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Culture April 7, 2017
A Florida parent suggests leaving more taboo life lessons up to social media.
The bizarre message comes after Fox Chapel Middle School fired teacher Daryl Cox for giving students a controversial questionnaire.
“How Comfortable Am I?” suggests situations such as “Your new roommate is Palestinian and Muslim,” and asks students to rank how it would make them feel.
Parents fumed over the questionnaire, which they didn’t believe was appropriate for school discussion. But one mother oddly seemed to suggest that even she wouldn’t want to talk about such “taboo” topics with her children.
“They have social media. I figured they would learn everything there nowadays anyways,” she says. Wow, okay. Because God forbid we talked to our own kids about racism or homophobia…
I mean, I remember growing up with the “Golden rule.” Treat others as you would like to be treated. Sure, it doesn’t cover the semantics and nuances of the LGBTQ+ experience, racism in America, etc… but it’s a good place to start.
One father did welcome the discussion in school, but only because it makes his life a little easier. “I think the school could do it a lot better than we could. It’d be a lot more comfortable. It’s weird talking to your kids about this,” Rick Hunter told News Channel 8.
So… no parents want to talk to their children about the current state of the world? No wonder we’re all having such a difficult time understanding each other.
I mean, I personally find Twitter informative and a good jumping off point for discussion… but that’s also because I’ve cultivated my timeline to include intelligent, open-minded and accepting people.
And even then you still run into trolls saying you deserve to die because you wrote one story on the benefits of raising your children gender neutral.
So it’s pretty terrifying to imagine a world in which some kids’ only introduction to things like, Islam, LGBTQ+ issues, racism, etc. comes from unfiltered, unregulated social media. Give us strength, oh Oprah.
