From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: NEWS:Saving the Rainbow Curriculum
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 23:13:29 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Groups mobilize to defend Rainbow Curriculum

By Sara Loring
New York

[The writer is an elementary school teacher and union activist in
the New York City public school system.]

On Dec. 1, New York City Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez
suspended School Board 24 for its refusal to adopt "in principle,
content and intention" the first grade Rainbow Curriculum.

Groups such as People About Changing Education, Center Kids (a
network of over 1,500 area gay and lesbian families), religious
organizations, Educators for Social Responsibility, the Movement
for a People's Assembly among others have organized to defend
multicultural education, including positive images of gay and
lesbian people.

In response, the central board of education took a strong stand
against homophobia and for education that is inclusive of all
peoples.

Last March, the New York Board of Education Division of
Curriculum published the third in a series of multicultural
social studies resource guides. "The Rainbow Curriculum" was
designed to answer the demand from parents and teachers for
updated, non-biased and non-Eurocentric curriculum.

By June, and then throughout the summer, three pages of the 443
page first grade curriculum became the subject of public
discussion.  These pages suggest that within the state-mandated
social studies theme on families, teachers communicate respect
for and positive images of lesbian and gay parents and families.

"It is important for children to see gay and lesbian people as
normal everyday people in our society," the document asserts.
Teachers were told that an environment of acceptance and
validation was necessary so all first-graders would develop
positive attitudes about their own or others' families.

The other 440 pages are devoted to information and strategies
designed to highlight diverse ethnic and cultural information.
Included are: holidays, names, foods, history, immigration, and
much more.

Mary Cummings, the president of Community School District 24 in
Queens--an all-white school board in the midst of a majority
Latino community--has led the anti-gay response against the
curriculum.  Throughout the summer and into the fall right wing
religious forces tried to create a homophobic hysteria among
parents.

Soon after the ultra-reactionary Republican convention,
reactionary forces in the city created a movement to reject the
entire curriculum. These racists focused on one mention of
alternative insemination for lesbian parents and, in a separate
curriculum, on instruction about AIDS and held a protest at the
central Board of Education headquarters.

Unsigned flyers dubbing the Rainbow Curriculum the "gay
curriculum that would teach 6-year-olds to be gay and how to wear
condoms" emerged throughout the city.  The media, as a whole,
referred to the Rainbow curriculum as the gay curriculum.

A coalition will hold a news conference on Dec. 9 at 12:00 noon
at the board headquarters in Brooklyn to show a united response
against homophobia and for moving forward in the area of
multicultural education.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers" on PeaceNet; on Internet:
"workers@mcimail.com".)


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