DEKALB, Ill. (AP) - Louis Peckys, 17, a junior at DeKalb High School, recently did a class presentation on J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Although Peckys, a member of the high school’s Genders and Sexualities Alliance, tried to incorporate Hoover’s history and many accomplishments, the only question students had at the end of the presentation was whether or not the former director was gay.
“I did not want to make that the purpose of the presentation,” Peckys said. “If you only focus on whether someone was LGBTQ, you take away from all of those accomplishments.”
Should legislation in the Illinois General Assembly mandate LGBTQ education in public schools, Peckys hopes it will be done in a way that breaks the stigmas surrounding the LGBTQ community, but that it will not deter from important history lessons.
“I think there needs to be a good balance of accomplishments and personal life, like there is in any history class,” Peckys said. “Hopefully, it won’t be a scary thing.”
The legislation, Senate Bill 3249, requires that within public schools, the teaching of the history of the United States will include a study of the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the history of the nation and state. Textbooks must also be bought that include the roles and contributions of all people protected under the Illinois Human Rights Act.
As of Monday, the bill has been approved by the Senate and awaits a second reading vote in the House.
Ann Shult, DHS biology teacher and Genders and Sexualities Alliance adviser, said it’s good for LGBTQ students to have role models they can reach out to and connect with such as computer scientist Alan Turing or gay rights advocate Harvey Milk.
“The biggest task to help the community be more tolerant and more accepting of that which they don’t know is to educate,” Shult said. “As long as people slam the door on LGBTQ individuals by not acknowledging them, we’re denying their presence in history and not giving children a chance to express themselves as they are.”
Although many advocates want classroom representation, some feel an LGBTQ course is rather excessive.
DHS sophomore Rebekah Larsen, 15, said a separate unit focusing on the LGBTQ community is not be necessary, but could be incorporated with civil rights movements.
“It’s not that it’s more or less important than other movements,” Larsen said. “It’s something other people had to fight for.”
Alexandria Henry, a physical education teacher at Huntley Middle School who also runs the Equality Club at Clinton Rosette Middle School, said club members also hope for some type of curriculum integration that would blend a number of culturally diverse topics together.
“The message our equality club is trying to give it to have inclusion for the LGBTQ population and to teach and educate that people in this community are just as important as other diverse populations,” Henry said. “DeKalb School District 428 is the most inclusive school district in this area. One of their biggest successes was the support of the LGBTQ population over the past 7 years.”
Jennie Hueber, DeKalb District 428 director of curriculum and instruction, said once an unfunded mandate is approved by the state, it can be embedded into existing courses, so long as there is no requirement for a separate course. Implementing a separate course would require school board approval.
“I’ve seen that it could be coming, so we’ve had some preliminary conversations,” Hueber said. “Because the curriculum doesn’t change overnight, we’re evaluating where it makes sense.”
Ultimately, Hueber said any change in curriculum would be discussed with with all affected teachers to determine how state requirements can be integrated into current practices.
“It would be a collaborative conversation with the teachers before we would put anything into practice,” Hueber said.
Kris Webster, curriculum director for Sycamore School District 427, said she follows all state education legislation closely as it is introduced and makes its way through state government. So, she said, she was aware of the LGBTQ curriculum bill coming down the pipeline.
Webster said she already contacted the Sycamore High School department chair for social studies, who felt the contributions to history of LGBTQ people were already included within the high school curriculum.
“We feel like we would meet the mandate,” Webster said. “We feel we’re already in compliance.”
Webster said the district is waiting to see what the bill would actually require if it becomes law before changing the curriculum for elementary and middle schools. She said district officials will work together with whomever the potential law impacts staff-wise - which, in this case, would be social studies teachers, she said.
“This is really nothing different than what we strive to do for all students, all the time in whatever way they need, in whatever situation they’re in,” Webster said.
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Daily Chronicle reporter Katie Finlon contributed to this report
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Information from: The Daily Chronicle, http://www.daily-chronicle.com
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