. The field trip was a parent’s idea, a surprise for the children’s dedicated teacher.
The school’s interim director Liz Jaroslow had to justify the field trip academically, however, and concluded that it was “a teachable moment.” Parents could opt their children out of the trip, and two families did so.
Not surprisingly, however, the Yes on 8 folks who are trying to revoke marriage rights for same-sex couples are up in arms, calling the field trip “indoctrination.”
The San Francisco Chronicle notes, however:
The students’ parents are planning to make a video with the children describing what marriage is to them.
Marriage, 6-year-old Nolan Alexander said Friday, is “people falling in love.”
It means, he added, “You stay with someone the rest of your life.”
Yeah, that’s a bad lesson to teach your kids.
At the same time, I have qualms about whether taking public school children, on school time, to the wedding of any teacher—LGBT or not—is really appropriate. Does it cross the line between private life and public schooling? Would it be appropriate for the class to show up at, say, the bris of a teacher’s child, for example? Sure, it’s a “teachable moment” about Jewish culture, but it just seems like they could discuss it in class without wasting school resources on the personal event of one teacher. Or does the historic nature of marriage equality create an exception at this point in time?
Regardless, given Yes on 8’s concerns about teaching marriage equality to kindergarteners, was the field trip, bound to inflame the Right, a bad idea so close to the election? Your thoughts?
As a straight, married man it comes down to this: parental rights. Parents were given the option of keeping their kids in school, so what right do I have to tell other parents what is appropriate for their kids? How I feel is no reason to deny others their parental right to expose their kids to activites they as parents deem OK. The activity was not illegal, not mandatory, and did not infringe on the rights of dissenting parents so I do not have an issue with the field trip. I think opponents of this field trip are confusing their own issues with gay marriage with the separate issue of parental rights.
I’ll just say that it was a sweet thing, which happened in the midst of an ugly ugly fight, during which any sweet thing can easily be construed to be sour.
I’m not sure how I’d have called it, were I an administrator at the school in a position to nix the idea (the teacher in question was surprised by her students, as readers who don’t click through to the article might not know; it was an idea hatched by parents and another administrator and the partner of the teacher).
But I did wince when I read about it (and that was before I read that the Yes on 8 folks made hay with it).
Sigh.
Given the fact that this marriage was not possible until a very recent civil rights win, this was probably an appropriate teachable moment for the class. It ranks up there with showing the tearing down of the Berlin Wall during classtime (to those of us who were in school in 1989).
This was a rare moment, not because it was a same-sex marriage (presumably, those will continue far into the future), but because it was an exercise of human dignity and equality that has only recently been won. This was a lesson in civics and citizenship.
The school in question is a charter school that describes itself as being particularly sensitive to and supportive of cultural awareness and respect for diversity. Given its focus, location, and encouragement (nay, requirement) of parental participation, I think this was absolutely appropriate.
For anyone interested, the school’s site is http://www.creativeartscharter.org
I think seeing a civil wedding is educational as part of a study of families, celebrations, law, or other related topics. It could be framed with a minimum of controversy by clarifying the difference between being happy *for* the teacher and actually having the same moral or ethical or religious beliefs.
When we study holidays in school, we learn about lots of practices and beliefs that we don’t necessarily share. Only a very few people get exercised about that.
Of course for many anti-marriage folks, our very *existence* is political (and many gay folks agree, hence National Coming-Out Day). So we can never really please them.
The more we try to censor reality to “respect” their beliefs, the more we act like biology teachers inserting creation “science” into the curriculum, to the detriment of both science and religion. Evolution is true on a scientific level. Same-sex marriages are happening, period.
The moral or theological interpretation of these events should happen at home between children and their parents. Isn’t that the kind of discussion the “family values” people want?
I would absolutely say that it is extremely appropriate, given that here is history happening before their eyes, with someone they know and care about intimately involved. What better way to bring the subject into focus?
My kids are pretty well indoctrinated (if you will) that marriage is about love, not sex, so it’s like a “Duh!” that anyone should be able to get married. When their friend’s dads got married, however, you can bet I discussed it with them — here was an opportunity for them to understand first hand how inequality hurts real people. It’s not abstract for them, it’s real. Same for the kids in the class.