While we’re on the subject of education, a survey by the new research and advocacy group Common Core shows “a significant proportion of teenagers live in ‘stunning ignorance’ of history and literature.” The organization says “The No Child Left Behind Act has increased the amount of time schools devote to basic reading and math skills, […]
After 15-year-old Lawrence King was shot to death by a fellow student because he was gay, California Assemblyman Mike Eng proposed a new bill to “establish school diversity and sensitivity training to help prevent such tragedies in the future.” According to Gay Wired, “The new bill would require mandatory classes on diversity and tolerance in
If you can keep your kids up till 10:01 p.m. EST tonight (and still maintain their sanity and yours tomorrow), you can share with them the rare occurrence of a total lunar eclipse, the last one until December 2010. Both Sky and Telescope and NASA have details on the event, which should be visible in
Yet another school district has made a fuss over And Tango Makes Three, the book about the chick hatched by two male penguins, and the American Library Association’s Most Challenged Book of 2006. The school superintendent of Loudoun County, Virginia, has instructed county elementary schools to take the book out of general circulation and move
No, not W., although I do think we need an explanation of how someone who can’t say “nuclear” correctly made it to the Oval Office. How do you explain the president to young children? We’ve been telling our preschooler “The president is the person the people in our country choose to help lead the country.”
I just did a guest post for Teens Today with Vanessa Van Petten, a site for parents of teenagers. Van Petten, 22, wrote You’re Grounded!: How to Stop Fighting and Make the Teenage Years Easier while she was still in high school, basing it on dozens of interviews with teens, parents, and teachers. She continues
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Thursday unanimously upheld the rejection of a suit brought by two couples from Lexington, Massachusetts, who said their school district had no right to include LGBT-related books like King & King in its elementary school curriculum. (See my August post about the case.) The parents
Lots of late-breaking news today, so here are a few items that didn’t make it into my earlier roundup: Opponents of same-sex marriage in Florida managed to collect enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment banning it on the November ballot. A New York appeals court ruled that valid same-sex marriages performed in other states
A few parenting pieces from around the world: Teachers and school administrators in Britain now have new guidance on combating homophobia and reducing anti-gay bullying in schools. LGBT-rights group Stonewall produced the guidance for the government and released it last September, although the official launch was this week. It’s all sensible stuff, like explaining different
Finally, a sensible answer to the question of explaining LGBT families to young children. A reader of the Seattle Times asks: How much information is appropriate to give young children (6-8 years) about gay families? Evidently, my daughter has a gay family in her classroom, and I want her to understand and be tolerant. She
