Revolt in Queens
Tucker, William
All of the following are from educational materials now being distributed to children in the New York City public school system: The Teenager's Bill of Rights: I Have the Right to Decide Whether...
...Mary Cummins, the 61-year-old grandmother who is board chairman, confronted Fernandez and the curriculum head on...
...Among the general public, there is also a growing recognition that the nomenklatura of the education establishment is trying to drive a wedge between parents and children, appropriating responsibilities that have traditionally belonged to families...
...The mayor's appointees (both black) and the representatives of the Bronx and Manhattan (both Hispanic) lined up behind Fernandez...
...Albert Shanker, who represents another wing of the school bureaucracy, delights in pointing out that New York state, with a population one-tenth the size of 1 n no other state is the general population more under the thumb of its educational bureaucracy (although California is catching up...
...Anyone might have thought that to hear such common sense being spoken in the public arena, especially in New York City, would have produced at least a momentary awed silence...
...The argument that bigotry and prejudice are the heart of opposition has not stood up...
...You have to understand how this works...
...On the contrary, we are going to teach them that they should never engage in conduct that would cause harm to others or to themselves...
...are fun...
...Condoms can be sexy...
...The "Gang of Four" became a 6-0 majority (with Manhattan representative Luis Reyes abstaining) in favor of immediately reinstating the Queens community board...
...As far as homosexuality is concerned, it is clear that people outside the educated elite have decided it is a luxury they cannot afford...
...Jeffries himself has a theory that homosexuality is a white failing that is being forced on black people...
...2 What Fernandez and the bureaucracy did not take into account was that parents might feel some alarm about having their children introduced to the fundamentals of homosexu2Note: the term "gay-bashing" is often used by homosexual advocates to include verbal abuse, or just saying anything negative about homosexuals or homosexuality...
...Cummins accused both Dinkins and Fernandez of promoting the idea that sodomy is acceptable while virginity is weird: "We will continue to present our established multicultural education program, using unslanted materials of our own choice, rather than this disgraceful propaganda tract you are trying to jam down our throats...
...The adult who tells an adolescent "You have the right to obey your impulses" is guilty of treachery to the adolescent as well as to the community...
...At the request of the Gay and Lesbian Teacher's Association, a portion on "alternate families" was turned over to a single Bronx first-grade teacher, who wrote a 15-page section called "Fostering Positive Attitudes Toward Sexuality": Many children have lesbian/gay relatives...
...Members of black and Hispanic churches set up pickets in front of the chancellor's office...
...William E. Ubinas, superintendent of District 1 on the Lower East Side, told the New York Times...
...Each makes more than $100,000 a year...
...The report created a small furor, but Sobol—who if nothing else is a clever bureaucrat—mildly disavowed it while appointing another committee to start imposing it...
...Most vituperative' was Newsday, a Long Island tabloid that has been trying to penetrate Queens and Brooklyn with its color graphics and shrill editorial style...
...The special educational districts—called Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOLES)—operate in a gray area between state and county governments that allow most Western Europe, has almost one-and-a-half times as many public school administrators...
...In practice, community school boards have tended to be centers of corruption...
...Teachers of first graders have an opportunity to give children a healthy sense of identity at an early age...
...And parents who had doubts about the ultimate intent of the curriculum might find them reinforced in "Kids `R' Us," an article in the Village Voice by lesbian columnist Donna Minkowitz: I'm much more comfortable with the notion of "recruiting" than I am with the guesstimate that restricts same-sex passion to a fixed percentage of the population...
...The curriculum guide encourages teachers to introduce first-graders to "different kinds of families" and recommends three titles—Heather Has Two Mommies (which explains artificial insemination), Daddy's Roommate, and Gloria Goes to Gay Pride—for the first-grade reading list...
...The fundamental difference between a community and an aggregation is really the difference between what is in one's interest and what one desires—between one's hopes and one's appetites...
...The biggest risk from sucking is getting cum in the mouth...
...Joseph Fernandez, New York City's chancellor of schools since 1990, makes $195,000—yet even he is not the highest paid local school official...
...According to statistics, at least 10 percent of each class will grow up to be homosexual...
...it has its own way of life...
...T he New York City Board of Education is one of those antiquated, unrepresentative bodies that remains in place only because the ACLU and the courts haven't yet gotten around to declaring it unconstitutional...
...WATER SPORTS and scat are fine...
...Until we know otherwise, we must assume that our conscious attitudes and behavior toward homosexuality play a part in this process...
...For its efforts, District 24 won a demonstration by the Lesbian Avengers in front of one of its elementary schools...
...When Green died of an asthma attack in 1989 and Fernandez arrived from Miami to take over, the program lurched ahead...
