ESO, I love you. Can all teachers be like you?

Thanks ESO, that’s how it ought to be. As far as schools are concerned, I don’t want them teaching any type of family is better than another. Teach reading and science, teach good behavior, teach responsibility and teamwork, but no matter which family structures are presently legal, can we not be indoctrinating the kids on that in school or telling them that certain classmates come from bad families? I sure don’t remember my public school every telling me what family formats were preferred, and I want to keep it that way.

I am very pleased that where I live, it is the way you say – every child and their parents are treated with respect and support, not told there’s something wrong with their family. At least, judging by my in-class observations and by tours and parent nights, I’ve seen it just like your examples, and I love that.

Sam B–it happens!

jeans–no, and we should all be glad for that!

Duke–of all the families in my schools, I don’t know of any cyborgs, but that would be interesting! Someday….

cchrissyy–no matter what a kid learns about families at school, they will REALLY learn about families from their own, so no worries.

Euclid–at the elementary level, I cannot imagine a looser definition of “family” than the one that is likely already taught: a family is a group of people who love each other and live together. Let’s face it, everyone includes different people in their families. Some would include the whole extended family, others would include animals (not me!), others will include people who live in their house, but are in no way related. I just don’t see the difference. Same Sex Marriage is not legal in my state, but I do have kids who come from gay-parented families. Would I ever say anything in my classroom to denigrate their family? No way. For all intents and purposes, as far as my students are concerned, I am validating that family as much as any other.

Besides, teachers present material they may not personally agree with all the time–it is part of the job, and people who don’t want to ought to find another field. Can you imagine a high school social studies class taught from an expressly right or left political ideology? It would be a disaster. Teachers need to present material and let kids make their own judgments.

The California Teachers Association has contributed $250,000 to oppose Prop. 8.

Make that “would,” not “would have.” Prop. 4 is on the November ballot with Prop. 8.

ESO, the $100,000 horse against parental notification, which I guess is the same as the pro-union, pan-liberal horse that led the Service Employees International Union to contribute $500,000 against Prop. 8.

That’s probably the rationale, but I think simple liberal solidarity is the real basis of the action.

ESO –

I wasn’t expressing any opinion about Prop 8 or yours, simply that it wasn’t completely consistent with what I’ve heard others express. If you thought I was trying to disagree with you, I’m sorry, it was not my intent (because I don’t). As I suggested earlier, other than some personal discomfort on part of a teacher who feels compelled to teach something they’d rather not, I have a hard time envisioning any explicit “horrible consequences” from such an approach. Regardless, it would be inappropriate for a teacher to marginalize any student for their family circumstances. That said, feeling uncomfortable about teaching something like this does not mean a teacher is automatically denigrating a student (though I’d guess it could be hard for some teachers to temper their attitudes appropriately, so that’d be a fine line).

“Utah has the highest male youth suicide rate in the entire nation!”

That sounds like a made-up lie, and when I get a chance I’ll look up actual facts to show it. In the meantime, these threats to commit suicide if homosexuals aren’t allowed to marry one another are repulsive. Yeah, yeah, that’s not exactly what “MoHoHawaii” and others are writing, but nothing short of accepting their complete program ever counts as a “little kindness.”

And as a big fan of public education and public school teachers, let me say that if parents and churches and community organizers would do their d*mn jobs, teachers could focus on teaching and less on coddling.

Now that I’ve got my snark out of me, let me address one line from ESO’s post:

This particular thread makes clear that some people are very concerned that, if the amendment passes, their children’s elementary school teachers would be forced to express consent or tolerance for gay-parented families.

So my thought is, so what?

There is a difference between the terms accept and tolerate, a point which seems to have been forgotten here.

Nothing will every force a school teacher or anyone else to accept a gay marriage or a gay-parented family. Ever. All the law will mean is that they must be tolerated.

The way I’ve tried to explain this to my children is that they don’t have to be friends with certain people, but they also recognize their existence. If Prop 8 fails, gay marriages will be acknowledged. It doesn’t mean that they will ever have to be accepted/blessed/celebrated.

