Get Used to It: Ep. 20, "Education"

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi i'm sheila james kewell and this is get used to it welcome to the premiere episode of our third season we have a really good show planned for you today and welcome back i'm happy to be back the show today is about education and gay and lesbian youth and teachers administrators and the whole issues about our lives in the schools there seems to be a quite a battleground going on out there about education and about whether or not we'll even be allowed to be visible whether our issues can be taught or even discussed whether our lifestyle is a threat to children or perhaps other people's lifestyle is a threat to us and i'm very pleased to have as my guests today jeff horton who is an openly gay a member of the los angeles city uh board of education welcome jeff nice to be here it's really good to have you here my pleasure and bonnie castry who is a two-term uh member of the board of trustees of the huntington beach union high school district welcome bonnie thank you very much sheila it's a pleasure to be here thank you well this is a big subject to cover in an hour and of course i don't expect that we're absolutely going to do it but one of the things i wanted to sort of ask you just to begin with is generally what do you think or have experienced is the experience of gay or lesbian or even gay or lesbian friendly students faculty administrators and board members in these various districts and do they differ among the districts in los angeles we've probably been a little ahead of a lot of districts we've had project 10 which is a counseling program for gay youths and we've had some other programs so i'd say we're a step or two ahead basically though the experience for most gay youth in our schools and gay staff is the same though in that it's a part of their lives that they exclude from school that they hide in school and so we're just scratching the surface of making it something that belongs in school as an item of discussion of recognition but it's still employees and students i think still by and large feel that this is a this is something to keep out of school and a lot of the public has reinforced that view well you were a teacher for 17 years and were you teaching in la unified yes i did and was that that was your experience too yes it was and i was i mean it fits with the general being in the closet of most gay and lesbian people still i was not really out openly gay to my students and it was a part of my life even when i became active in gay educator circles it was still a part of my life that really didn't belong at school i mean i now feel it does belong and i wish that i had made it belong better but that was how i felt what was the downside jeff i mean it's not as if i don't know i went to la unified schools my whole life and though i didn't even think about it at the time it wouldn't have occurred to me at all to come out but what was your experience what did it sort of what was holding you back do you think well uh the in high school it was the reaction of the students i mean i saw their anxiety and prejudice about this issue and so i was afraid of losing credibility with them and you always sort of have a only a tenuous hold on their attention and allegiance anyway and so to do something that was going to drive them away was it was a frightening thought for me the most poignant regret i have about this is what i was not able to do for some of those clearly gay or lesbian students that i had and i saw going through such a terrible time and getting such harassment and i was not really able to do anything for them and i that's my deepest regret on this i mean i would have felt better and i would have educated a lot of students if i'd come out but those few that were really having a terrible time and getting harassed he's very that's what i regret the most not being out and i when i go back to teaching i will be out and it'll be a different story it's hard to go back in the closet when you've been on television and everything but you decided to come out when you were on the school board what was the reason for that decision well i had i was really ready to come out and i and for all the reasons that we get ready to come out gay men and lesbians and i was sort of persuaded not to do it during the campaign and so shortly after i was after i was elected on uh coming out day october 11th um i i came out so there was the personal reason of wanting to be out that those of us who are out have experienced or have heard about but then there was there were still all these students and i'm still thinking of the students that i had had and all the students in the district and how good it would be to have an openly gay school board member i have since learned how hard it is to filter that information out to them they didn't all happen to read the l.a times the next day so i'm still telling them every chance i get well coming out is a process yes right have i come out to you yet exactly so that was my the other half of my motive was not just the personal pleasure of being out which we know is there but the providing uh something a role model or some kind of security for these students so one of the experiences that we have is we're we're hidden we're in the closet we're scared we figure everybody's going to hate us and half the time you know you do get a lot of harassment but when the some of the students do organize and they certainly have recently more then they run into sort of the whole next phase of it i know bonnie your school district is in orange county not that orange county is the only county of the uh 58 in california that uh has some homophobic elements in it but as a trustee you ran into kind of a buzz saw in even being gay friendly didn't you yes i did sheila and i'm still feeling the repercussions of that in the current uh election cycle but essentially what what happened is that when these young people decided to form a group under the equal access law there was response from parents in the community and the parents actually picketed the school and they did the school because the kids wanted to have a gay and lesbian group just to meet yes and that was carried in the in the newspapers and then another group of young students started another organization called the good boys club and so it was kind of a point and encounter point if you will in in terms of uh the hostilities that that were building on on the campus uh and then the the whole issue came