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Sticks and Stones


Sticks and Stones
Despite the old adage that “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” children still experience the hurt of being picked on. It might be for wearing glasses, for having braces, for being the class “brain,” for speaking with an accent or a lisp, or even for having a physical handicap, but most children don’t grow up without experiencing some of the pain of being left out. Name-calling and bullying are real problems, and parents and teachers must not only “soothe ruffled feathers,” but also teach children how to be kind to one another. 
Next week many schools will focus on this issue with a special No Name-Calling Week (NNCW). Now in its seventh year, the program is a project of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Resources on the GLSEN and NNCW websites include books with a pro-homosexual slant and other activities that teach the position that the problem is one of wrong attitudes and ignorance about certain groups of people.
No Name-Calling Week was based on the children’s book, The Misfits, written by openly homosexual author James Howe. In the book, “A Gang of Five” junior-high students tackle the issue of name-calling by organizing a campus political campaign around the issue of stamping out bullying of any kind. Although the group of friends (one of whom is an openly homosexual seventh-grader) loses the election, they win the respect of the principal who supports their No Name-Calling Day concept.  
The highlighting of The Misfits and the campaign’s association with GLSEN led to early criticism that the NNCW program was a thinly veiled attempt to teach children a pro-homosexual message in the schools. As more curriculum has been developed to expand the program from a middle-school focus to include both elementary and high-school students, the pro-homosexual message has become more apparent.
The new high-school curriculum, “Lights, Camera, Action: Using Film to End Anti-LGBT Name-Calling, Bullying and Harassment,” created by GLSEN and a group called Stories of Us, “is designed to help draw students’ attention to name-calling, bullying, and harassment that targets sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression…” (emphasis added) It exposes students to student-made media on the topic, teaches them to differentiate between harassment based on an individual’s identity and other types of name-calling and bullying, and teaches them basic LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) terminology.  One activity calls for students to brainstorm and share different reasons students might be called names or bullied. If sexual orientation and gender identity/expression aren’t on the student-generated lists, the teacher is to mention them.
Elementary-school parents can no longer believe their children are immune from pro-homosexual advocacy in their public schools. While less obvious, one of the discussion scenarios in the curriculum for youngsters in grades kindergarten through fourth grade involves a girl who brings her two dads to parents’ night at school. 
Tolerance today no longer means to politely respect a viewpoint with which you disagree – as it did in past generations. Today’s tolerance is a forced neutrality, at best. Truth is non-existent or is understood as a nebulous, shifting concept that is different for each individual. Yet those who believe in an unchanging truth or disagree with homosexuality as morally wrong are considered intolerant, while those who promote homosexual behavior refuse to tolerate the faith-based view that homosexuality is wrong.
Parents, find out what is happening in your local schools. While bullying and name-calling are appropriate for classroom discussion, the pro-homosexual curriculum that may be used is not. It is becoming more and more important for you to keep the lines of communication between school and home open.  Talk with other parents, volunteer in your child’get to know your child’s teachers, attend parent meetings and school-board meetings, and volunteer to serve on committees.
Additional Resources for Parents:
·         Education: Gay Activism in the Schools, CitizenLink
·         True Tolerance, a project of Focus on the Family
·         Homosexuality In Your Child's School, Family Research Council
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