Homosexuality, Nature, and Education
An Illinois high school teacher gave his 10th grade class the optional assignment of reading an article from Seed magazine about homosexuality in the animal kingdom and was suspended for doing so. A parent complained that the website was not appropriate viewing material for her child. Many other parents and students are supporting the suspended teacher, however.
This raises a number of questions. Some relate to the news story itself: Who decides what’s appropriate for 10th graders to view? What is the place of controversial subject matter in a high school class? Does the school’s suspension of the teacher constitute censorship? Is homosexuality (especially when it is scientific research being presented and not propaganda) a taboo subject for discussion at this level? Should it be? What are the consequences of preventing such information from circulating?
Other questions have to do with the article the teacher assigned: Is the article itself offensive in the way it approaches the subject? (Or was it possibly just the subject matter being brought up at all that offended?) What kinds of evidence is presented and is it convincing? How might this article affect the way students think about the ongoing debates about homosexuality? How might it affect the way you think about homosexuality?
