When parents' values conflict with
public schools
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
Columnist |
April 27, 2006
OF THE FIVE candidates running to succeed Mitt Romney as governor of
Massachusetts, all but one have chosen to send their children to
private schools. Nothing wrong with that -- millions of parents would
move their kids out of public schools tomorrow if they thought they
could afford something better. For millions more, government schooling
isn't an option in the first place: They would no sooner let the state
decide what their children should learn than they would let it to
decide whom they should marry.
In an interview this month, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, the only
Republican in the race, explained why she and her husband picked a
private school for their son and daughter. "I want my kids to be in an
environment where they can talk about values," she said -- talk about
values, that is, "in a way that you can't always do in a public school
setting."
It's hard to see anything objectionable in Healey's words, but they
triggered a broadside from Attorney General Thomas Reilly, a Democrat
and the only gubernatorial candidate whose children all attended public
schools.
Healey is "completely out of touch with the lives of regular people,"
he snapped. "Somehow the perception is that the kids in public schools
are not learning the values that they should be learning. ..... Public
schools reinforced the values of our home. ..... It was a wonderful
experience." Those quotes appeared in The Boston Globe on April 17. Now
consider a story that appeared three days later.
On April 20, in a story headlined "Parents rip school over gay
storybook," the Globe reported on the latest controversy in Lexington,
where school officials committed to normalizing same-sex marriage have
clashed with residents who don't want homosexual themes introduced in
class without advance parental notice. Last year, a Lexington father
named David Parker complained to officials at the Joseph Estabrook
Elementary School about the "diversity" curriculum in his son's
kindergarten class, which included pictures of families headed by gay
and lesbian couples. Parker was arrested on trespassing charges when he
refused to leave the school grounds without a promise that he would be
alerted before similar lessons were taught in the future.
The latest incident, also at the Estabrook School, was triggered when a
second-grade teacher presented to her class a storybook celebration of
homosexual romance and marriage.
There is nothing subtle about "King & King," the book that Heather
Kramer read to her students. It tells the story of Prince Bertie, whose
mother the queen nags him to get married ("When I was your age, I'd
been married twice already," she says), and parades before him a bevy
of princesses to choose from. But Bertie, who says he's "never cared
much for princesses," rejects them all. Then "Princess Madeleine and
her brother, Prince Lee," show up, and Bertie falls in love at first
sight -- with the brother. Soon, the princes are married. "The wedding
was very special," reads the text. "The queen even shed a tear or two."
Bertie and Lee are elevated from princes to "King and King," and the
last page shows them exchanging a passionate kiss.
Dismayed by such blatant propagandizing, the parents of one student
made an appointment to discuss their concerns with school officials.
"This is a highly charged social issue," Robin and Robert Wirthlin told
them. "Why are you introducing it in second grade?" Kramer said she had
selected the book in order to teach a unit on weddings. When the
Wirthlins checked the Lexington Public Library, they found 59
children's titles dealing with weddings, but "King & King" wasn't
among them. The library's search engine listed it instead under
"Homosexuality -- Juvenile fiction."
Massachusetts law requires schools to notify parents before "human
sexuality issues" are taught in class and gives parents the right to
exempt a child from that portion of the curriculum. But the Wirthlins'
request to be given a heads-up before something as contentious and
sensitive as same-sex marriage comes up in their child's class again
was rejected out of hand.
"We couldn't run a public school system if every parent who feels some
topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides
their child should be removed," Lexington's superintendent of schools,
Paul Ash, told the Globe. "Lexington is committed to teaching children
about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is
legal." Reviewing "King & King" for the website Lesbian Life, Kathy
Belge -- who describes herself as a longtime lesbian activist and the
director of a queer youth program -- writes that it is "sure to capture
a child's imagination" and praises it in particular for its
nonjudgmental embrace of homosexuality: "The same-sex attraction is
normalized. There's no proselytizing, no big lesson. It just is."
But homosexuality and gay marriage are not like subtraction or
geography; they cannot be separated from questions of morality,
justice, and decency. No matter how a school chooses to deal with
sexual issues, it promotes certain values -- values that some parents
will fervently welcome and that others will just as fervently reject.
And what is true of human sexuality is true of other issues that touch
on deeply felt religious, political, or ideological values.
When it comes to the education of children, there is always an agenda
-- and those who don't share that agenda too often find themselves
belittled, marginalized, or ignored. Perhaps it was true, as Thomas
Reilly says, that the public schools his children attended "reinforced
the values of our home." But as the Parkers and Wirthlins in Lexington
can testify, other families have a very different experience. When
Kerry Healey says she wants her children "to be in an environment where
they can talk about values ..... in a way that you can't always do in a
public school setting," many public-school parents will know exactly
what she means.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
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