before the school board and uh was the issue of whether the kids would be allowed to meet or not yes uh-huh and so you but you had been involved early on in in something else about the equal access doctrine yeah the equal access law was actually uh passed some time ago by the federal government and so it is a federal statute that that the school boards are governed by and what happened in 1990 is there was a decision out of the supreme court called murgan's decision jeff i suspect you've probably read and i don't know she'll if you have or not but an interesting decision in in terms of saying absolutely that the bible clubs uh bible groups could meet and other groups could meet as long as certain criteria were met and among those criteria were that this was not specifically a curriculum driven course uh and and so the the organization was meeting outside the curriculum if you will but that the young people organized themselves had a custodial supervisor in the classroom and then they could meet either before school after school or during their lunch period so that it was not during curricular hours and in 1990 the religious community came to our board of trustees and said that they would like very much to have bible clubs meet and they were very persuasive in their arguments in that we had key clubs meeting and kiwinets and red cross blood groups and wtlc groups and and all meeting and why was it that we were not allowing bible clubs to meet and i was the board member who said well you know why are we not if this is a supreme court decision it seems to me that we should look at the decision that we need to talk with our attorney who advises us regularly and we need to meet with the religious groups and make sure that what we're doing is both fair and also legal so we looked closely at the policy and we actually wrote a policy then that conformed with the law so that all of the groups would come within the protection of the law and there was no gay or lesbian group at this point it was really the religious and essentially the religious what we call the religious writer the radical right that was insisting that this was a right of all students and it should include the bible study groups and the strange part about it was sheila that at that 1990 board meeting when we were talking about the the actual policy that was finally implemented i can remember saying at that board meeting with a number of the people in the audience you know this even means that the ku klux klan if in fact they're not doing anything illegal on campus can meet and everybody's shaking their heads yeah what made you think of the ku klux klan i'm not sure all right so so they won that fight and essentially that's a fight by what are pretty much as they see it outsiders at that point fighting for inclusion right so now we fast forward three years and and this group of uh young people and they as i understand it the youngsters are both gay and lesbian but also heterosexual youngsters who are supportive of the gay and lesbian youngsters so it was a mixed group of youngsters who got together as a support group and we're talking together as i understand it with each other about what are the issues probably jeff much of what you weren't able to talk about and and talking about you know their feelings and what was happening to them and um this reaction came from the community in in very short time uh with the youngsters on the the campus organizing and then the uh the parents picketing in so they came to the school board meeting in december and the question before the board was do we leave the policy in place which provides for the limited open forum under the law or do we close the form which essentially means either all groups can meet as long as they meet the criteria and are not doing anything illegal or no groups can meet so i asked the superintendent of schools to find out for us exactly how many groups were on all of the campuses and there are some 70 groups among our seven campuses and i spoke out and said that i think that the limited open forum is working and that it was my position that we not close the forum so did the people who had been arguing for the open forum in 90 in order to get bible study included were they now arguing against the open forum because gay and lesbian groups would be included a few of them were sheila but most of them were arguing that we should keep the forum with the limited open forum but we should exclude the student alliance from meeting and their thought processing behind that as i have tried to understand it is that there are sodomy laws on the books and they the the innuendo was that that in fact something illegal was going on on our campuses so it didn't meet the criteria the supreme court case because it was uh something encouraging illegal activity yes so they hadn't actually read many of the laws in california i guess so i think the old and so um i stood up for the the fair and legal implementation of the policy that we have and so you've been you're being punished yes and what how are they campaigning directly against you on on this sort of using us as the you're a fellow traveler or something that's a portion of the campaign but but the major thrust of their campaign is around fiscal responsibility and they're saying that i've been fiscally irresponsible that our district is in trouble and well you know it's been interesting to me because there are a number of um radical right organizations that you know meet regularly as most organizations do to try to plan a strategy and one of the strategy seems to be this kind of stealth strategy because openly targeting school districts and saying we want to have a religious curriculum put in place didn't seem to be working as well or or is it i mean do you see a struggle though in l.a unified it would be maybe more subtle i don't know do you see a struggle in the school district over just subject matter and this is an acceptance question multiculturalism that kind of stuff jeff there's some struggle in l.a unified i think the cities are going to be later in the strategy for these groups i think they're starting in suburban and rural districts but we we had we in l.a unified we recognized june as gay and lesbian pride month and we've encouraged the schools to do something during that month and many of them have and every year for three years now we've increased the number well this year we had a little attempt at a boycott of the schools on june 1st to protest gay and lesbian pride month and by the