Somehow, we’ve decided that “tolerance” is “acceptance”. I can tolerate that linguistic change, but I can’t accept it.

(It also doesn’t change the Church one whit. The First Presidency and the Twelve will reclarify, if they feel it’s warranted, the definition of a valid marriage and valid sexual relationships.)

Utah’s rate was 15.7 per 100,000. For neighboring states the rates were: Nevada, 22.2; Wyoming, 19.8; New Mexico, 18.5; Arizona, 18.0; Idaho, 16.6; and Colorado, 16.3.

If you factor out Church membership, I wonder what it would be. (Not entire germane to the discussion, but I wonder.)

queuno, I posted a comment referring a study that answers your question. It is in moderation, because of the links I guess. So look for it when it gets kicked out of moderation. The difference is huge. For males 15-19 years old, the Utah sucide rates were: active LDS, 17.4; less-active LDS, 57.1; nonmember 59.7.

bbell,

When I spar on the interwebs I always try to play my strong suite. Sarcasm is not yours.

John,

So what?

Peter LLC, so queuno had a question and a provided an answer. We arrived at that point because I was looking up numbers to demonstrate that MoHoHawaii’s assertion that Mormons driving homosexuals to suicide has caused Utah to have “the highest male youth suicide rate in the entire nation!” is a lie that he or whoever he’s repeating made up out of his imagination. Since you are interested enough to express your curiosity, I refer you to comments 17, 18, 21, and 24.

ESO,

I was a part of the thread you referred to in your post, and one of those who vocalized their concern about SSM in elementary schools. Just to clarify: The concern wasn’t over teachers’consent or tolerance of gay-parented families. It was over including the example of SSM parents in the prepared curriculum. If a child in the class pointed out that they belonged to a SSP family, I would be horrified if the teacher belittled them and I’m sure everyone else in the thread who shared the actual concern would agree. But criticizing families in the classroom was never the issue.

I think that your approach is spot on. Only, I think that when kids tell you that their parents are Republicans, you should say, “Good for them!”

That Utah health department PDF doesn’t say anything about suicide rates in neighboring states.

John Mansfield:

I had double-checked Pearson’s cites a while back, so I thought I’d get you her sources. I mean, you wouldn’t want to accuse someone of misrepresenting data until you look at their sources, would you?

What follows is the footnote in my paper that corresponds to her claim. I double-checked, and this is the source she cites in her book.

CAROL LYNN PEARSON, NO MORE GOODBYES 36–37 (2007). For documentation regarding the rate of suicides among male Utahns ages 15–24, see Lucinda Dillon Kinkead & Dennis Romboy, Deadly Taboo: Youth Suicide an Epidemic that Many in Utah Prefer To Ignore, DESERET MORNING NEWS, April 23, 2006. For documentation on the suicide rates of gay and lesbian youth, see Paul Gibson, Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide, in 3 REPORT TO THE SECRETARY’S TASK FORCE ON YOUTH SUICIDE 110, 110 (Dep’t of Health & Human Svc., Publ’n No. (ADM) 89-1623, 1989).

Euclid–no hard feelings. I am totally open to other people having feelings that don’t mirror my own. I just wanted to expand on my point–I truely don’t believe that anyone will be forced to read “Heather has 2 Mommies” or anything like unto it. Creative teachers will easily be able to handle the issue without having to profess comfort for any specific kind of marriage.

queuno #22–I think we agree. As mentioned above, teachers will basically continue to respect and teach their students and they may discuss kinds of families that were not discussed in the curricula used in the 1950s. No biggie.

John #31–I feel your pain

David T–I do not believe that anyone is advocating that people be unkind to children. What I am saying (perhaps inartfully) is that things will not actually change for teachers with or without Prop. 8. Teachers will continue to teach and care for the children in their class. Feel any way you want about the amendment, but the school issue is a red herring.

DKL–of course, it would be unprofessional of me to reveal my political bias to students, but I’ll try to sneak that in.

Bookslinger–I think that is a good point, but I still don’t think it will matter much. Look at race–we absolutely do not have adequate representation of non-anglo races in textbooks, primers, or set books. People actually TRY to get better representation, but it just hasn’t happened, even after 20-30 years of trying. I think the inertia of the educational field will work for those with these fears on this issue.

