Welcoming Schools would make schools safer for all students

A guide to help teachers and school administrators combat bullying is taking a hit by social conservatives who claim it's merely a Trojan horse meant to indoctrinate students on "homosexual behavior." But students, parents and school officials see the Welcoming Schools guide as a useful tool to combat growing anti-gay bullying in Minneapolis schools.

The concern over Welcoming Schools reached a fever pitch last week when Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten penned what advocates call a "hit piece" on the guide. Kersten's column aimed to expose what she calls the "real agenda" (or was that "homosexual agenda"?) behind the curriculum. But her heavy-handed column was followed only a day later by a contrasting counterpoint by her paper's editorial board: After seeking more information on the guide from Out4Good, the Minneapolis-based program charged with implementing Welcoming Schools, it published a glowing endorsement of the guide calling it a "worthy" and that "such a program is overdue."

"Minneapolis is considering using it on a pilot basis in three elementary schools -- Hale, Jefferson and Park View -- because staff members at schools around the district asked for help," the Star Tribune wrote. "The district uses other anti-bullying programs, but none that specifically addresses gender stereotypes or anti-gay harassment."

And that's been the point of the guide all along -- to supplement existing programs. Kersten claimed that the curriculum ignores other types of bullying. "It says relatively little about bullies' traditional targets," she wrote, "kids who are overweight, short or the wrong skin color, for example -- and places heavy emphasis on anti-gay name-calling."

It might not be traditional in the "traditional family" sense, but anyone who has grown up in public schools during the last five decades has seen or experienced anti-gay bullying. It's the most prevalent and underreported form of bullying in schools: Gay and lesbian students fear being outed if they report bullying and straight students who experience anti-gay bullying are afraid they'll be labeled gay if they report. But typical anti-bullying programs don't cover LGBT issues.

Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green gives some startling statistics about how damaging anti-gay bullying can be -- even for straight students. "In the 28 random shootings in US schools between 1982 and 2001, nearly all the boys who committed the violence had stories of being constantly bullied, teased and 'gay-baited' -- not because they were gay, but because they were different from the other boys; shy, artistic, theatrical, musical, non-athletic or 'geekish,'" he wrote. "Indeed, according to a nationwide survey, children said they feared anti-gay harassment more than any other kind of name-calling. And this happens to children who don't come from a family with a GLBT member."

Minneapolis had been working to address a growing problem of anti-gay bullying in the schools long before Welcoming Schools. The district's health education standards require students from second grade and up to learn about different family structures, including gay and lesbian families, and for students as young as kindergarten age to learn about what makes people different, including LGBT people.

Kersten asserts that Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green was trying to pull a fast one on district residents by not being up front with the Welcoming Schools guide's emphasis on anti-LGBT bullying. She quotes Green as saying that guide is "a tool to combat bullying, by focusing on diversity, gender stereotyping and name-calling." Kersten adds "but the curriculum's underlying social/political agenda leaps from every page."

But if Kersten read the paragraphs directly preceding this cherry-picked sentence, she would know that Green's statement on the guide was explicitly about anti-LGBT bullying.

Further, Kersten says that the guide's teaching "on 'family diversity,' drums into kids the idea that 'traditional families' are outdated."

The guide says nothing about trashing traditional families; in fact, it seeks to create a welcoming environment for students from traditional families as much as it does for students from non-traditional ones. Ellen Kahn, director of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation Family Project, said last week, "The Welcoming Schools Guide is a comprehensive resource designed to transform elementary schools into fully welcoming learning environments for all students and their families. The Guide is meant to reflect the real fabric of our diverse communities -- children raised by single parents, grandparents, multicultural families, 'traditional' families, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents."