The Hanover School Division is sticking to its guns – and the provincial curriculum – by refusing a lesbian mother’s call for middle-school instruction on same-sex unions.
“Middle school teachers can talk about it if a student raises it in class, but then they are directed to discuss it privately with the student,” school board chairman Ron Falk said in a media statement. “We believe this is sensitive matter best raised in the family.”
After her son was allegedly bullied because she was in a lesbian relationship, Michelle McHale asked the school board to teach middle schoolers about alternative family structures, including single mothers and households “with two moms.”
“It has nothing to do with sex ed to say everybody's families are ok,” McHale told the CBC. “It's about people, it's about acceptance, it's about diversity, it's about human rights, really.”
McHale is human resources director for Pride Winnipeg, and Solidarity & Pride Vice-President on the Manitoba Federation of Labour’s Executive Council.
Falk says he has the community behind him. The provincial curriculum states clearly that “that the prime responsibility for education about issues of sexuality, including HIV/AIDS, rests with the family.” The ministry has set out a process for individual boards to consult with parents on what should be taught and in what grades, and the Hanover board followed the process to develop its policy.
Parents in the district are mostly comfortable with the curriculum calling for instruction on human reproduction starting in middle school, but a few parents are opting to pull their children from those classes, Falk said. As for “sensitive topics” such as abortion, homosexuality and masturbation, most parents in the district don’t want them taught, though discussion is allowed.
McHale also wants students to be able to “come out” as homosexuals to teachers or counsellors without them notifying parents, but that goes against district policy. “A policy that requires a teacher to out a student to their parents is dangerous. … We’ve had kids who have committed suicide for less,” McHale told the CBC, admitting she was speaking generally and could give no examples.
To Falk, the idea of keeping a child’s homosexuality from parents is “bizarre. My own personal view would be: ‘Why in the world would we not want the people we love and who love us to know this?"
But might conservative parents stigmatize a child who had just declared him or herself a homosexual? Responds Falk, “Most parents love their children more than anyone else loves them.” He noted that opinion within the district was overwhelmingly behind the board.
In the provincial capital, however, the homosexual lobby feels differently. “For a division to not take this seriously, I would question everyone around that table—every single trustee—how much they truly are committing to their mandate to provide a safe and inclusive school for kids,” Jonathan Niemczak, president of Pride Winnipeg, told reporters.
Middle schoolers in the Winnipeg School Division are already getting the diversity instruction McHale wants to see in Hanover. Same-sex parenting is reflected in library books, DVDs and even mathematics problems.
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