Also, of course, the family values are MUCH more important to the individual than the community ones. Look at racism that passes from parent to child, or swearing, or not recycling. Everyone recycles at school, but if your mom and dad and neighbors don’t, you are unlikely to. As queuno mentioned, kids learn their values almost anywhere BUT school.

John Mansfield, thanks for all the suicide stats.

Bookslinger, you definitely bring up a good point. I think many people who support gay marriage really don’t see the possible harm. I have four children. Like any sane parent, I don’t want my children dating at a young age because it often leads to earlier sexual activity. But I think the acceptance of gay sex will lead to more teens experimenting. You think your child is safe from sexual advances if they are hanging out with their same gender friend at 14, but it will become as risky as dating at 14.
The fact that your 14 year old isn’t gay doesn’t matter. You don’t want your child dating at 14 because they are too young to handle certain situations. Children of all ages are at risk of being taken advantage of, not by just child molesters, but by same age, or older children who initial sexual activity. This isn’t against the law and it is considered consensual even though your child can be too confused or too scared too overpowered to stop it.

Regarding Nate W. comment 38:

I looked up the Deseret News article in their online archives. It states, as has already been noted, that Utah has a suicide rate comparable to, but lower than, that of other states in the region. It doesn’t say anything in particular about comparative rates of suicide among young males, and it never mentions homosexuality.

Here ia a link to a scan of Paul Gibson’s 1989 report. Looking briefly, there is nothing at all in the report regarding comparative rates of suicide in different states or regions. Very little on rates at all; the author’s focus is not on statistics, but on what is going on within individuals.

So, if those are Carol Lynn Pearson’s sources, and Nate W. tells us that he looked into the matter and these are her sources, then I repeat what I wrote previously:

The claim that “Utah has the highest male youth suicide rate in the entire nation!” is a lie made up by someone’s imagination. Thanks, Nate W., for tracking her claim to establish this even more plainly.

Bookslinger:
“If anything, Anglo history has been downplayed and demonized (the “evil-white-european” thing), and minority history been given disproportionate coverage.”

I realize this is a conservative fear, it is just not reality. Only someone who does not work in education would claim this is reality. (Of course, our disagreement hinges on our definitions of “disproportionate”). You can huff and puff all you want, and I am sure your motivations are good, but this is simple fear-mongering.

MAC:
“If public schools in the US refocused on reading, math and science, this discussion probably wouldn’t have to be taking place. I would also guess that our students might be more successful.”
Again, this statement smacks of someone who simply has not spent time in education. I know of no school that is NOT focussed on reading, writing, math, and science (although surely social studies is also kosher?).

I know you all spent years as a student in schools, and that is why everyone feels their opinions on education (and needed reform) are totally legitimate, but your statements betray you. I claim no special knowledge of what happens in your workplace, so please validate your ideas about “current teaching” before you tell me what is going on in mine.

I am saying your statements betray a lack of knowledge of what schools currently teach, that is all.

“If anything, Anglo history has been downplayed and demonized (the “evil-white-european” thing), and minority history been given disproportionate coverage.”

I realize this is a conservative fear, it is just not reality. Only someone who does not work in education would claim this is reality. (Of course, our disagreement hinges on our definitions of “disproportionate”). You can huff and puff all you want, and I am sure your motivations are good, but this is simple fear-mongering.

It’s the reality I’ve personally witnessed. I read a friend’s daughter’s high school English composition textbook that was used in Indianapolis Public Schools. I’m basing my “evil-white-european” line on the bashing of white-europeans that was contained in many of the sample compositions from the textbook. Such political remarks were treated as common knowledge by the (supposed) student-authors of the sample compositions, and left unchallenged. Excuse me for thinking that an English composition textbook should be politically and historically neutral.

ESO,

I think we have discussed this before. My kids and Queno’s kids attend a well funded high rated school district in North Texas. I have read their history books and to me minority issues are over-represented in the history books.

One another note regarding public education I was glad to hear my elementary school principle promise to fire any incompetent teachers at 1st grade orientation night this year.

