Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasczak  As a parent you should expose them to it however you feel appropriate, but that doesn't mean government schools should take on the job of exposing anyone to anything other than education in reading, writing, math, etc.
To the part I bolded: You are right - the individualist in your is speaking. School is no place for applying any kind of influences whether they are the kind you agree with or not. School is where skills and knowledge are taught, not influences. |
One has to wonder what you see as covered by that "etc". Etc is a very abstract term.
It seems to me that to disallow this book based on the gender (and therefore by extension sexual preference) of the characters in it, is still making decisions on the curriculum - it is just doing it by exclusion rather than inclusion. It would be the same if one excluded a book because the characters in it were black, for example, or wheelchair-bound.
As I remember it (this thread was some time ago) nobody made any real pretense that the book was being excluded (or should be) because of its educational value (or lack thereof). People's opposition was directly against the fact that they thought gay characters should not exist in school materials. The book doesn't even have any 'moral to the story' focusing on the characters genders - it simply has a couple of characters who are the same gender.
If anything, I would hope that materials provided to kids would represent a view of the world as it is. So if (for example) 1 in 10 couples in the real world are same-gender couples, then 1 in 10 couples in the storybooks should be too. Otherwise you are implicitly perpetuating a belief that that 1 in 10 couples is abnormal and should be excluded.