scope of the district 640 000 students strong it was not successful but in three or four secondary schools in certain parts of the city which are very conservative there was some success and this was basically organized by groups like that are attacking those that are attacking uh bonnie many of them outside la unified so it is there um but we're not getting the kind of organized effort i don't think yet in the city that we're seeing in orange county and northern l.a county and some of the suburban districts but clearly that the issues are there to be exploited when they get ready and feel strong enough to move in on us i think well it seems like we're a ready target in these past couple of decades the more visible you become the more of a target you become and we're definitely the issue that the radical right is using you know for a good deal of fundraising that's for darn sure but in terms of education itself why is it you think this has become such a focus uh sort of a place although i don't think either of you would have thought to make this the battleground about lesbian gay issues certainly i don't imagine you woke up one morning and said oh i think i'm just going to go in there and you know make this an issue why though why the schools why has this become such an important battleground in the larger sort of war about values well i think if you have a a vision of how you think the world should be as people in the religious right-wing do they have a vision a clear picture of how they would like the society to be that gives you the energy and the staying power to adopt a long-term strategy to implement that vision and that means getting to the education of young people and to implement in that strategy you have to wait a while i mean you have to wait till you try and get kids inculcated in a certain attitude and headed in a certain direction and then it's a while before it all sort of bears fruit in the laws and so forth so it's a long-term strategy but it is a powerful strategy and it needs to be countered with an equally compelling vision a more compelling vision uh it's put in its place i mean we can't just operate at the state legislature level and leave the schools to somebody else and i as a a gay activist as a gay school board member a gay teacher it's become clear to me that i have as much work to do in the gay and lesbian community persuading us who have been scared away from children and educational issues intentionally and who kept out of that arena as much as possible it's as much my job to persuade our community to pay attention to this that not only are our gay and lesbian kids hurting out there but all kids are suffering from this so we have got to get more invested in this and see and have a vision of how we want society to be open inclusive democratic which is the opposite of what they're talking about and move forward on this agenda by looking at school districts what's happening in huntington beach union and other districts in orange county in north county should be as important to gay and lesbian political activists as senator races presidential races because not only are we creating future candidates there we are affecting the lives and attitudes of children i think there's a global perspective on it too jeff and i agree with with everything that you've said at this point but when the pot of money becomes smaller and smaller and as resources shrink people tend i think to become far more conservative and they tend then to be able to have someone else feed on their fears and so for the homophobics in the world you folks are absolutely wonderful targets because there aren't enough resources and so they get into this this feeding frenzy almost and i think 187 is is a symptom of that in terms of you know if we throw out all the illegals out of the schools then we won't be paying to educate them well you know we would all say hell but we're just paying for ignorance down the line and right exactly well i think it is true that it har it's interesting because the the way you can harness hatred uh it's almost like the dumbing down of a school population by withholding information or you know giving disinformation which of course is the way i feel about the cultural mythologies about gay and lesbian but it's interesting too what sort of to tying it together what you said about keeping us away from children i it's i always think there's a reason for a cultural mythology beyond the the obvious and to characterize us as sexual predators when everybody knows that the huge percentage of so-called sexual predators are straight men you know because that's if you just look at the rap sheets and the crime sheets that's the way it is still the mythology about especially gay men is a very useful tactic for keeping them from being teachers keeping them from being out as teachers keeping them from or us from saying who we are in the school environment and i had never thought before about the importance of that sort of that enforced invisibility that's ratified by this mythology it's not just in schools i mean it's in nursing and pediatrics in parenting right right parenting well the same reason i think and i always link it with the whole issue of gender i mean we do put the lie to all the dicta about how boys and girls are supposed to be because we violate that inherently i mean in at least one respect so in terms of who we are turned on by if in no other way so it's hard to maintain a rigid segregation of the two genders if you have these other people these gay men and lesbians not to mention bisexuals in the picture it just you can't have a clear division boys have to be this way so i mean i that's where we attach in terms of what we threaten and so i think that accounts we're going to keep us totally out of the out of the picture when it comes to raising the next generation which is what we are denied is the right to participate in that fundamental human activity of raising the next generation and i think bonnie your experience in simply thinking that you were acting as a fair and decent human being and supporting democracy and you know pluralism which has sort of been aren't we built on this rock here um also shows what happens when you align yourselves with it with a disfavored minority because not only do they use us in order to keep the girls being girls and the boys being boys because if the boys stray they're called and if the girls stray they're called dyke but if you even do what you think is only fair you get punished too for being