Teaching Tolerance - Classes on homosexuality mulled
Thursday, March 17, 2005
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) will consider allowing lessons on homosexuality drafted by a gay-rights group to be taught in primary schools.
According to a report published 17 March in The Nation the BMA received a request from the Bangkok Rainbow Group that lessons on gays and lesbians be added to the syllabuses of students in grades four through six. If the draft proposal is deemed suitable for the youngsters, it would be applied in about 400 BMA schools within two months, said Pensri Pichaisanit, the BMA’s deputy governor.
“We hope to make teachers and students understand homosexual children better and help [gay and straight students] live more harmoniously,” she said.
Bangkok Rainbow Group leader Natee Teerarojjanaponsg, who is also a BMA committee member, proposed the idea. He said the draft, to be based on his pocketbook “Gay Unwrapping”, would help students understand homosexuality and make it easier for homosexual children to cope. “The idea came to me a long time ago,” he said. “I want children to understand their friends who are homosexual, not to ‘turn’ students homosexual.”
He said many children start forming a hatred of gays in late elementary school, forcing some gay boys “into the closet” and to marry women when they grow up in order to conform to society’s expectations. Their wives become victims, too, Natee said.
Natee’s proposal has encountered serious opposition during the past few days. Opponents say students who are too young might be led into homosexuality by such lessons. Natee argues that waiting to teach them about homosexuality until they are teenagers would be waiting too long.
It would be better to teach such lessons to high school or university students, said Kamolphan Shevaphansri, president of Parent Network. Moreover, the BMA should invite psychologists to evaluate any syllabuses before they are put into action in schools, Kamolphan said.
“It would be more useful to educate students so that in future they can teach their kids not to be homosexual,” she said.
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