School Gays
One thing you learn, working in a primary school – and would be head of my list of ‘Hints to Parents’ – is that kids repeat your speech patterns. Playground duty is a fascinating little social study, where children get to let off steam and do whatever they like for a while, be that shriek unceasingly, run around in circles, swear like sailors, or come out with phrases like ‘Must I say everything twice?’, ‘I think you’ll find…’ and ‘Bloody Hell, not again!’
They also take this opportunity to follow you around and ask you the questions that have been pressing on their minds. Things like where people go when they die, or is Father Christmas real, or do you have a girlfriend, Miss?
Certain children would ask me the last one in a ‘just checking’ way, because they’d all seen my girlfriend quite often. My children had all attended the same primary school where I later worked, and both my girlfriend and I used to collect them or drop them off at school, and we’ve always been quite noticeable looking. Lots of them had been to parties at our house, or had brothers and sisters who had. We were quite famous for our Halloween parties.
I got my job at the school whilst being quite open about being bi and in a gay relationship, and no one ever asked me to be otherwise. I never had anyone pass comment, or object in any way, and although I was later made aware some older staff members ‘didn’t approve’, they were always perfectly nice to my face, which was fine by me. The children never had the slightest issue with it at all.
Children never do. This is the thing that it’s easy to overlook here, whilst everyone is wringing their hands and crying ‘Will no one think of the children?’ The children are just fine, the issue here is with the parents, as it always is. It’s the parents we could do with sitting down and giving lessons to, rather than their children. Hatred and bigotry and selfishness are not natural, they are taught; they are acquired from the environment around us. For these lessons to be really effective, the children need to take what they’re learning home.
Our children did find some issues with bullying at secondary school, because they came from a family who were ‘different’. I don’t think that would have been the case if the children who picked on them had been taught in infants school about acceptance and LGBT families.
No one is suggesting teaching five year olds about homosexual sex. These are lessons about real people who exist all around us, in our everyday lives, and attend school with our children. These are our friends in our communities and we should be reaching out to support them, not turning our backs on them and rejecting them as somehow ‘wrong’ and unsuitable to associate with. These lessons simply tell our children that some families have two mummies, or two daddies, and that’s ok.
And yes, some of those children at school will be gay. But not because of these lessons. They will be gay whatever happens, and these lessons will help them feel less confused, and lost and alone. They will go some way to erasing the stigma that can lead to self harm and unnecessary self hatred. They will let them know that it’s ok to be who they are, and that really is the most important lesson any child can learn at school.