a sympathizer i guess is that been your experience that is my experience and you know as we talk about this the other night at a forum where all candidates were asked questions i was the only one who was asked the question about equal access and i was asked that question twice as if i could have responded any differently the first time a second time than i did the first time and so it just came to light for me jeff as you were speaking that yeah that that targeting and that uh going after really does happen and that that's a very low level of harassment but that's that's what's going on well and you can imagine as the how the children feel about it because everything is so exacerbated when you're young you have your you know your peer group and if they don't affirm you you have nowhere to go i mean you can't you know it's not your parents not your community there is nothing but the schools which may be the other reason why schools are such an uh uh appropriate target i guess for everybody not only are we really soaking up values in schools when we're kids but we're so dependent on that arena for just about everything because what what do we have outside of the schools when we're kids and if you look uh at other civil rights movements uh certainly of the african-american community and the latino community and to some extent the women's community i think they were led more naturally to schools i mean there was always a component of the civil rights movement among youth and in the schools we haven't really achieved that yet partially because we don't have that generational link that racial groups have i mean you can't rely on the parents of gay kids to be their advocates unfortunately i mean we may get to that but and so i think that's part of why we haven't gotten involved in the struggle in the schools although it is beginning and what is going to really push it forward are the young people in the schools themselves the gay and lesbian young people who emboldened by an adult movement not so much paying attention to them as other things but still emboldened by that they're going to start demanding their rights and that has happened in huntington beach that's what's going to drag us all into this i hope we're going to take a break just for a minute and i want to come back to the theme of sort of the connection to other movements and also what positively we do do and can do uh in the districts and in the individual schools so don't go away we'll be right back at first we didn't know what to think he said he was gay we thought we had done something i was so angry so hurt we didn't know where to turn talking to other families at parents flag was a lifesaver now we're closer than ever she's the same daughter she always was we love him just as much as always parents flag helped us through it you are not alone talk to us we understand for the parents helpline nearest you call 1-800 for family here's one time it doesn't matter who your neighbor is here's the other life's too short stop the hate hi welcome back to get used to it i'm sheila james kuhl your host and today we're talking about gay and lesbian youth and teachers and school districts and education and all of the issues that combine our community and the struggles and joys etc and schools and i talked to jackie goldberg who is an openly lesbian member of the los angeles city council who was a member of the la unified school district board about these issues in city council chambers so first of all what's the experience of gay and lesbian children and teachers in the schools well it's still pretty negative most kids are still closeted heavily closeted even the kids they hang out with don't know they're gay and they do that because there's still a barrage of jokes it's still okay on the sports fields in particular but just about anywhere else and so there's just a very large num large amount of kids and teachers in hiding teachers no longer fear they'll lose their jobs at least in a school district like los angeles unified but they still fear harassment and we've had teachers harassed by students with principals unwilling to step in and provide protection for the teacher we've had teachers harassed by other teachers we've had teachers harassed by administrators we've had kids harassed by all of the above and provided very little or no protection and this is in a school district that's had some intense efforts on this area so you know that in places where there there's no support at all um it's it's much worse now i don't want to say it hasn't gotten better because that's not true either the fact that we can have a gay prom the fact that we have project 10 the fact that when my last year of teaching which was a couple of years ago before i came on the school board actually a year and a half ago a kid came out on friday forum in my class in front of all of his peers and you know i mean you could have heard a pin drop when he did it but he got tremendous support from from those kids what happens to kids who come out well it depends on the setting the young man who came out in my class was embraced by his classmates found out that one other of his classmates was gay that nobody knew about and i think where you have a group of friends that are really good friends and supportive teenagers are probably better off coming out it's the kid who's tend to be isolated behind being gay or lesbian that really has a tough decision because coming out may just exacerbate the isolation and that's when we get kids who end up with substance abuse or even suicidal ideation and and that's we we have a higher than average uh suicide rate for gay and lesbian kids in this city in this country because at some point they are so isolated family isolation school isolation they just feel like if anybody were to find out i'll die and l.a unified's taken some steps about this haven't they well the support the school district gives to project 10 is a very important tell a little about project project 10 is a counseling program which is believed by some republicans to this day in the uh in the state legislature to be recruiting people into the gay lifestyle which i think is always one of my favorite things that the right wing says about lesbians and gays is that you could recruit somebody with our great wide acceptance [Laughter] and love and high esteem in which we are held in this society is a really good recruiting tool to get people to come into a hated group i think that's really a tough sell actually if you're going to recruit