On Thursday, the California State Board of Education voted to approve lessons for elementary, middle and high school students that recognize the contributions of minorities including “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.”
According to a press release by the California Department of Education, the framework is meant to provide “guidance” to teachers, administrators, and publishers for history and social science instruction. “It includes more than 20 detailed classroom examples that show teachers how they can integrate their instruction to build students’ history–social science knowledge and skills, literacy skills, and English language development.”
“This is a big win for our students,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. “This document will improve the teaching and learning of history and social science. It will give our students access to the latest historical research and help them learn about the diversity of our state and the contributions of people and groups who may not have received the appropriate recognition in the past.”
Excuse me, but can someone please explain how learning about historical figures’ sexual proclivities will improve history education in a country where college students don’t know who won the Civil War and can’t name our vice president? And do tell how learning about LGBT history is going to “improve literacy skills, and English language development” of students in California’s classrooms, where 22% of kids speak English as a second language.
For years we were told by the progressive left that they wanted everyone to stay out of their bedrooms, but now they’re dragging our kids into the most intimate aspects of adults’ lives. They’re insisting that our children must know how (and with whom) everyone likes to have sex, claiming this is an essential element of a well-rounded view of history.
When I was in 4th grade our teacher took us on a field trip to her house for some odd reason. During a tour of her home, I was shocked and awkwardly embarrassed to see that there were twin beds in the master bedroom. That set my 9-year-old mind to thinking about my 4th grade teacher in bed (or not, actually) with her husband, which seemed terribly strange and confusing to me. There’s no reason a 4th grader (or any elementary school kid) should be thinking about how, where, or with whom her teacher is sleeping.
Rather than earnestly endeavoring to equip California’s K-12 kids with a comprehensive history education, the progressive left is expending an excessive amount of time and energy on this quest to convince all of us that there’s a huge percentage of Americans who identify as LGBT. If you turn on your TV for 15 minutes, you’ll be led to believe that at least every other house on your block has a gay family, because every last TV show now must include a sympathetic gay character. Of course, Hollywood math is as confusing as Common Core math. According to the CDC:
Based on the 2013 NHIS data, 96.6% of adults identified as straight, 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identified as bisexual.
And now they would have our kids believe that but for the LGBT influence, America would be some Third World hell hole, thanks to the special interest groups that are pushing this agenda on the schools.
I went to a talk one time where James Loewen (a liberal-leaning author and history professor, but a straight shooter, in my opinion) discussed the difficulties of teaching history in schools. He talked about how we often teach children about the “twigs” in history and often miss the “forest.” We pick and choose inspiring stories while missing the larger narrative of our American story. He’s right. When I was growing up we learned about the Pilgrims year in and year out (mostly the Thanksgiving story) and we spent a lot of time studying various “people groups” because in the ’70s history had unfortunately been replaced by something called “social studies.” I don’t ever remember learning anything about the Constitution. I’m ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until I homeschooled my own kids that I actually read our founding documents and finally learned about our nation’s history.
What they’re doing with this new history framework in California is adding some trendy new “twigs” to the curriculum. But the twigs come at a cost because there are only so many hours in the day and something must be eliminated from the lesson plans when LGBT lessons are inserted. Something will have to be subtracted from the “forest” of the great American narrative — why people came here in the first place; how our nation’s religious heritage shaped our country and laid a foundation for the liberty we all enjoy; our founding documents and the American Revolution; the nuances of the Civil War that helped us to overcome the great shame of slavery; the role (and importance) of federalism; the Great Wars and defeat of fascism; how we defeated Communism, and much, much more.
There’s no way all of our nation’s history can be taught in a single school year, or even several. Frameworks and standards exist because someone must choose what gets taught and what doesn’t. If LGBT history is added to the curriculum, something else has to go. California has 175 days in its school year and only a fraction of that time is devoted to learning history. Unfortunately, the state school board has chosen to devote some of that precious time to pandering to special interest twigs instead of conquering the great American forest. A dozen years from now, expect to see those kids on a YouTube video, ready and able to answer a plethora of questions about Harvey Milk, but completely ignorant about the Constitution and the Civil War.
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