Good call, ESO. As a classroom teacher, I totally agree with your position here.

bbell: That shift has more to do with trends in historiography rather than political pressure, I think. If you were a teacher, that last sentence you wrote could be used as evidence of incompetence and get you fired. Look out!

for bbell

Hit submit too soon.

My kids aren’t at the point of their education where they are getting “Heather has 2 mommies, and it’s OK” messages in school. I do, however, think they might be turning my daughter into a conservation nazi…

And as long as we’re firing teachers who don’t perform, can someone PLEASE provide a quantitative measure of performance that isn’t influenced (either positively or negatively) by parental influence?

There are too many mediocre teachers who look good because they’ve basically succeeded in mobilizing parents into doing their work for them, and too many good teachers stuck in schools with dual-income and overworked parents (or worse, upper-middle class and indifferent parents).

Teaching is a profession where effort and methodology should be weighted as equally as high as test scores. It cannot ever be a results-only measure.

bbell–I suspect your principal was pandering at orientation
norbert–thanks for stepping in on the textbooks
sister blah–thanks for coming to our rescue
queuno–thanks for pointing out that “merit” is indeed very difficult to measure in education

JKS, you should consider yourself bless as most parents have a hard time getting their kids to eat anything but sugar.

Nate W., thanks for highlighting that line in the text. So, the Deseret News article is a basis for Mrs. Pearson to make that claim. I would still really like to now the basis for that statement in the Deseret News, because my bit of web browsing over the past couple days has turned up nothing where suicide rates are partitioned by state and age simultaneously. We have Utah suicide rates by age from the Hilton et al. paper. Can anyone find numbers indicating suicide rates for 15-24 year olds in Nevada or Wyoming?

OK, I couldn’t find tables prepared by someone else, so I made a few of my own. The CDC has a database called WISQARS (with a cat logo with animated whiskers). I queried the Top 20 causes of violent death for males 15-24 in four different states: Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The several types of suicide sum for the years 2000-2004 to: Utah, 276; Wyoming, 65; Colorado, 390; New Mexico, 249. The Census Bureau’s profiles of general demographic characteristics for those states show that the population 15-24 for those states in 2000 was: Utah, 441,430; Wyoming, 75,358; Colorado, 613,476; Nex Mexico, 267,042. Subdivision into number of males and females in that age bracket was not provided, but we won’t be far off assuming a 50-50 split.

So the suicide rate per 100,000 over the five years for males 15-24 was: Utah, 31.3; Wyoming, 43.1; Colorado, 31.8; New Mexico, 46.6. Utah’s suicide rate for this group was a bit lower than Colorado’s and more than 30% lower than Wyoming’s or New Mexico’s

I’m not going to do this for other states; someone else can. Whoever the Deseret News was quoting was just making stuff up to draw attention to the cause of reducing teen suicide in her state. Not the worst of motives; as a Rocky Mountain state, Utah’s rate is higher than the national average, so Utah is a leading state (probably in the top 10), but not the leading state. Carol Lynn Pearson and MoHoHawaii latched onto this non-fact, that should have caused them to say “Wait a minute; is that true?”, because it fitted their prejudices that 1) homosexuality is a huge social factor, and 2) Mormons drive homosexuals to suicide.

#43 At the risk of beating this particular meme to death, I can’t help but bring it up. Allow me to slightly “reimagine” your post:
***
What do you think is going to happen when high schools are populated by students who grew up in a society that has no taboos against interracial marriage, and whose entire prior school experience had social studies textbooks (english, writing, history, etc.) containing positive role-models of interracial couples? And not just school curricula, but when all the joking/guffawing type of disapproval of interracial marraige disappears from our media, and interracial marriage becomes totally normalized in media influences. (In that process, our society is well along.)
***
Wow, just imagine. Every single kid will demand to marry an individual not of his or her race. Racism in general might soften or disappear, and random people won’t be beaten, brutalized, or murdered simply because of racial issues. Mormons will have their temples filled with awful, diverse people demanding to be sealed, and the Church will lose its tax-exempt status when it refuses to marry them. It’s going to be awful, isn’t it?