people but be that as it may it is a counseling program that was started by dr virginia uribe at one high school fairfax high school that's now spread to most of the high schools and most of the middle schools in the district which simply gives young people an opportunity to explore their own sexuality with a counselor confidentially their parents sexuality because we've got a lot of kids whose parents are gay and or they're just their feelings that gee i don't know i have these feelings for this boy and i'm a boy does that make me homosexual or for a girl with a girl and it's an opportunity to explore these things in a safe and confidential environment i can go now to a lesbian or gay prom i can take my partner i can feel totally comfortable but it's the other prom it's an alternative prom i'm not going to my own right what do you think about that i think we're moving i think that's a step in the direction of being able to go to your own prom at your own school i mean that's the ideal um it's always nice to be able to go where you're completely safe and comfortable so you may have both you may not eliminate one to do the other but right now it's a major step so i support the separate prom but i also support saying to those principals and activity directors and senior class sponsors what are you doing to make it possible for lesbian and gay kids at your school to feel comfortable coming to their own prom right here at x high school in the recent past we've seen an explosion of right wing fundamentalists of radical right conservatives running for school boards and everybody's talking about it as a tactic for the right wing uh have you seen this and if so why would they switch their focus i don't think they ever did you see uh for a very long time the right wing were the only people on school boards uh it's only as some of us in the 50s late 50s 60s and 70s said hold it no no no no no no no no schools can't be in the captive of one ideology here it's got to be more uh um you know integrated into into looking at all of the various needs of kids and and cultures so more of people like myself began to run for school board and then the right wing found itself largely losing seats and now it's in the process of trying to recapture what it didn't ever have to even work for they were mostly uncontested races now do you think finally that it's been important for you to be visible i mean out and active and also um active in in a number of sort of making connections between communities and between oppressions right um that's i think it's important uh i think anybody who is lesbian or gay or bisexual should be out unless it's dangerous physically to them or unless the costs are beyond what they could bear something dr uribe taught me is it's a continuum you do not have to go hold a press conference with the la times to be out just pick a target or a goal each week each month each year tell one more friend that you know is a friend of yours and if you do things in increments i think that most people will find that they that they may have at first only a corner of their life where they don't have to hide but i do think we're headed in the right direction and kids are becoming more accepting they really are people are being more sensitive not fast enough for anybody's taste certainly not mine but i do see a positive trend in where a system like los angeles unified is going welcome back to get used to it um today as i indicated we're talking about education and my guests are jeff horton who is a member of the la unified school board openly gay member and bonnie castry who is a trustee of the huntington beach union high school district welcome back uh we were talking uh about a whole range of subjects i think around education but before our break we were talking about i think the kind of the relationship between this sort of gay and lesbian issue as a civil rights issue and other civil rights issues and what you i remember you saying jeff about how parents have been deeply involved in sort of bringing to light the issues of other students or groups of students but that it's more difficult for gay and lesbian students because often we don't have gay or lesbian parents going in there and saying yeah this is what my family is like but it seems to me that the restrictions kind of or not wanting the issues to be aired is very similar to what it's been like for other civil civil rights groups i mean the african-american students could not have felt comfortable in schools certainly when i was uh going to school in the 50s to see how invisible they were in in history and social studies and government and all that stuff every social movement has a sort of a dimension in the schools and you know with the african-american movement it was to see that the curriculum reflected african-american interests and achievements to see that school practices and activities reflected the interests of african-american students to see that all these dimensions of the african-american community were represented in the schools even as the movement was fighting in congresses and legislatures for the legal parts of the their demands and similarly with gay and lesbian issues we need these dimensions that are in the schools but we have to rely on the broader community more than on just parents of gay and lesbian kids because of because we can't always rely on them so we have to call upon all these childless gay men and lesbians who have been such great uncles and aunts to get involved in their schools in some way on behalf of gay and lesbian kids they don't even know and may never meet although you know we're pretty visible now as parents more and more and what they've been calling the gaby boom i guess a lot of friends adopting or a lot of lesbian couples having children etc yes but well you were talking about sort of the issue of students being able to meet on campus which is one aspect of visibility but what about the curriculum isn't there a big struggle around the curriculum in how about in your school district bonnie there is a struggle around curriculum and in in my school district it it hasn't come to the the for at this point in time um we still uh are teaching through the the health curriculum and the biggest fight that we're having is the abstinence issue and oh yeah the the phone calls that i've been getting during this particular campaign are around if i'm not willing to only teach abstinence and to have the curriculum reflect that there are in fact ways that if if a student decides not to remain abstinent that they can protect themselves from pregnancy and disease and and everything um that they won't vote for me and that goes right back to that same movement i mean there's a whole core of issues sheila that that go back to the extreme well the federal laws in a sense been kind of taken over by that where it's my understanding the federal law requires that as an aspect of the health education in if if sex education is taught that abstinence must be taught as the preferred method of birth control if you like or of you know that non no sexual activity is sort of the preferred approach though schools are allowed to teach about uh other aspects of sexuality are they not i think everybody agrees we would i mean we all agree that we would caution young people to be cautious about starting sexual activity the question is whether you then allow for the fact that they're going to make up their own minds and that's a key point because this abstinence-only curriculum doesn't take into account even the possibility that they'll make a decision contrary to what we're advising them and uh obviously they're going to so this abstinence only really just if you make a decision other than what i've said then you're not even in my picture here you know you're some totally off the well that's sort of the essence of the struggle isn't it whether in the larger sense whether students are taught critical thinking right or whether they are taught the rules right and that's always been the struggle of education it's not only american education it's it must be the theory from the earliest uh you know chips on stones yeah socrates before socrates probably some people who were living in caves were trying to decide you know do we tell them the truth or and let them make it up for themselves or do we tell them what we want them to believe um and that's that's a struggle when we call it right wing i think a lot in a lot of cases we do mean that part of the populace that wants people to follow a prescribed path relatively unquestioningly and that's that makes us because we are outsiders we are path breakers by virtue of having been marginalized all of through all of history in essence and it seems to me that it makes us a danger as creative thinkers i mean we are artists and poets and you know uh sort of the the creative minority you think oh that's where you find all those gay men and lesbians are in the social movements saying things have got to change systems have got to change justice is injustice those are both very dangerous polls i think of of thinking for yourself and i can imagine when you combine that with the fact that when people think about lesbian or gay people they think about sex that that's what we're about and that is such a taboo subject maybe because it's a such a core part of individual identity you know that we become a danger on all of these thresholds so what does a district or a school or an individual teacher or student do to counter this well i think it's sufficient to really act on and believe in the premise that the school should be safe and welcoming for all students that all kinds of activities and guarantees flow from that and it means for example that you have to look at every student and at every group of students and say do they feel safe and do they feel welcome here and if not what do we have to do to see that they are part of that is simply eliminating harassment and persecution part of that is seeing that they are acknowledged by the school that they have activities that meet their interests that the curriculum has them in it so they feel whether they're a racial minority an immigrant a woman or whatever that they feel connected to the curriculum all that comes from believing that this school is for every child and we're going to meet every child's needs both individually and in the groups that they come in and that's the basic premise and if we believe that and act on it we're going to be led to all kinds of things that are going to make it come true for gay and lesbian kids as well and jeff do you find that i do at least from a board perspective that when i look at all of our board policies in terms of access and i don't mean the equal access issue but in terms of how people access what whatever it is that's going on be it our safe secure schools which is the number one priority on all of our campuses making sure that kids have peer mediation programs so that they can learn listening skills and begin to work together and all of these activities begin to break down those barriers they they create an environment in which critical thinking takes place but my sense is that it's those critical thinking skills that are really being attacked it's because we're saying you don't go to school for a prescribed set of somethings the rules right that we then get into trouble as educators and as board members because we're saying it's okay for the kids not to agree with us as long as they've got a rational reason for that yeah i think that is at the heart of it i mean we're talking about a movement here which has as you said as its premise that you follow the rules you get handed a set of rules and you follow them whether it's the bible or whatever you're given a set of rules you follow them if we then teach you should question whatever you get come to your own conclusion consider the rights of others consider everybody's interests learn to work with others and learn to come to a conclusion then together with others that's a very different animal and that is what you run up against ultimately but when you get it to that point of definition at least everybody knows what's at stake that we have people who believe in democracy and pluralism and people who don't and that's the decision that was a big struggle with the class test wasn't it yes i mean the the uh the concern as i understood it as a as a lay person with the class tests was that students were asked open-ended questions like what do you think about this or can you think of a circumstance in your life where someone let you down and the right wing apparently thought that that was too much inter uh um trying to find out about their what was going on in their families um and asking them to think i mean the alternative was here's a set of questions there's right answers there's wrong answers if you don't give the right answers you fail as opposed to hear open-ended questions we're going to judge how you think how you attempt to answer can you be coherent that kind of thing i guess