When I Teach Literature That Has Gay Characters...

Am I "indoctrinating" my high school students with a liberal agenda? Is that what regressives mean when they accuse public school teachers of brainwashing our students?

 

No i mean like when my teachers forcefed political opinions down our throats, then orally graded us on said opinions.

 

Judging by your posts, it's reasonable to surmise that the only time you're not doing that is when they're out of earshot.

 

Heh, it would be an oral grade.

 

If the literature includes obvious references to the characters being gay then no. That being said, if your curriculum is over-represented by gay literature OR if you characterize a character as being gay when no mention of it is in the literature, then you ARE indoctrinating.

 

Its only prejudice if your advocating anything in regards to the gay characters. If your saying its acceptable or not then you are stepping out of the realm of educator and into one of advocacy.

Educators should be impartial and only try to give kids the critical thinking skill they need to make their own decisions.

 

Ah, so if a curriculum has NO gay characters, it's indoctrinating because then it would be "under-represented by gay literature." Right?

 

If you had a 100 books then 3-4% of them should have gay themes if we're speaking of representation. I don't know why people would think in terms of that. I would think in the k-12 you would just take the classics of literature and if one of them happens to have gay themes speak to that.

I'm trying to think of a classic with gay themes...Oh, the Iliad. If you were speaking of the Iliad then you would speak to gay themes and its not indoctrination because you are discussing a great work of literature that happens to have gay themes.

 

So when we talk about the bullying and cruelty of other students in regards to the gay characters, I must be indoctrinating the students, right?

 

There is no reason to 'represent' any sexual sex act to children. That is not your job as a teacher. You should be 'blind' to those issues and concentrate on fundamental academics...THAT is your job.

 

I'm guessing you've never taught literature to high schoolers.

 

When is the hearing?

 

If the literature deliberately creates a false reality and the curricula attempts for the students to accept it as reality, then yes. It's just silly propaganda, painting a victim where one doesn't really exist. This would be like German National Socialist propaganda that got Germans to feel bad for themselves, by painting themselves as victims with a villain.

btw, your partisan hackmanship is much appreciated. Defining the "other" as regressives is just pathetic, but it's the same thing that it seems you are trying to do in class - define the "other" as villains.

 

Uh...that's what fictional literature aims to do. The rest of what you posted is drivel.

 

What works of literature have bullying and cruelty of other students in regards to gay characters? Do you have an example?

 

Will Grayson Will Grayson.

 

It is obvious that the OP feels he has the right as a teacher to "correct faulty parental teachings" regarding homosexuality.

I beleive teachers have a duty not to express any moral bias one way or the other on any curriculum and not say or do anything that would cause children to question parental teachings, even if those teachings are counter productive. A parents right to mold their childrens moral outlook is sacred.

 

Oh...yeh. My school didn't teach contemporary literature. We're were more Dostoyevsky, Homer, Hemingway, Harper Lee, etc. It had to be a "classic" for it to be taught in our literature class. However, we could choose contemporary for our own book reports. They felt college was the place for contemporary literature.

 

Go ahead and support that with evidence from this thread. Otherwise, you're just spouting off an uninformed opinion (par for the course when it comes to you), which is what I chastise my students for doing as well.

 

We won't be able to teach much fictional literature for long anyway with the new Common Core Standards coming into effect.

I can teach the same skills with modern, engaging literature as I can with the classics. However, it's much easier to teach the skills when the students are engaged, so I mix in contemporary young adult literature whenever possible and appropriate.

 

Well, I'm sure the kids like that a lot. Do you also let them pick books for class?

 

You mean for independent reading or for whole-class reading assignments?

 

It doesn't really matter what the material is, just the motivation behind it.

 

Do you allow the class to pick books for the whole class? I would have loved that had the nuns allowed it.

 

Unfortunately we only have a few selections per grade that we have enough copies of to furbish an entire class set, otherwise I would. I've toyed with the idea of doing small group "book clubs" where students have 6-8 novels to rank based on interest, then group the students based on those selections and have an assessment that's applicable to all of the novels.