...Don't let anyone's p--s or s--t get inside your body...
...Electoral participation is light and local political machines have often won control...
...People With AIDS Can Do More Than Just Die" proclaimed one recent front-page headline above a story that one of New York's AIDS victims had graduated at the top of his class from law school...
...The problems of indiscipline] may not seem so pressing to the rich, who have a long way to slide, though not as long a way as they may think...
...It soon became obvious that Fernandez had underestimated the depth of the opposition...
...Impellizzeri pointed to the link between family values and upward social mobility, the disintegration of the family among the underclass, and the emergence—particularly among underclass blacks and rich whites—of cultural nihilism and a stark hostility to the very institution of the family: At no time have I been more aware of the danger to the family than during the episodes last year on the condom distribution policy that constituted what the media describe as the most bitter battle in the history of the City's public schools...
...Arguing that School Board 24 was a small coterie of unrepresentative members, Fernandez suspended the board and appointed three school bureaucrats as trustees to run the district and immediately implement the curriculum...
...Fernandez, unrepentant, responded in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal that appeared three days after the school board vote...
...the one germ of social consciousness...
...It was clear that—unlike most of his opponents—Fernandez still had not read the curriculum...
...All of the following are from educational materials now being distributed to children in the New York City public school system: The Teenager's Bill of Rights: I Have the Right to Decide Whether To Have Sex and Who to Have It With...
...I Have the Right to Use Protection When I Have Sex...
...The minority task force produced a report entitled "A Curriculum of Inclusion," which argued that "African Americans, Asian Americans, Puerto Ricans/Latinos, and 1See my article "Black Family Agonistes" (TAS, July 1984), which reported a speech that Hilliard gave to the NAACP/Urban League Black Family Summit in Nashville...
...When other community boards—emboldened by District 24's success—began to pick apart the curriculum, they objected, not to the lesson plans about African games or American Indian holidays, but to the conversion of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" into a song about ecology...
...Fernandez, brought in three years ago as a skilful bureaucrat who would address minority concerns, was being pilloried on all sides as an autocrat with no understanding of anyone's concerns...
...26 The American Spectator February 1993 The problems arose out of something called "Children of the Rainbow," an effort by the city and state educational establishment to persuade New York's many tribal and ethnic groups to live together in peace and harmony...
...2) parental exposure to infected blood . . . and (3) transmission from infected women to their infants...
...As word of the real nature of the curriculum got around, the argument was reopened with violent intensity in district after district...
...Some of the groundwork had already been laid by Dr...
...Anyone who attended the hearings in the Hall of the Board of Education and heard the loud hissing when speakers used the words "family," "marriage," "man and woman," and "children," would agree that there are strong forces in this City opposed to the family...
...However, page 379 of the "Rainbow" teacher's guide states: "HIV is transmitted from one person to another by any of three routes: (1) unprotected sexual intercourse, including vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse...
...This year, sixty-six public officials made more than Cuomo...
...Whatever institution or idea we trust as a substitute for the family becomes a cold temple...
...Aggregations get their way by stridency...
...Cummins fired off a letter telling Fernandez she would meet him to discuss the issues in the offices of Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, who was also beginning to voice doubts about the curriculum...
...Clean them with lots of soap and water after each use...
...There was no disagreement...
...That honor goes to Edward J. Murphy, superintendent of the vocational school system in Eastern Long Island...
...F ernandez's defeat has raised speculation that he won't be around very long...
...As a liberal scholar, Fernandez saw only one solution: condoms...
...C hancellor Fernandez, who seemed to have convinced himself that he represents the Hispanic community, took his cue...
...The builder of that cold temple shall see his folly: the gradual dehumanization of his own children before his own eyes...
...Communities work by civility...
...We are not going to teach our children to treat all types of human behavior as equally safe, wholesome, or acceptable...
...They put it on the shelf and nothing happens...
...If teachers do not discuss lesbian/gay issues, they are not likely to come up...
...S o how did the Rainbow effort get started...
...Hence, to the extent that society has an interest both in reproducing itself and in strengthening the institution of the family—and to the extent that parents have an interest in reducing the risk that their children will become homosexual—there is warrant for resisting the movement to abolish all societal distinctions between homosexual and heterosexual...
...At least, that's the public version...
...In May, Newsday "broke" the story that District 24 was resisting the curriculum...
...It must be this vista of infinite sexual possibilities beyond the exigencies of procreation that scares the family-values posse more than anything...
...During one school board meeting, a subversive teacher had slipped Impellizzeri a copy of the New York City Department of Health pamphlet "Teens Have the Right," which was already being distributed in the high schools (and from which the first two quotes at the beginning of this article are taken...
