CNN reports on a Louisiana school district’s efforts to make sure its youngest children are, in the words of Rodgers and Hammerstein in South Pacific, “carefully taught.”
The AP story describes the phone call to the second grader’s mother Sharon Huff (excerpt):
The ordeal started with a disturbing phone call on November 11 from the assistant principal at Ernest Gallet Elementary School in Youngsville, just south of town.
Marcus is in trouble, the school official had said, for using “foul words” and ‘talking inappropriately.” It was so bad, Huff remembers him saying, he “didn’t feel comfortable” repeating them over the phone.
Worried, Huff agreed a conference was necessary. “I want to get to the bottom of this,” she remembered telling the official, “see where he picked this up.”
When Marcus came home, Huff looked through his backpack, as she does every day. And then she read the report about what had happened at 9:50 a.m. in Room 2.
“Imagine how I felt,” she said.
She was astonished at what second-grade teacher Terry L. Bethea had written: “Marcus decided to explain to another child in his group that his mom is gay. He told the other child that gay is when a girl likes a girl. This kind of discussion is not acceptable in my room. I feel that parents should explain things of this nature to their own children in their own way.”
Marcus was scolded in front of his classmates, sent to the principal’s office and barred from recess, the ACLU said. And he was ordered to attend “behavior clinic.”
Huff didn’t understand. She asked Marcus what “bad word” he had used. The child answered, “gay.”