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EDUCATION MATTERS:
Day of Silence may prove resounding
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By DAN KIMBER
April 25 has become a day of student-led action that now involves more than half a million students across our nation. These concerned and activated kids have taken a vow of silence for the day to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying, harassment and physical violence experienced by gay students on campuses across the country and at all levels of education.
The goal of the Day of Silence has little to do with sexual orientation and everything to do with human tolerance. It focuses on a problem that most of this country doesn’t regard as a problem — gay kids being harassed.
The “liberal media” will no doubt find news in this, and Fox will likely uncover an evil “gay agenda” somewhere in the story. The kids involved in this are asking only for tolerance, hoping someday that there might be acceptance for who and what they are. They’re not promoting a lifestyle but only trying to affirm a basic “Do unto others” value that exists in all religions and enlightened societies. They’re not asking to be embraced, but they are, by their symbolic act, asking that we not hurt each other because we are different.
A recent broadcast on a local Armenian channel addressed this issue with homophobic rantings and ravings that might be easily dismissed for their hysteria were they not so hateful. As a result of the program, phone calls and letters are pouring into the school district and individual schools from parents who threaten to keep their children from attending school on the Day of Silence.
Some parents seem to be worried that gay kids (and straight kids who support them) will, by their conspicuous silence on April 25, be promoting, legitimizing, advertising or, if you can believe this, recruiting other children into a deviant lifestyle. That is nothing but pure ignorance and is conveniently covered over by a concern that students will not be “on task,” or, as one parent put it, that they will be “paying attention to why students are silent and not to the lesson in the classroom.”
I want to say to that parent and others so inclined — that’s the idea. Students should pay attention to any, and all, appeals for tolerance. Whether it bats them over the head with curriculum or is subtlety suggested through the quiet protest of their peers, each and every human being is entitled to respect and dignity regardless of perceived differences between them.
The Gay-Straight Alliance club at Hoover High has its origins in something called Project X, which was nothing more than a gathering of students once a week during lunch in a room where they could feel safe and unafraid to discuss problems and questions that they did not feel free confronting with friends or family. A number of these kids happened to be gay, and when word got out to the community that there was a “gay club” at our school, the local marauders of morality raised the hue and cry that indecency (Satan himself) had crept into our schools. In reality, it was just a handful kids who managed to find a brief interlude in their lives where they were not made to feel like freaks and, it must be added, were less inclined to think about ending their lives.
The parents who object to the continuance, or indeed the mere existence of such a club (or their day of silence) should know that the highest rate of teen suicide continues to be among gay teenagers. The message that pounds into their brains and, frankly, breaks their hearts, is that they are not normal; that they have a sickness; that they are an abomination to right-thinking people who hold their scriptures in one hand and wag their finger with the other.
The district’s official position on this subject is not to endorse it. But it doesn’t condemn it either. It recognizes the passion and dedication of any group that protests indiscriminate and unrepentant violence (The day before, April 24, Armenian Genocide Day, half of all of our students are not just disengaged, they’re absent from school.)
Whether the school district endorses this day of silence or not, I will honor it, and I will incorporate it into my teaching. My school needs a good dose of tolerance, especially the young men who pump their fists in solidarity with gay bashers and their ilk and all who would openly persecute people whose sexual orientation is different from their own.
April 25 is not about celebration, commemoration or consecration — it’s about reflection; it’s about listening to what is embedded in the heart more than what is implanted in mind. That’s not in the California Standards.
I think it should be.
DAN KIMBER is a teacher in the Glendale Unified School District, where he has taught for more than 30 years. He may be reached at DKimb8@sbcglobal.net.
The goal of the Day of Silence has little to do with sexual orientation and everything to do with human tolerance. It focuses on a problem that most of this country doesn’t regard as a problem — gay kids being harassed.
The “liberal media” will no doubt find news in this, and Fox will likely uncover an evil “gay agenda” somewhere in the story. The kids involved in this are asking only for tolerance, hoping someday that there might be acceptance for who and what they are. They’re not promoting a lifestyle but only trying to affirm a basic “Do unto others” value that exists in all religions and enlightened societies. They’re not asking to be embraced, but they are, by their symbolic act, asking that we not hurt each other because we are different.
A recent broadcast on a local Armenian channel addressed this issue with homophobic rantings and ravings that might be easily dismissed for their hysteria were they not so hateful. As a result of the program, phone calls and letters are pouring into the school district and individual schools from parents who threaten to keep their children from attending school on the Day of Silence.
Some parents seem to be worried that gay kids (and straight kids who support them) will, by their conspicuous silence on April 25, be promoting, legitimizing, advertising or, if you can believe this, recruiting other children into a deviant lifestyle. That is nothing but pure ignorance and is conveniently covered over by a concern that students will not be “on task,” or, as one parent put it, that they will be “paying attention to why students are silent and not to the lesson in the classroom.”
I want to say to that parent and others so inclined — that’s the idea. Students should pay attention to any, and all, appeals for tolerance. Whether it bats them over the head with curriculum or is subtlety suggested through the quiet protest of their peers, each and every human being is entitled to respect and dignity regardless of perceived differences between them.
The Gay-Straight Alliance club at Hoover High has its origins in something called Project X, which was nothing more than a gathering of students once a week during lunch in a room where they could feel safe and unafraid to discuss problems and questions that they did not feel free confronting with friends or family. A number of these kids happened to be gay, and when word got out to the community that there was a “gay club” at our school, the local marauders of morality raised the hue and cry that indecency (Satan himself) had crept into our schools. In reality, it was just a handful kids who managed to find a brief interlude in their lives where they were not made to feel like freaks and, it must be added, were less inclined to think about ending their lives.
The parents who object to the continuance, or indeed the mere existence of such a club (or their day of silence) should know that the highest rate of teen suicide continues to be among gay teenagers. The message that pounds into their brains and, frankly, breaks their hearts, is that they are not normal; that they have a sickness; that they are an abomination to right-thinking people who hold their scriptures in one hand and wag their finger with the other.
The district’s official position on this subject is not to endorse it. But it doesn’t condemn it either. It recognizes the passion and dedication of any group that protests indiscriminate and unrepentant violence (The day before, April 24, Armenian Genocide Day, half of all of our students are not just disengaged, they’re absent from school.)
Whether the school district endorses this day of silence or not, I will honor it, and I will incorporate it into my teaching. My school needs a good dose of tolerance, especially the young men who pump their fists in solidarity with gay bashers and their ilk and all who would openly persecute people whose sexual orientation is different from their own.
April 25 is not about celebration, commemoration or consecration — it’s about reflection; it’s about listening to what is embedded in the heart more than what is implanted in mind. That’s not in the California Standards.
I think it should be.
DAN KIMBER is a teacher in the Glendale Unified School District, where he has taught for more than 30 years. He may be reached at DKimb8@sbcglobal.net.
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