Education

1. I wish I had a book club still. I have been reading really interesting books, and I'd like to discuss them. Actually, I wish I had a literature class, because my book club wasn't really about delving into the books' issues. Lit classes way more fun. Geek-fun. I just want a lit class with adults in it, though, so I might have to either create a book club full of English majors (oh! or professors -- way more fun!) or at least people interested in literature, or look into "community education," or just give it up.

2. People have co-opted Proposition 8 for their own fear-based purposes. So I'm going to co-opt my cycling blog with some Prop-8 related information. It's only fair that my 4 readers suffer through it with me. Why is it fair? It's my blog.

3. Education is important. We have a whole code here in CA about it. A whole state department. The federal government gets involved. Local school boards and communities get involved. Parents too. We're compared internationally to students and statistics regarding successes (or failures) in education.
It starts from when we're born (at least)-- our parents educate us in a variety of ways. They help us learn to use words and language, they teach us their values, they (often) teach us to read and write, they foster curiosity so that education becomes a life-long endeavor (see #1, por ejemplo), they teach us judgment, and discerning, and sometimes they pass on their likes and dislikes. When I was young, my mom home-schooled us for a while, with some other families. We also went to Sunday school and church. We had family dinners and lots of talking (if there's one thing the Rowans can do, it's talk. . .a lot) and we had a set of encyclopedias that always confused me. I mean, I kind of wanted to read them, but then it seemed like it was kind of boring and I never new what to look for. That's why we have educators.

4. Education can be subtle, and pervasive. There's other stuff we learn too, from a very young age. Take Disney, for example: princess gets into some trouble, or loses her internal compass, or has to overcome adversity (and is always pretty, thin, white, and well-dressed [I'm aware of the movie Mulan, yes]), then she gets her prince (handsome, muscular, tall, white) and they kiss, and then live happily ever after. We are bred to believe we must be be heterosexual, thin, white people with a nice wardrobe. The media demands it. It's called the 'heterosexism' and is interlaced with the 'presumption of heterosexuality.' Barbie and Ken know it. Calvin Klein knows it. If you look around, you might see that there is an onslaught of heterosexual propaganda. It starts when we're very young, and it continues. People don't think of it as propaganda because we're so numb to it. I challenge you to start seeing it, however.

5. Schools. The big arguments in favor of eliminating marriage equality is that kids are going to learn homosexuality in schools. I've already said I don't know what that means, what some think it means is that California will find itself in Massachusetts's shoes, where a teacher read King and King in a second grade class room. The basic story: the prince is supposed to take a wife, so he meets a bunch of princesses, one of them brought her brother with her, the prince's heart went boom. At the end, there are two princes in a quite-covered kiss.

Kids are sponges for information. The little ones especially, because everything is so new. Our school boards build a curriculum, with parental and governmental input, our teachers teach it in straightforward, creative, traditional, and (or?) innovative ways. Teachers read to their students.

Students who read books in school probably learn about marriage. Not in a lesson necessarily (i.e., 'this is what marriage is') but in picking up the clues from the books. You can imagine a question about, 'what is a step mother?' or 'how did she get from Princess to Queen?' or 'how come that boy doesn't live with his daddy?' These things all get you marriage (or divorce, which you can't have without marriage). Gay people exist in the world. They have lasting commitments. The Yes on 8 folks want to keep them in the 'separate but equal' civil unions, the California Supreme Court recognized that there is a fundamental right to marriage. Either way, to acknowledge it in our libraries (where the MA teacher got the book), on our bookshelves, in our media, and in front of our children will not create a harm. If parents have chosen that homosexuality does not comport with their religious or personal views, parents can explain this to their kids.
When I was a kid, we were vegetarians. We were pretty much the only family that was vegetarian. Growing up, I knew that not eating (most) meat was something that was a belief in my house, but not everyone else's. Friend's parents (and my grandparents) offered to feed us hamburgers or ham sandwiches or bacon. We said, 'no, thank you. We don't eat meat.' It wasn't traumatizing.

6. Prop 8 doesn't have anything to do with education. Nothing in California's education code has schools teaching about marriage. And third, California allows a high level of parental involvement in their children's education and also allows a parent to 'opt-out' of a particular lesson (on behalf of the child).

Further, the anti-marriage-equality folks keep saying that civil unions are the same, and why aren't the gays happy with that? So if they are the same, as the argument goes, nothing is to stop a teacher from reading this fairy tale about happy-ever-after in schools, and then adding, "But in California, we call them "civil unions." Prop 8 isn't going to get you around that. If someone is unhappy with the curriculum, there are avenues to address that. Avenues that do not involve civil rights.

Some kids have gay parents or siblings or family members. Including those children in a discussion would seem to add to educational value, not detract. It's hard to be gay. But it doesn't have to be so hard.

7. There's another fear tactic involving a 'field trip' that a grade school class in S.F. made to go watch their teacher get married. I offer you this quotation from the news article on the event: "A parent came up with the idea for the field trip - a surprise for the teacher on her wedding day." Parental involvement. The students were not forced along by their teacher so that they could be "indoctrinated into homosexuality," they were driven by their parents.
And Prop 8 has nothing to do with that either. If the kids showed up at their teacher's civil union, Prop 8 won't touch that at all. I know it's hard to look past the ways that we're raised, or the thoughts that are so ingrained, we don't know we're having them. Really hard to see two women getting married or two boys kissing and not have some sort of reaction. But having a reaction doesn't mean it's wrong or unnatural or immoral.


Proposition 8 doesn't have to do with education. Proposition 8 is about writing discrimination into the California Constitution (largely based on religious morality). Proposition 8 is about eliminating the "fundamental right of marriage" from a particular group of people, but allowing it for another.