Friday’s Salt Lake Tribune included a story about the Nebo School District’s attempts to keep homosexuality out of the curriculum for high school psychology classes.
Tribune reporter Mark Eddington writes, “State law bans teachers or texts from advocating homosexuality, but Nebo District’s policy is more restrictive.
“‘Our policy is that it will not be taught unless it is teaching the negative consequences thereof,’ said Nedra Call, Nebo’s director of curriculum.”
(Nebo School District is in the lower part of Utah County, by the way, just south of Provo.)
The problem they’re running into, of course, is that most psychology textbooks published in the past several years include at least SOME material on homosexuality. Of course, they also include material on antisocial and psychotic behavior, the Oedipus complex, serial killers, and various other unsavory subjects, but those are OK. It’s homosexuality that Nebo doesn’t want anyone mentioning.
So they’re having a hard time finding new textbooks for the students to use, but Priscilla Leek, a Springville High School psychology teacher, doesn’t see this as a problem. As far as she’s concerned, they can just not HAVE textbooks.
“I can find current research material, selected readings, and we have the Internet,” she is quoted as saying. “I mean, we’re not living in a cave.”
Now, I know what she meant. She was just trying to say that there are many forms of media besides textbooks from which she can draw teaching materials. But come on. You’re trying to pretend homosexuality doesn’t even exist, and you’re NOT living in a cave? Please.