it just depends on what you think people are supposed to do when they grow up i mean they're maybe that's the the essence it may be stating the obvious but the essence of why the schools are at the center of the struggle because it's not just about what you experience in school it's as you said it is investing in the long term schools are investing in the long term we talk about our young people but it's not just making them happy today or making them smart today it's in in a sense what are we building for california what are we building for the future and i suppose if you have a populace that you can get a knee-jerk response from by simply using a trigger word like immigrant for instance then in essence i think the education system may have let us down although it is interesting when you see as more information gets out whether it's on the initiatives or whether it's on any subject matter like gay and lesbian people people are much more thoughtful when i was going through my campaign and going door to door i would never get very far because i'd always oh sure i'd love to come in for some lemonade and talk endlessly about issues and the voters are not into sound bites frankly individually they're not the problem is of course we don't have time to have lemonade with every single voter and say let's explore how complicated these issues are but generally people are hungry for information and so i think that when students are given the chance to make these kinds of critical decisions they feel better about the process they may even come to the same conclusions that the right wing wants them to come to it's not a foregone conclusion frankly what i think liberals and progressives always risk is that we allow people to come to decisions and they we may not like them they may decide they hate lesbian and gay people you know but you've got to trust that that's sort of that liberty notion that freedom notion so what else have the school districts done specifically in the area of perhaps helping lesbian gay students or teachers or gay friendly parents teachers and administrators to sort of work in a more open atmosphere sort of how do you counter this stuff well i think you just hammer away at the equal access issue i mean you just say we've got a group of students here that need something how can we provide it when we first introduced this i was a teacher at the time when we first introduced it at the national education association in 88 a position that would have said all students deserve the right to counseling on sexual orientation issues that was appealing to the educator and people and ask them to put aside any personal attitudes they have but to come forward as an educator and say this is a kid in need and i we're going to have to do something and if you let yourself be driven by that in advancing the cause of gay and lesbian students i i think i don't see i mean you win a lot that way as opposed to this is the gay adult community's agenda or something that is a red herring and i've had many debates on this what i found is if i stick to we got a group of kids they get yelled at they get called names they get harassed what are you going to do i mean what can we do about them forget me forget all these people marching and everywhere what about these kids we got to do something for them they've got a right to come to school to go to class to pass their class and not to fear going home and come to school every day you tell me how we stop the harassment and once you get people down that path then you can take them to all kinds of things curriculum activities and so forth one of the ways that that came to my attention right after the equal access issue was reinforced in our district and and we kept our policy it did not go away so we still have the limited open forum but shortly after that the dress code came forward and not for uniforms but for a dress code that looked for making sure that there was compliance and not gang regalia on the young people and not baggy pants so they couldn't hide weapons and things and it was brought to our attention at a board meeting that in fact we had said about t-shirts that they shouldn't be antichrist and they you know shouldn't have religious overtones and all but that we had said nothing at all about sexual orientation immediately put it into the dress code now you know that's one place where the board can have impact in terms of setting the whole tone for a safe environment for students so you couldn't have a t-shirt that was itself a form of harassment like you know i hate you death to all or whatever that's right on the other hand you couldn't have one that says nobody knows i'm a lesbian right well who does that harass well it doesn't seem to harass anyone although um i think there was some notion that you know these outrageous arguments are made that you invade my privacy by making me face the fact that you're gay or something and these arguments i think are not sort of based in good legal theorem you said something bonnie that was interesting to me too as a you're a lifelong mediator as your profession and uh in terms of sort of conflict resolution because it seems to me that where the adults are out there sort of shouting at each other and trying to essentially uh unelect you and do all of these things at that level i find that the students themselves for the most part are very troubled about all of the this shouting and would really rather see if there's not some way to work through some of these conflicts and i wonder whether mediation techniques are used on the campuses to kind of defuse some of this stuff but as well as as to educate we are using them and actually we're using peer mediation uh techniques yellow where where we first are going in and teaching teachers the the techniques that they can integrate conflict management skills into the curriculum because it's applicable in many areas of curriculum and then teaching students to mediate and at a number of our schools we have students who have now graduated gone on both to college as well as into jobs and called back and said that they're starting mediation programs in their job so i mean it's a lifelong skill that makes sense it teaches good listening habits it teaches you how to get to the issue and then find out what people's interests are it's so important to teach people how to operate in a peer environment because that's what democracy is is assuming we're all in a peer environment and operating and so to teach students to operate with peers as