A responsibilty to educate

In my message board involvement, in news articles on sex education, creationism and evolution, on lgbt people and discrimination, it is obvious many believe our schools have no role in bringing about different outlook, and with it... social change.

I'm thinking on this as a result of one educator's comments on how he supports and is involved with, the Boy Scouts, yet also is apparently an advisor for lgbt students. He claims his duty is to give each a safe place to congregate. I can appreciate that, but... it's also a half hearted cop out.

I'm a great believer in Hillary's "it takes a village," and it is not my intent to place the burden of bridging these cultural divides upon any one educator. Yet educators are in a rather unique position to bring together, for it is only in the school years we have minds in formative stages, and we have those minds collectively gathered in one setting.

When I see mention of safe space from the bullying that takes place outside that room, I see education as a means to end the bullying, to foster understanding, to look for the flaws in why the discrimination and taunting exists, to get the young minds thinking critically, examining why it's not at all cool to do such things. An educator can make a difference.

In my grammar school days of the 1960's, attending a Catholic grammar school, we were taught that discrimination was wrong, that people... are just that... and to look for the good, not for things to put them down. To look past skin colour, to learn of our differences, to celebrate our differences. I find it unconscionable someone would simultaneously encourage two groups to find value in believing the other bad, to allow flawed views of each other to stay with them, to send them out into society as young adults, prejudice intact. A wonderful opportunity wasted. And whilst I have other issues with my days at the Catholic school, I applaud their teaching in this regard, and on things like evolution and creationism, where it clearly taught one was story to better understand an impossible complex coming to be, one was science.

Eductors face sometimes impossible challenges, and fight an uphill battle to even achieve minor successes, but that is not reason to knowingly allow children and young adults to pass through one's doors without an effort to change and to better understand each other.

Parents carry prejudices, and it is far more difficult to foster change at that level, where there is no say in what a child is exposed to. In a classroom, we can bring alternate outlook, we can get minds grasping the spirit of living together, of accepting others. They left an indelible mark upon me, helping to create that spirit of idealism - seeing society for what it can be - that has been with me in life. It was the greatest gift the sisters of the Presentation of Mary could have given me.