Gay History 101

YGBFKM, I know that you are a bit of a board provocateur. I had not pegged you as a social conservative, though. Just curious about what role you are inhabiting here and elsewhere.

 

Really? That's kinda gay.

 

It would seem that, with the current battles over gay marriage, Don't Ask Don't Tell and Marcus Bachmann's status, teaching gay history would be a good idea, just so students could get an idea of how we got to this point. I agree it would be less useful if, say, standardized tests forced you to state what figure in history was gay/straight/confirmed bachelor.

 

Why do that when you can cry about the advance of the gay army?

 

I am inhabiting the role of a guy who has thought a lot lately about education, in myriad forms. This is not necessarily a gay issue to me. I read about South Korea embarking on an initiative to supply all students with tablet notebooks, and meanwhile, this country is spending money on making sure history textbooks, which are generally terrible to begin with, have the proper amount of gay references. I will be a father in weeks, and it's pretty damn disconcerting that I'm already worried that my son will grow up in a world where no one really seems to give a damn if kids learn how to think as long as they learn an agenda. I'd like for my son to at least get to college before the indoctrination attempts begin.

 

Does this mean that they're going to show gay porn to my 6-year-old? #conservativetalkingpoint

 

Were you equally outraged over Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. day back in 1965?

You can't accurately teach American history from 1993-present without mentioning Don't Ask Don't Tell and the gay marriage battle current going on. And if you think the history books should ignore it for fear your son might become gay (oh the horror!) then you're probably a homophobe.

 

I agree with your sentiment, but not necessarily as applied. I remember being a kid and not understanding why we had to learn Black History. Why were black people so "special"? Of course, now I completely understand.

I don't know if it's an indocrination as much as California is being proactive about what is turning into the No. 1 civil rights struggle of their time.

 

Oh good G-d.

 

Worry more than your child's school will teach to the standardized test, indoctrination or no. Actually, the last thing a lot of political and business leaders want are students who know how to think for themselves.

"Indoctrination" (assuming the mere teaching of gay history is "indoctrination") works both ways -- witness the Texas textbook controversies, and the one that started them all, and was the first shot in the Culture Wars, the Kanawha County Textbook War of 1974.

http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/exhibits/13

(I keep posting about Kanawha County because I find it endlessly fascinating, and one of the criminally under-recognized events in current U.S. history. If nothing else, it would make a hell of a movie.)

 

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How far did your history classes get in terms of history?
For U.S., we seldom got past WWII.
In state history we shut it down after the Mine Wars, circa 1930.

 

Most high school general U.S. history classes:

Revolutionary War era: September-January.
Post-rev through Civil War: February-May.
Everything else: last two weeks of school (most of it about Vietnam).