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CA Senate bill mandates gay history in schools

If we are going to teach history, we need to teach things that are important. You want to understand more about gay history? Take a class on it in college. Gay civil rights will be discussed in high school, as will gay marriage. Other smaller issues, just to pander to a group? Should not happen... nor should it happen to ANY group.
I don't know how representative my 9th grade American History class was, but if memory serves, "Current Events" was the last chapter in a long textbook. We barely covered anything in detail, having run out of time and it being the end of the school year, but even if we had kept to the schedule, the chapter covered everything since WWII - the rise of communism, wars in korea and vietnam, the bay of pigs, the kennedy assassination, reagan, thespace race, challenger, aids, etc. That's a TON of stuff all given short schriff and I don't see how gay marriage fits, or if so, how it could be anything more than a one or two sentence blurb in a paragraph on legislative trends (which is slightly less than the paragraph we may have received on the formation of Israel).

Needless to say, the only kids who knew any post WWII history were those that took the elective class on current events (where this topic makes much more sense), which meant that you missed psychology, anthropology, geography, or one of the other electives.

Perhaps it will be a more important topic in history 20 years from now, but I just don't see it in 2010. I think one could argue that we're still living or have yet to live what may be the most significant history.
 
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I don't know how representative my 9th grade American History class was, but if memory serves, "Current Events" was the last chapter in a long textbook. We barely covered anything in detail, having run out of time and it being the end of the school year, but even if we had kept to the schedule, the chapter covered everything since WWII - the rise of communism, wars in korea and vietnam, the bay of pigs, the kennedy assassination, reagan, thespace race, challenger, aids, etc. That's a TON of stuff all given short schriff and I don't see how gay marriage fits, or if so, how it could be anything more than a one or two sentence blurb in a paragraph on legislative trends (which is slightly less than the paragraph we may have received on the formation of Israel).

Needless to say, the only kids who knew any post WWII history were those that took the elective class on current events (where this topic makes much more sense), which meant that you missed psychology, anthropology, geography, or one of the other electives.

Perhaps it will be a more important topic in history 20 years from now, but I just don't see it in 2010. I think one could argue that we're still living or have yet to live what may be the most significant history.

Nowadays, from what I hear from clients I work with, current affairs is more prominent in history classes. I do think that gay marriage would be something to be discussed... but not as key as Libya, the budget, and many other things. It has a place, but depending on what is occuring at the time, a place that would be proportional to other things.
 
You're wrong, important historical events should not be left out. And there are historical events that involve the LGBT movement.
They HAVE to be left out. You can't possibly cover everything in a one year history class.

What would you say are the top three important historical events to date involving the LGBT movement?
 
Nowadays, from what I hear from clients I work with, current affairs is more prominent in history classes. I do think that gay marriage would be something to be discussed... but not as key as Libya, the budget, and many other things. It has a place, but depending on what is occuring at the time, a place that would be proportional to other things.
My curiousity is certainly piqued and I'd love to thumb through some of the latest texts. My cousin teaches high school history (and has done the whole range from the most disadvantaged communities in the Bronx to the privileged sons and daughters of diplomats), so I'm curious to get his take on what is/isn't/should/shouldn't be taught.

Interesting side note:
I have a text from 1928 that my grandmother taught from in a poor, rural, Southern town. Volume One alone is almost 1000 pages long and gets you through "the downfall of the Confederacy." No pictures, maps or graphs of course. It makes even my College text seem like a Cliffs Notes or "History for Dummies" version. Of course, history used to be a much more substantial portion of the curriculum back then.
 
Nowadays, from what I hear from clients I work with, current affairs is more prominent in history classes. I do think that gay marriage would be something to be discussed... but not as key as Libya, the budget, and many other things.
I should add that we certainly discussed issues of the day (like Libya) that students indicated an interest in (or sometimes feigned interest in to see how long a delighted "my students are engaged" teacher would put off the day's lesson). We may even have been encouraged to explore such topics by getting extra credit for writing a summary of a newspaper clipping, Newsweek article, or somesuch. My comments in this thread are more aimed at the mandated curriculum.
 
I should add that we certainly discussed issues of the day (like Libya) that students indicated an interest in (or sometimes feigned interest in to see how long a delighted "my students are engaged" teacher would put off the day's lesson). We may even have been encouraged to explore such topics by getting extra credit for writing a summary of a newspaper clipping, Newsweek article, or somesuch. My comments in this thread are more aimed at the mandated curriculum.

No, I understand that. I think current events are more often discussed then when I was in high school. I just think that history needs to be taught as history, and any of the ethnic, racial, sexual issues that are ancillary to the main point being taught can be presented if really pertinent, but otherwise, a quick mention... if even that, is all that is needed.
 
I like the idea and do not view them as getting preferential treatment-just finally being included that they were/are gay. As it should be.
 
I will not get deep into this because I do not want to offend any one person....this is STOOOPID and this kind of thing is the reason our schools graduate half retards from HighSchool that cant read a full paragraph...stop the nonesense

If you do not wish to offend people? Maybe you need to chill on the use of terms like half retards. Good job at not offending anybody. BRAVO!:roll::roll::roll:
 
Really, THIS is why our schools suck? :lamo

Yes. Teach them to read, write and do math, math, math and more math. Do that and we might have a chance vs China and the rest of the world. Continue to push crap like this onto our kids and we will be lucky if we can keep our space program alive.
 
Watch this.

I disagree with this. In fact, I disagree with ALL of the special distinctions of ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, or anything that MUST be included. If the individual was important, for whatever reason, include him/her. Identify his/her "characteristics" in passing. To me, it's that simple. Once you make your ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation your defining characteristic, you diminish your importance and those achievements as a PERSON. Me being Jewish is part of who I am, but it does not define me.

