Sixth Grade Coming Out ... of a Teaching Career

Two sixth-grade boys in Florida were talking in class. So the teacher made them sit in front of the class and hold hands and tell the class they were gay. That teacher is currently unemployed.

ORANGE PARK, FL -- The Clay County School Board says a Swimming Pen Creek Elementary teacher has resigned due to some inappropriate comments made in the classroom.

Two boys claimed their teacher, Larry Eager, humiliated them in front of classmates Friday in reading class.

The 6th grade boys say they were mouthing words to each other while the teacher was talking.

"He made us sit in the front touching knees and then he kept trying to make us hold hands," said Vinny Fuller.

The boys said Mr. Eager told the other students they were gay. Fuller and Jones said it went on for about 15 minutes while the six other students looked on.

"I was feeling embarrassed and wondering what he was going to do next," said Fuller.

"I was mad and I was sad," said Malcolm Jones. Clay County Students Say Teacher Humiliated Them

Now let me tell you why this is here.

Just last week, the President of the CRC sent an email to a PTA group, repeating some stuff they had sent before about the sex-ed curriculum that was nearly implemented. She included the statement:

While encouraging children to determine their sexual identity – heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual - all material from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) that discusses the health risks of homosexual behaviors was excluded. That is irresponsible.

The same person's presentation at the March CRC Town Hall meeting (commonly known as the Hate-Fest) said something similar:

The new curriculum encourages students, beginning in 8th grade, to "develop your individual sexual identity," i.e., to begin to question their sexual orientation.

On their web site, the CRC tells the world that the curriculum that was proposed:

encourages students to develop their individual sexual identity, i.e. to identify themselves as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

and so on.

This has been one of the CRC's hottest talking points, the allegation that the school district was going to get children to somehow declare publicly, in sex-ed class, whether they were gay or straight. They derived this talking point through misconstrual of an item that was in an early draft of the curriculum.

See what you think here. Let me show you what the curriculum actually said, and you see if you think they're being ... accurate ... in their portrayal of it. The November, 2004 draft of the eighth grade curriculum (but not the final version) had teachers telling their classes:

As we study human sexuality we will discuss how you develop your individual sexual identity.

Now picture those two boys sitting in the front of a sixth-grade class, as embarrassed as anyone can possibly be. It doesn't matter if they really are gay or not (if that concept is even meaningful in sixth grade), that's actually got nothing to do with it, it's just as embarrassing either way. This is what they want you to believe MCPS intended for our kids. They want you to imagine that Montgomery County middle-school students were going to be forced to dress up in tu-tu's, hold hands (fingernails painted, of course) in front of the class, give each other a little "coming-out" kiss, and tell the whole class they're gay. That should be approximately what you picture as you listen to their letters and speeches. They want you to think that their lawsuit saved us from that.

Listen, this Florida teacher is beyond nutzoid. I have no idea what he thought he was going to accomplish with this stunt, if he thought it was funny, if he thought it was in-bounds, or if he'd just reached some existential flashpoint, exploded, and this was like pieces of emotional ash wafting down from the blue expanse of the career he once loved. Because, as parents know, sixth graders will do that to you. They will push you over the edge. That's part of what makes a teacher's job so very hard, you can't let them do that to you, you have to keep control of yourself and your judgment of what's appropriate.

Kids that age don't know if they're gay or straight, they fall in love with movie stars and rock guitarists, they can't tell if they "love" somebody or just want to be like them. The CRC wants you to think that MCPS was going to encourage kids to tell the world what their sexual orientation is, in eighth grade, and that's just dumb. The schools weren't going to do that. This Florida teacher lost his job, and that's appropriate.