Sexual Orientation In The Classroom

Have you ever wondered why elementary schools or any schools in general do not include sexual orientation in the curriculum? We do not start to learn about queerness until we are placed in a higher academic environment. Why is that? Is it because they do not think grade school students are mature enough to handle the information? Or is it because they do not want to influence homosexuality as acceptable? I was never taught about the LGBQT community until I started taking communication classes in college. Even when I attended middle school and had to participate in a sex education class, I was never taught about the different sexual orientations that are present in our world today. As a result, I had to learn from my peers what it meant exactly to be lesbian, gay, and bisexual. Just because I thought I knew …show more content…
It was interesting to find out what has been left out in my curriculum and why. For instance, the main topics that were covered in the pre-service education about homosexuality was, “Gay and lesbian families, risk factors associated with sexual orientation, and your program’s students’ attitudes about sexual orientation” (Jennings and Sherwin, 2008, pg. 267). On the other hand, the topics that were less likely to be brought up were “The history of the gay and lesbian movement, the contributions of gay and lesbian individuals, and the origins of sexual orientation” (Jennings and Sherwin, 2008, pg. 267). To be honest, I have not covered any of these topics in my education classes. The only class that came close to covering these topics was my Children’s Literature class. For instance, we did a section on feminist fairytales and then talked about children’s books that were about same sex parents. Unfortunately, those books had been banned from public schools therefore, I never learned anything about sexuality and sexual orientation in-depth until I took a gender and communication