From The Telegraph:
Lesson plans have been drawn up for pupils as young as four, in a scheme funded with a £35,000 grant from an education quango, the Training and Development Agency for Schools.
The initiative will be officially launched next month at the start of "LGBT History Month" – an initiative to encourage teaching about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual issues.
The lesson plans, spread across the curriculum, will be offered to all schools, which can choose whether or not to make use of them.
But critics last night called the initiative a poor use of public money which could distract from the teaching of "core" subjects.Among the suggestions are:
Maths – teaching statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population, and using gay characters in scenarios for maths problems;
Design and technology – encouraging pupils to make symbols linked to the gay rights movement;
Science – studying animal species where the male takes a leading role in raising young, such as emperor penguins and sea horses, and staging class discussions on different family structures, including same-sex parents;
Geography – examining the transformation of San Francisco's Castro district in the 1960s from a working-class Irish area to the world's first "gay neighbourhood", and considering why homosexuals move from the countryside to cities;
Languages – using gay characters in role play scenarios, and teaching "LGBT vocabulary".
The lesson plans, written by teachers and backed by the Department for Education, will be available for schools to download from the Schools Out website.
For younger children, the plans will suggest using images of same sex couples and also promoting books such as "And Tango Makes Three", which is about two male penguins raising a young chick, inspired by actual events at New York's Central Park Zoo.
And I can only imagine the types of gay math word problems the students will have to solve...
"Joey Sparkles is shopping for leather bondage kits for his upcoming date. The red ones cost $25.99 each, the black ones cost $27.99 each, and the studded version costs $31.99. How much money will be spend if he buys two red, three black and one studded (include 6% sales tax)?"
"Elton John and his "husband" have $1,000,000 dollars. If surrogacy costs $50,000 per pregnancy, how many children can they pay for?"
Something tells me the kids will be learning much more than just mathematics - which is the intent, of course. Just out of curiosity, how are English kids scoring in math compared to other nations? I bet their scores trend downwards next month. Just a hunch.
I wonder if they'll use statistics from the NIH (or even the US's CDC) on how gays are more likely to contract AIDS and other STD's than the rest of the population. Somehow, I kinda doubt it.
And Gay Geography? Well, at least the kids will learn what areas to avoid, if you know what I mean.
"Merry" Old England indeed.
s/s That The Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill
