Talking Point Number 3

Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community,Dennis Carlson

Carlson states on the first page what he is going to argue," ...more importantly I want to argue that these practices are increasingly hard to sustain." He believes that schools and communities need to teach about "gayness", so that it does not seem abnormal to everybody. If it is being taught then it will not seem so 'weird' for people rather a part of life. He also says that if teachers use words like, "lesbians" and "homosexual" in their everyday language it will not seem awkward to children and even adults.

"One way that a normalizing curriculum or text works is by presenting students with a "selective tradition""
--- This quote really got me thinking, about how true this is. We talked about this a little in class, about not telling kids about something because it might not be "age appropriate", but there are definitely ways to make things more age ready. Like the true Thanksgiving lesson that Dr. Bogad did with her class. In order to make something more "normal" lesson planners, book publishers, etc. just take out the awkward material, material that might cause controversy, or even something that is not in the "norm" .


"One thing we can conclude about the emerging shape of community in America is that because it is more fragmented, it is becoming more difficult to construct a "public" curriculum that has broad-based support."
---- I believe it is hard to come up with a curriculum for public schools due to the cultural, and sexual orientated growth in communities. And now a days everything has to be politically correct, and if it is not you are in trouble. I do not think there is ever going to be a time where you can get an entire community to agree on something, there is always going to be someone or a group of people that disagree. Like teaching "gayness", or bringing it into a classroom will definitely upset religious people, and keeping it out upsets LGBT groups. It is a lose-lose situation.

This article was hard for me to read, one because of the style, and two because I do not believe in Homosexuality. Although I do not hate anybody because of it, and am friends with gays and lesbians I do not support it, and would find it hard to teach in a my classroom one day, or even speak upon it because it goes against everything I stand for. I am a sunday school teacher, and teach the total opposite to my children that marriage is between a man and woman, so it would be really hard for me, and I probably could not do it, to teach it in my classroom.