[xisukar]

>But in Florida there is a law now saying teachers can’t talk about gay people in school.

If only you weren't misrepresenting the Parental Rights in Education bill[1] you'd have a point. There's no reason why a teacher needs to discuss sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. with kindergartens, be that heterosexual or homosexual. That's a private matter that has no place in a classroom, less so in primary grade levels.

[1]: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1834

[snowwrestler]

Hi, you’re just incorrect here. Sexual orientation and gender are perfectly appropriate subjects for young children, and have been part of elementary curricula across the nation for decades.

This is one reason why the Florida bill was opposed by pediatricians, child psychologists, and teachers. The professionals whose job it is know how children develop are aligned against the bill because it goes against quite a lot of research about to help children develop emotionally.

Orientation and gender are attributes that children naturally observe in others and in themselves, even at a young age, and ask their teachers about. Denying them answers helps them not at all, but is useful for stigmatizing the subjects (which is of course the point of the bill).

I noticed you also mentioned “sex” as well, but that is a red herring because no school system in Florida, or anywhere in the U.S. actually, starts sex education before middle school.

[dragonwriter]

> There's no reason why a teacher needs to discuss sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. with kindergartens, be that heterosexual or homosexual.

How do you explain the use of English personal pronouns without referencing sex or gender identity? I mean, I know the that the right is perfomatively “anti-pronoun”, but unless they've decided to exclude them entirely from education...

The same issue exists with traditional honorifics (Mr./Mrs./Miss/etc.); with those you can probably get away with “it was what it is” for specific individuals as a baseline, but are teachers really expect to defer questions about them till later grades?

(It's also very hard to to discuss anything about families, actual or fictional, without, in fact, talking about sexual orientation, and while the bill is superficially written neutrally, it's very clear that the intent is to resolve all these issues of perfectly common childhood things that would become impossible to discuss if it were enforced as written by simply by ignoring then as long as the orientations and identities at issue are heterosexual and cisgender.)

[Jcowell]

> That's a private matter that has no place in a classroom

While I agree that kindergartners may be too young to receive sexual education, I disagree that sex, sexual orientation , gender identities have no a place in the classroom. At least starting in Middle School it’s important to educate children on the realities of the world they are going to see that will include all of these things. I can at least point to Health and History as two subjects that these topics will be relevant in.

[sn9]

Teachers talk to kids about families all the time to illustrate ideas or just to build relationships.

What happens when a student has two dads or two moms?

Homosexuality isn't some abstract idea. Gays have kids and nephews and nieces.

The same goes for all those other topics. There are developmentally appropriate ways of talking about most of them.

[mikkergp]

I wonder if there are actually any classrooms in America where gender identity or sexual orientation aren't discussed. Particularly in grade school. Particularly in a place like Florida.

Edit: actually if you’re up for a serious discussion, you mention gender identity shouldn’t be a topic in primary school. Sometimes I wonder if we have a shared meaning on the terms “gender identity” because I would love to send my kid to a primary school where gender identity isn’t discussed, but the idea is ludicrous, not because of its immorality, but it’s impossibility. gender is one of the most discriminating social institutions we have. Everything about the way our society is organized is designed to socialize Kids into a traditional gender identity, hell months before being born parents throw gender reveal parties to determine if a kid should like pink or blue, so what would this even look like? Same thing with sexual orientation by the way given the prevalence of prince winning over princess stories in childrens media.