Many students, school staff, and LGBTQ rights advocates have vocally opposed these curriculum restrictions, saying they could lead to incomplete and inaccurate lessons, make some students afraid to talk about themselves or their families in class, and exacerbate mental health disparities that already exist for LGBTQ youth. “We need to focus on what matters - core instruction like reading and math.” Kay Ivey, when she signed the state’s new law.
“We don’t need to be teaching young children about sex,” said Alabama Gov. And lawmakers who support these teaching restrictions have argued that elementary school students are too young to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity in class.
Proponents of these measures have said it should be up to parents to decide when and how to teach their children about LGBTQ topics. “By making it harder to have conversations in the general classroom environment, it’s making those issues worse,” Norton said. Watching a slew of laws pass in quick succession - including a law that restricts teaching about race and racism and another law that restricts transgender students’ access to certain school bathrooms - left the students in the club feeling frustrated and isolated. Norton co-sponsors her high school’s GSA club, where students gather to talk about gender and sexuality. “They honestly are so overwhelmed,” said Nashville teacher Cassie Norton of her students. The result is that sometimes it gets avoided altogether.Ĭoupled with other efforts, like those seeking to remove books from school libraries that include themes of sexuality and gender, it’s a climate that’s left many students and educators feeling a sense of whiplash. And lawmakers in Oklahoma and Tennessee have introduced proposals that would go further, restricting teaching on LGBTQ issues in a history or English class, for example, though neither bill has advanced.Īlready these curriculum laws are affecting the choices some educators are making in their classrooms, leaving them and their students unsure about how to talk about LGBTQ content. Ohio, Louisiana, and South Carolina are considering restrictions like Florida’s. Montana, Tennessee, and Arkansas all passed laws last year that require schools to give families advance notice of lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation and allow parents to opt their children out. On Friday, Alabama’s governor signed a law like Florida’s that bans instruction about those same topics for students in kindergarten to fifth grade. While a Florida law that prohibits lessons in kindergarten through third grade about sexual orientation and gender identity has drawn national attention in recent weeks, several other states have imposed similar restrictions.
“It was very much like this odd sense of: So, am I not allowed to mention myself?” “It felt kind of like turning something that’s a fact of history, and life, and my life, into something secret or taboo,” Aneshka said. The omissions and “hint, hint, nudge, nudge” approach frustrated Aneshka, who identifies as queer and uses they and she pronouns. To 17-year-old Aneshka, who asked that their last name be withheld, these were all indications that a new law requiring teachers to notify parents about lessons on gender and sexuality had had an effect at their eastern Tennessee high school.