Neutrality and Other Dimensions

The Washington Post this morning reported on the recommendation by MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast to the Board of Education that the new sex-ed classes should be implemented as they are.

Montgomery County schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast recommended yesterday that new health lessons on sexual orientation and condom use be expanded to all middle and high schools in the fall with only minor revisions, based on the results of field tests at six schools this spring.

The lessons are the fruit of five years of debate on how, if at all, homosexuality should be addressed in sex-education classes. Approved in January and piloted in March, the teaching materials will reach all eighth- and 10th-grade health classrooms in the fall if Weast's recommendations are adopted Tuesday by the school board.

In a memo delivered yesterday to board members, Weast wrote that students and teachers seemed mostly satisfied with the lessons. He suggested no change to their content. New Sex-Ed Curriculum Is Urged for All Schools

Generally the testing went pretty well.

One difference from the usual was the fact that teachers were forced to present the script verbatim and were not allowed to answer questions about the course content. The school district is so afraid of letting a teacher say something wrong that they won't let them say anything.

There is an easy remedy for that.

Board members will have to weigh conflicting recommendations. Weast wants the lessons to go forward essentially as written, but a citizens advisory committee wants board members to add passages stating that mainstream medical and mental health organizations have concluded that homosexuality is neither a disease nor a mental illness.

Weast and his staff oppose adding the material and say they have sought to keep the lessons as neutral as possible. Members of the citizens committee contend that the extra passages would help students cope with their sexuality and help teachers answer their questions.

In January, a divided school board rejected adding such language to the lessons.

The citizens committee made those recommendations last winter, and the Superintendent's staff decided not to include them. The school board had a lively debate on the topic, and in the end decided to leave them out at that time, before the testing, but to wait and see if there were questions that teachers couldn't answer. There were.

Since the school district did not collect questions that were asked in class, we don't know how many there were, but from teachers' and students' comments on questionnaires and in focus groups it is obvious that these were significantly non-zero.

Upon being presented with the pilot test results this week, the citizens advisory committee again voted to urge inclusion of materials from the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatric, and the American Psychological Association. The original recommendation had been that there would be a handout for 8th graders and the materials would be available as teachers' resources in 10th grade, and this was reasserted in the committee meeting.

The committee members were unanimous, except for the CRC and PFOX members, who are on the committee as part of a legal agreement, and who unsurprisingly voted against including the AMA, AAP, and APA recommendations.

With these resources, first of all a lot of students' questions would be answered without them asking -- and there is a concern that students who most need this information may be the most reluctant to embarrass themselves by asking. Further, if teachers had the three articles available to them, they could answer almost all likely questions, giving answers that are supported by the authoritative organizations in medicine and mental health.

I want to go back to the word "neutral."

Neutral implies a midpoint on a continuum. In some situations it implies a balance. Generally, for a politician, the concept of neutrality is good thing, as it implies nonpartisanship, compromise, fairness. You're less likely to make enemies in the short run by being neutral.

There are times when it doesn't mean that. Sometimes it means that you're afraid to take a stand for what's right.

The medical and psychological establishments have investigated the question, and have made their statements. All three of these organizations have released very clear policy documents, easily readable by ordinary people, explaining their official position on sexual orientation, in particular homosexuality. They did that because, having studied the matter, they drew certain conclusions. They concluded there is no rational reason for trying to oppose homosexuality, which is not a choice anyway, and that homosexual people can have perfectly normal, healthy lives.

The neutral position between science and bigotry is not acceptable. It is not a compromise, it is a concurrence that the bigoted view has some validity.

On Tuesday, the school board will vote on this curriculum. As it is, it represents a baby-step forward. At least sexual orientation will be mentioned in the classroom, and some concepts will be taught. But hand-cuffing teachers and keeping students in the dark is not the goal we were hoping for. The school board has one last chance to make it clear that Montgomery County is not neutral when it comes to right and wrong.

Teachers and students who participated in the field tests chafed at the tightly scripted structure of the lessons, and teachers reported confusion about their authority to answer questions posed by students. Teachers were instructed to answer no questions that strayed outside the health curriculum and to refer such inquiries to "a trusted adult," such as a parent or counselor.

But they could easily answer those questions, with a few pages of articles from the medical and psychological experts.