But seriously: it’s been 40 years since Loving v. Virginia, and 30 years since the lifting of the LDS priesthood ban. Mormons are still uptight about race, and heck, so is society at large. They still make movies about interracial relationships where the relationship is a joke or a point of tension (“Guess who?” and “Something New,” most recently). Only one movie I see on the horizon (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”) seems to feature an interracial family (white mom, black/multiracial kid) that seems to treat it as “normal.” So if we have a 30-40 year turnaround time for once-taboo relationships to become sort of “normal,” we Mormons can happily maintain anachronistic viewpoints without fear of being forced to change anytime soon.

If 45.0 per 100,000 is then the youth suicide rate in SF over 5 years, how can the male suicide rate in SF be double that? I think you multiplied by two instead of dividing, John.

Nate W., I don’t understand what you mean when you write that I need to “find data that contradicts their conclusion.” I found it, and showed you where you can look at it too. When I assume a 50-50 split, I am not talking about the suicides; the number of male suicides is given directly by the WISQARS database. I am assuming a 50-50 split of the population; i.e., that half of the 15-24 year olds in a state are young men. Now I did make an order of operations error in my calculations. I made the same error for all four states, so the relative comparisons between Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico are unchanged, but each rate should be multiplied by four. For Utah there were 276 male suicides from a population of 441,430 young men and women. So that gives a rate of 276/(441,430/2) = 125.0 male suicides per 100,000 males. For comment #70, I erroneously calculated (276/441,430)/2 = 31.3 per 100,000.

The corrected rates for the five year period are: Utah, 124.3; Wyoming, 172.5; Colorado, 127.1; New Mexico, 186.5. Dividing by five gives annualized rates: Utah, 24.9; Wyoming, 34.5; Colorado, 25.4; New Mexico, 37.3.

Nate W., what is lacking to show that there are at least three states next to Utah with higher rates of suicide among males 15-24?

“You also cannot assume people are making things up because you can’t find their data, nor can you assume bad motives on everyone else’s part except your own, especially since you have no evidence to support your conclusion.”

Do you mean evidence of their motives? That evidence is right there in MoHoHawaii’s comment that started this, and which is a commonplace among advocates of homosexual marriage. He is accusing Mormons of driving homosexuals to suicide, and using this non-fact to tar opponents of homosexual marriage. I don’t feel like letting that false accusation stand.

As many of you know the Mormons are one of the largest financial backers of the attempt to pass Proposition 8. The Mormon Church has been putting extreme pressure on its members to support the amendment.

I am a Mormon High Priest in good standing in the church, and I am offended that our church would take such a horrible stance. There are many other Mormons, who also disagree with the Mormon Church, and many of us have begun to speak out on websites such as Signing for Something, http://www.signingforsomething.org/blog

Additionally, there are many other Mormons who also oppose our church’s stance, but assume they are the only Mormons on the planet who disagree with the church leadership. I am not a regular reader of this blog, but am posting here in hopes that perhaps at least a few Mormons who disagree with the leadership on this issue might learn that they are not alone.

Thank you.
Andrew Callahan
Hastings, Nebraska

RE: 67. Steven B.

me: What do you think is going to happen when high schools are populated by students who grew up in a society that has no taboos against homosexuality . . . and homosexuality becomes totally normalized in media influences.

you: Then gay and lesbian children will grow up without self-loathing, will attend school and not be bullied, will make it through young adult years without attempting suicide, and will hopefully find happiness in a world that no longer demonizes them for who they are or murders them for whom they are perceived to be.

Now me again:

In the spirit of what queuno wrote about tolerance vis-a-vis acceptance…

I hope that what you hope to see can be achieved through the principle of _tolerance_, and that our society realizes that _acceptance_ of homosexual sex acts as “good” (or even “okay”) is not needed.

To echo what queuno wrote, one side is essentially claiming that tolerance requires acceptance. I’m on the side that says tolerance does not require acceptance.

“If homosexual marriage stands as a socially accepted thing, then examples of homosexual marriage will need to be written into various social curriculae used in schools.”

Gee, I hope that Hollywood television show writers don’t get into that act.