opposed to operate with authority is a very important distinction and there's plenty of authority over students i mean there's no lack of that so to begin to introduce elements of peer power and working with peers to solve problems it's a basic democratic skill you've got to have it it's interesting too because there was a conference not long ago called listening to generation x that i was invited to and the notion was that elected officials would go and sit at a table with 10 young people and not say a word and listen and topics were given or assigned or drawn for the table and it was very thoughtful and i walked into that room and it was such a rainbow and it wasn't just a four color rainbow sort of like you see but even you know the asian component was itself a rainbow and it was a rainbow in terms of sexuality too i mean there were children and and young people who identified as gay or lesbian or bisexual or you know who just hung out with people who were because it was the whole notion of breaking down these these very rigid lines seemed to be a big part of what generation x was really interested in and i found them fascinating and uh you know very smart and and motivated not at all um having given up you know on anything very vocal and one of the things that struck me was that it was an adamant part of the rainbow that gay or lesbian people where it wasn't just about color it was about the rainbow was a larger notion to them and they said they they said they thought their generation was more integrated more multicultural than any had that had come along partly by virtue of the fact they have to be in the schools are more mixed than they've ever been two years ago when we had gay pride month there was a lot of controversy at the district level and one reporter went to a number of high schools and talked to kids there and the difference between all the controversy that had played out on the talk shows and everywhere and all these kids saying what's the big deal i mean of course we have some here we think they should be part of it i mean we're not worried at all we had recently in los angeles we had our second annual gay lesbian and bisexual youth conference and had over 300 kids this year increase over last year come together for a day at occidental college and um it was a similar rainbow now these were all gay or lesbian or bisexual kids but they were their own rainbow and spent the day talking about careers and their future and all kinds of things a very empowering thing that's why i say what i said earlier which is these young people are going to pull all of us along after them well and what about the prom i mean the interesting thing la unified is has a whole commission right essentially devoted to gay lesbian youth issues right yes and had a prom where people could bring their significant others or dates or whatever if they were gay or lesbian now but jeff what do you think i mean this is a thing where you have to go to the prom somewhere else instead of with your friends well we we would all like to get to the point where same-sex couples can come to the high school prom and not and feel comfortable of course we want to get there i don't think we're there in most high schools most kids would like to go to their high school prom but beyond that they want to go to aprom with someone that they are turned on by i guess i mean i went to my prom but it was a sort of platonic experience enjoyable but platonic um you know i would have loved to go to prom with someone that i was turned on by you know a romantic date um and so that's why we had this problem kids came from all over southern california because there's not been able to go to the prom with someone with your honey with someone you're sweet on is what a loss you know to kids and that's something that a lot of people don't even think about what a gay and lesbian kid might miss and how that might affect them so we're going to keep doing that and we're going to also keep pushing for the proms and dances at the schools to be friendly to all kids jeff you said something that triggered for me the the whole issue of people don't think about it i think not only do people not think about it what came out in our hearings in december and january from the adult population was somehow if we continued to have the young people deny their gay and lesbian rights that then they would somehow turn their heads around and become heterosexual right right again just a refusal to face reality but but it was like if the adults deny it then then the kids will follow it's connected with their view on the abstinence i mean we're just going to deny that they might choose to be sexually active we're just going to act on the assumption that they'll all follow this rule i mean it's no nothing ism uh pure and simple well it also i think is a part of the a larger strategy that has been kind of effective if you think about it if you make someone invisible enough if you make them feel ashamed of themselves or what they are or might be it can help the pressure is supposed to change behavior and it seems to me that the interesting thing about lesbian and gay people and especially young people is that it really doesn't it forces you into a closet you may feel ashamed but you are still lesbian or gay because it is such an essential part of who you are and i think the kids really know this so it seems as though the strategy though it is used often to make people feel ashamed of who they are and change and either assimilate or hide is really a losing strategy i mean i feel very hopeful about the the you know the work that you both do because in essence you open the door of the closet a little bit and you say we know you're going to be the way you are anyway and we love you come on out and it is uh i i i have to say it's an essential part of saving the lives of our kids who have a much higher suicide rate than you know kids who are not gay or lesbian or who think don't think they are even even our some of our kids aren't sure so i want to thank you very much for your work and i want to thank you very much for being on the show we've just come to the end of our time and um it's been a fascinating discussion i hope that you will get involved in your local schools if you have kids or if you don't this is about us about our state about our country and about our lives and i know that you know that gay and lesbian people are there and that gay friendly people are there and what we say to you always every month get used to it [Music] you