A teacher in Seattle, Washington allegedly told his students that being “straight” is offensive.
The statement was made by a tenth-grade teacher of Ethnic Studies World History at Chief Sealth High School, Ian Golash.
The information was discovered after a parent filed a complaint with the school, claiming that the teacher told her son that being “straight” was offensive while working on a “Social Identity Wheel” assignment.
When the student identified himself as “straight,” the teacher said that “straight” carries a poor connotation suggesting that those who are LGBTQ may be deemed “crooked.”
“When filling out a Social Identity Wheel, he (her son) was told that if he identifies as straight that he needed to pick a term that was less offensive. It is completely inappropriate to dictate what terms a student can and cannot use to identify themselves with,” the mother wrote in an email to the principal.
“I’m told that rather than converse about the topic and provide him with information and an actual answer, he was told that he was a ‘product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care,'” the mother wrote in the email. “You missed an opportunity here to teach your student about current events and instead shamed him for being a male. To assume that he’s being raised in a patriarchal household is a very mistaken one.”
In response to the mother’s email, Golash wrote, “Because I think language has power and that it shapes the culture that we live in, I did say to the class, in response to a student, that I do not use the term ‘straight’ because it implies that to not be straight is to be ‘crooked’ which could have a negative connotation. But, again stated that I am not interested in telling them how they should identify and that the wheel they are completing is for their own reflection, not for me to assess.”
“My response about patriarchy was not directed at one student, it was connected to discussions of systems of power that we had been having in the previous few days and the behavior of several boys in the class,” Golash added.
Last month, a student in the same class failed a quiz after saying men cannot become pregnant.
In an “Understanding Gender vs. Sex” quiz, the student said only biological women can become pregnant, and only biological men have male genitalia.
In one question, however, the student was asked to respond with “true” or “false” to the statement, “All men have penises.”
The student said the statement was “true,” but the teacher noted the answer was incorrect.