Wow, I agree with CC completly. That doesn't happen often.
 
I don't see the importance of it, unless someone did something specifically because they were gay, then it's not really important, same with race, religion, favourite colour or size of their big toes.
 
But the basics are not being compromised by teaching things like this. The basics should be learned in elementary school, and they should be expanded on in middle, and high school. They should know about LGBT history, just like they should know about black history, about European history, about asian history, about all of history. We should teach our kids to think critically, and demand the best from our kids, not just expect them to know the basics and move on, that is why the school system is in the mess it is in now. We should demand more not less.

Sorry but I couldn't disagree more. The only real history they absolutely must know, and it is really more political science, is how the political system of the USA works. Other than that, I could give a rats’ behind whether my kid knows who Caesar, Hitler or anyone else is much less whether they might or might not have been gay.

Let it be one of those lame college electives they can choose to learn about if they so choose but stop trying to push your gay acceptance into the school curriculum.
 
Whatever it takes to learn kids to be tolerant and respectful and aware of good things about people who are not just like them is fine by me,
 
I don't see the importance of it, unless someone did something specifically because they were gay, then it's not really important, same with race, religion, favourite colour or size of their big toes.

Exactly. It doesn't matter if Hitler or Alexander had a gay relationship, at least to anyone who isn't a college history major. Leave the kids alone and demand more math, reading and writing from them in their early years. The LGBT community is really starting to push things too far. Whether someone was LGBT is about as important to the rest of us as whether they smoked cigars, drank coffee or liked to sleep in on Saturday mornings.
 
Whatever it takes to learn kids to be tolerant and respectful and aware of good things about people who are not just like them is fine by me,

Like that will ever happen. What planet are you from?
 
We should be teaching history competently, not just LGBT history, of course to teach history competently you have to include LGBT history. Nothing that should be included in our school curriculum should be considered extra, we need to demand more of our students, not less.

The history curriculum is already so packed that it is impossible to get everything in within 180 days... it simply can't be done... and before I moved to Taiwan, I taught history in public schools...
 
I'm not sure religion of ANY kind is taught in public schools, is it?

edit: Oh, and equate much? Religion at least I can see as having some educational value in the sense that it has had, and continues to have a great influence on our entire human population. Gayness?? Not so much, eh?

Tim-

The HISTORY of religion in Europe most certainly IS taught and really MUST be taught if you want to understand European history...
 
You're wrong, important historical events should not be left out. And there are historical events that involve the LGBT movement.

You must be referring to the awarding of civil rights to the HIV virus that ensured it's uncontrolled spread through the homosexual population.

Perhaps you're referring to Clinton's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy that relegated national defense to a position secondary to that of social engineering.

Or are you just referring to Joe Namath's panty-hose commercials?
 
Sorry but I couldn't disagree more. The only real history they absolutely must know, and it is really more political science, is how the political system of the USA works. Other than that, I could give a rats’ behind whether my kid knows who Caesar, Hitler or anyone else is much less whether they might or might not have been gay.

Let it be one of those lame college electives they can choose to learn about if they so choose but stop trying to push your gay acceptance into the school curriculum.


Don't be silly and igorant.

Julius Caesar is important because, among other things, he's an example of how repulbics are destroyed from within, by the decay democracy inevitably produces in society that enables strong men to seize power and alter to political form permanently. Among other things, Caesar was a political manipulator expert at the use of street agitation to instill fear and instability in the extant order that enabled him to manipulate the system to his advantage.

A look at the mindless goonion mobs in Wisconsin last month illustrates the necessity of understanding how unamerican influences can use street agitation to promote the fall of the Republic.

Similar lessons are learned from the fall of the Bourbon kings, the fall of the Romanovs, and the fall of the Weimar Repubic, and it was also taken advantage of in the earliest days of the American Revolution, ie, the Boston Massacre.

Another thing to be learned from Ancient Rome is that buying public loyalty with bread and circuses serves the politicians handing out the loaves, and serves the nation with death. Again, today's welfare state is killing the Republic, and with it individual freedom.

History, REAL history, is important. The Mayor never learned real history in public schools, that was something he had to learn on his own. The American student today isn't being taught real history, either. They're being prepared to be dutiful robots of the coming Paradise of the Proletariat by a diet of myth and propaganda in the public schools.
 
History, REAL history, is important. The Mayor never learned real history in public schools, that was something he had to learn on his own. The American student today isn't being taught real history, either. They're being prepared to be dutiful robots of the coming Paradise of the Proletariat by a diet of myth and propaganda in the public schools.

We are not given the chance to teach "real history" because the curriculum is so jammed packed that you can't even give cursory coverage in 180 days much less provide any depth that would actually allow students to UNDERSTAND what they are studying...
 
I will not get deep into this because I do not want to offend any one person....this is STOOOPID and this kind of thing is the reason our schools graduate half retards from HighSchool that cant read a full paragraph...stop the nonesense


Only in the eyes of a "conservative" does MORE education = "half retards that can't read a full paragraph".

No wonder conservatives are always fighting to keep people uneducated.
 
Like that will ever happen. What planet are you from?

I am from the future. I am from one of the planets that your decendents will emmigrate to as the planet dies.

We are not here to harm you but to prepare you for the great journey.

We are human, just like you.
 
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gays are a part of human society from the start of civilization, did it really take this long for them to be recognized as normal equals?
oh yeah i forgot, segregation just happened last century, lets not demonize progress please
 
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