Parents say homework topic inappropriate for children

ACTON -- Regional school officials here pledged last week to better inform parents about potentially controversial topics in the seventh-grade social studies curriculum after a flap erupted this month over the extent to which the civil rights of homosexuals are discussed in the classroom.

At two tense junior high school council meetings this month, about a dozen parents complained that their 12-year-old children should not be forced to confront the topic of homosexuality at such a young age. If the topics are to remain in the curriculum, they argued, parents should at least be given fair warning so that they could speak to their children about it beforehand.

"It's a matter of trusting the school," Lucia Carrington said after a parents council meeting at the R. J. Grey Junior High School Tuesday night. "I'm progressive -- I'm just saying that it's getting more and more difficult to raise your kids."

The curriculum controversy began to simmer this fall when a parent read an assignment her child had taken home regarding homosexuality. In it, students were asked to comment on a letter written to a Revolutionary War soldier in which he was dismissed from the military because he was gay.

The point of the assignment, said Jonathan Landman, assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction for the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District, is to prompt students to analyze how different groups have been excluded from the American dream. Those groups include ethnic and religious minorities as well as homosexuals, Landman said.

But Tuesday night, concerned parents asked teachers how they could teach about the civil rights of homosexuals without getting into the topic of sexuality. Landman staunchly defended the curriculum but said that because a particular sex act is mentioned in the letter, the letter is no longer part of the curriculum.

"We want to talk about civil rights, and that just complicated the issue," Landman said. "But issues of identity are so central at this point in these kids' lives that it's really important to deal with this."

While the curriculum, including the issues of civil rights for gays and lesbians, has been used for at least four years, according to teachers, this is the first year that parents took umbrage.

The controversy began picking up steam as the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriages and legislators on Beacon Hill began debating how to meet that requirement. But neither parents nor teachers said they believed the political climate prompted the controversy.

"Sometimes these things just pop up," said Marc Lewis, a seventh-grade social studies teacher, who complained that from the sound of the criticisms voiced by the parents Tuesday night, it appeared as if the entire social studies curriculum was based on sexuality.

"It's not," he said. "Sexual identity maybe comes up four or five times over 10 months."

An outline of the curriculum, part of which has been posted on the school's websites, centers around two questions: "What are the factors that shape our identities, our perceptions, and how we are perceived?" and "What is the American dream vs. the American reality?"

While several parents questioned whether there was an implicit agenda of political correctness driving the curriculum, Landman defended the issues of identity and diversity as extremely appropriate for seventh-graders. Students from six elementary schools are funneled into the regional junior high school, he said.

In the process of sorting out their social hierarchy and intellectual and political identities, there is a tremendous amount of questioning that goes on, as well as a considerable amount of bullying and intimidation between students, teachers said. Some of that friction centers on ethnicity and sexual orientation.

"It's our responsibility to make sure this is a safe place," Landman said.

At the center of the problem, Landman said, is that seventh-graders are at so many different stages of development. Some are as tall as adults but emotionally immature. Others are physically undeveloped but more mentally and emotionally mature than their peers.

Jo-Ann Berry, chairwoman of the Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee, said on Wednesday that similar flashpoints have been sparked around the health education curriculum. To deal with it, parents are now told when the unit will be taught and have the option of pulling their children out of that class and into an alternative assignment.

Landman said Tuesday a letter would be sent home at the beginning of next year to inform parents about the curriculum and tell them where they will be able to look through it for themselves.

"This is a great school, and we all support the teachers here," said Carrington, who has a child in the junior high school. "It's just a question of age appropriateness."

Douglas Belkin can be reached at dbelkin@globe.com.