Can you show me which important gay historical figures have been excluded from history books? I may be wrong but I think this is about specifically carving out a portion of the learning time and dedicate it to teaching homosexual history. This is about the choice of parents and their right to decide if they want such a hot button issue taught to their children.
Private sexual preference should not even be mentioned in regard to a persons historical contributions to humanity. Does it matter who Salk was boning when he invented the polio vaccine. What great contribution to the sciences or what political leader who changed the world has been omitted because of their sexual escapades at home in their private personal lives. Who has said that a particular historical event should be omitted because of sexual preference. This class in California will teach who the gay rights activist were and what they did. Should they be taught who the anti whale hunting activist were or who the anti war activist were? Do we need a special class for every activist leader ? How about a class for anti drug history. That's a good one. We can teach kids a special class about all the great world leaders that have helped mold our anti pot laws and how they caused millions of pot heads to be taken out of society and put in jail.
whether a historical figure liked to bang his or her own kind seems really important. make sure every kid knows who likes to bang who
I'd like to know a little about the 1st caveman that wiggled his finger at another caveman. I'd also like someone to explain to me why lesbians hate men but one of the couple always looks like a man. Inquiring minds...
Gay history will be a history of homosexuals that fought for gay rights. I don't think there is a major historical event that has been omitted because one of the players were gay. It's more about trying to teach gay acceptance than any true history. Who cares if Alexander the great was gay, bi or straight. He spread Greek civilization around the western world and founded great cities such as Alexandria in Egypt. Why where he put his Willie while in his tent mattered. His military brilliance had nothing to do with his Willie.
I wonder what's next? A class on how communism has been misunderstood and how capitalism is bad? Oh wait....
Every textbook includes and excludes things. And someone makes those decisions about what’s in and what’s out. And then the teacher teaches the subject AND again makes decisions on what to include and what to leave out AND in what to emphasize. This is not new, and it will never change. I'm very sure that my classroom experience on the Civil War was different then someone in Ohio or Massachusetts. I agree that we live in an era of extreme partisanship. But I disagree that it has anything to do with classroom education. It has a lot to do with how our country was started and how it has evolved. We are a country of individuals; it’s our strength and our weakness. It provides for individual freedom but makes it hard to join together when needed. Mostly, todays extreme partisanship is closely tied to the way professional political operatives have learned to use our differences as a wedge to carve out and capture voting blocks. Dems and Repubs both use emotion inflaming tactics over common sense arguments. If you only have 30 seconds its easier to get someone pissed off at your opponent, than to convince them of your abilities. If you believe only one side does this you need to wake up to the reality. The punch line in all of this - and its really not funny at all - is when the country needs unity. That's when the same jokers that stirred all this up seem confused as to why things are so hard. As The Who said "And the men who stirred us on Sit in judgment of our wrongs" I would like to hope we won't get fooled again - but . . . . .
