Bizarre Children’s Book About Homosexuality

[mattx]

I wonder what the Daily Mail would think if this ended up in some of our schools ?

Comments anyone ? And notice I am posting under 'General' before some of you get the wrong idea.

 

Bizarre Children’s Book About Homosexuality | SadAndUseless.com

[AngryTechnician]

Though the Wail would probably disagree with the subject matter, I don't find this to be 'bizarre' at all. There are plenty of children's books in our lower school about a plethora of other subjects that are written and illustrated in the same sort of style; that style may seem odd to an adult reader, but they're all like that.

[Dos_Box]

I was looking for the picture that read 'Daddy and his friend go to clubs together', and I'l leave the contents of the picture to your imagination!

[localzuk]

Nothing bizarre about it at all to me. Seems like many children's books I read as a kid, just the topic is about homosexuality.

[AngryTechnician]

I was looking for the picture that read 'Daddy and his friend go to clubs together', and I'l leave the contents of the picture to your imagination!

Crochet club?

[synaesthesia]

Did wonder why they chose to use a very good likeness of Freddy Mercury

[fiendishlyclever]

I thought it was kind of sweet. I'd rather a child read that than play with those Bratz dolls or other toys that promote a sexual image. The fact that the book was teaching about love and positive relationships has got to be a plus?

[Batman]

I thought it was kind of sweet. I'd rather a child read that than play with those Bratz dolls or other toys that promote a sexual image. The fact that the book was teaching about love and positive relationships has got to be a plus?

 

I suppose it depends whether you consider a homosexual relationship to be healthy or not. For some people the fact that it is about homosexuality may nullify any other points it makes.

 

I agree that kids are being presented with too much sexuality, straight or otherwise.

 

There's plenty of stuff in the world that won't make much sense to kids, although if you look at the way the dutch do sex ed (from an early age) it seems to stop the subject becoming taboo... which is better in the long run I think.

[synaesthesia]

There's a shedloads of ideas about how it should be taught to kids - I'd agree with the above, that a more open minded approach from a young age might be the way to go, however plenty of people would like to disagree; certainly when you start adding mitigating factors into it like "religion".

 

How do you teach kids about something that some people consider taboo yet others would find completely natural and fine. Personally, I'll be making sure that the truth is told to my child(ren) from the start, I don't hold out for telling tales of storks, and if they point at a gay couple and ask, I'll be sure to tell them why. For me, the happiness and completeness of my children means more to me than forcing them to grow up with someone else's stereotypes, they can make their own mind up when they have the facts presented to them and make their own judgements when they're mentally capable of doing so.

 

However that may seem very brash or possibly immoral by devout Christians and certainly by others who like to raise their kids in the same way they were.

 

That brings problems for education; when you have a huge mixture of different religions, faiths and ideals, (or lack of) how do you teach them truthfully and respectfully of that? Strict muslims would probably almost find all of the above and that book really rather disrespectful.

[AngryTechnician]

That brings problems for education; when you have a huge mixture of different religions, faiths and ideals, (or lack of) how do you teach them truthfully and respectfully of that? Strict muslims would probably almost find all of the above and that book really rather disrespectful.

Some (thankfully a small minority) of those religions, faiths and ideals also hold views that discriminate on the basis of race or gender, but I would say there is very little support for not teaching racial or gender equality in our schools. It's one thing to argue that we should teach according to the views of particular communities, but when their views amount to harmful discrimination I'm don't think they should be catered for.

 

I both hope and believe that 20 years from now we won't even need books for children to explain that homosexuality is 'normal', in much the same way that you would never see a book these days about why it's 'normal' for mummy to be black and daddy to be white.

[PiqueABoo]

There's a shedloads of ideas about how it should be taught to kids

 

Uh huh - and some of them are a crock including this one, which has the dubious honour of making Reading Tree look really engaging. I've never noticed that kids are quite so programmable. Sprogette is Y2 and past that level of book, but certainly would have got bored in the window when it might have fit (what happened when she randomly picked up one just like that on divorce or something). Charlie & Lola it ain't.

 

And another thing: I don't think they're particularly bothered about what is or isn't "normal" at that age e.g. we haven't had a single comment yet about the lesbian couple + daughter directly across the road.