...The fact is, there is no discussion of sex or sexuality in the first grade, whether the guide being used is "Children of the Rainbow," the HIV/AIDS curriculum, or any other teacher's guide...
...Fernandez, who later admitted he hadn't read the curriculum, took a personal stand on the issue...
...Typically, the newspaper started arguing that the District 24 board did not reflect community opinion...
...Interestingly enough, though—a hint of things to come—her efforts won over the support of Ninfa Segarra, the Bronx representative...
...William Tucker is The American Spectator's New York correspondent...
...Of the first fifteen people on the list, the only ones that are not deans or professors at the state universities are Harold Langlitz, director of the Teachers' Retirement System ($180,000), and Stanley Brazenoff, executive director of the Port Authority of New York ($170,000...
...He also complained that: Some opponents of this section of the guide have found that, by talking about the "Children of the Rainbow" curriculum as if it were the same as our HIV/AIDS education program, their vicious distortions will be more readily believed by parents and the public...
...Aggregations have programs...
...Instead of simply railing against the pornographic aspects of the literature, however, Impellizzeri addressed the issue thus: Self-discipline is not an instinct...
...Locally, things are as bad, if not worse...
...Even more graphic literature from the Gay Men's Health Crisis (also quoted) came to the Board's attention when it was carried to board headquarters by an alarmed custodian...
...71...
...But that is getting ahead of our story...
...The report also complained of the "arrogance" of white students and said the object of the curriculum would be to raise the self-esteem of minority students and lower the self-esteem of non-minorities...
...You can put them on together...
...When the board was asked to certify the dismissal of Community Board 24, however, Fernandez was routed...
...If we accept youngsters' feckless or undisciplined behavior on the grounds that it cannot really be prevented—"You know they're going to do it anyway"—we objectively (as the Marxists used to say) push them towards the underclass...
...At the classroom level, "Children of the Rainbow" probably would have made little difference—except for one thing...
...that they have the right—unearned—to set their own standards, or no standards at all...
...District 24 rejected the Rainbow curriculum and wrote letters to the other thirty districts, alerting them to the nature of the material buried in the curriculum and encouraging them to do the same...
...I Have the Right to Buy and Use Condoms...
...It was here, on the playing fields of Middle Village, that the battle of parents against the bureaucracy was finally joined...
...Shop around till you find the type you like best...
...Devoid of any of Hilliard's or Jeffries's blusterings about black supremacy (Hilliard was named an adviser but did not make the commute from Atlanta), "Children of the Rainbow" is a benign series of classroom games and activities designed to introduce children to other cultures...
...Notable, however, was the emergence of Brooklyn representative Irene Impellizzeri as the leader of the "conservative" faction...
...Newsday has more delusions than most other New York newspapers...
...In Park Slope, Brooklyn, an armed police guard had to be called to protect the white-liberal-dominated board against enraged Hispanic parents who argued the schools were attempting to pervert their children...
...Such young waverers, who until now have been raised in an environment overwhelmingly biased toward heterosexuality, might succumb to the temptations of homosexuality in a social climate that was entirely evenhanded in its treatment of the two orientations...
...integrated the white neighborhood, but always knew he wanted to go home...
...Citing surveys by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation, she noted: The truth is that gays and lesbians represent about 1.6 percent to 3.3 percent of the population of the U.S...
...Native Americans have all been the victims of an intellectual and educational oppression that has characterized the culture and institutions of the United States and the European American World for centuries...
...Digging up a few disgruntled opponents, Newsday declared that opposition to the curriculum was being railroaded through the district by a circle of narrow-minded partisans...
...The underclass is not really a class so much as a caste...
...Although the district is half Hispanic, the board members are all non-Hispanic ethnic Catholics with numerous family ties to the parochial schools...
...T he curriculum met with a certain resistance, even among teachers and administrators...
...Some districts adopted the curriculum with notification that they were eliminating the offending pages—a viable option...
...One scenario had him angling to join the Clinton Administration—where he certainly would have found a warmer reception than he got in Queens...
...But if the children of the poor are taught that they need not be constrained by the social order and its civilities and its prudential demands...
...Communities have consciences...
...But then an even greater crisis presented itself to Fernandez: AIDS...
...There was a loud clamor in the newspapers that Impellizzeri should be removed from office...
...A former public school teacher and dean at the City University, Impellizzeri almost seemed like someone out of another century: In the City where we work, there is little or no community anymore...
...No discussion...
...These underlying anxieties are summarized nicely by E. L. Pattullo, former director of the Center for Behavioral Sciences at Harvard, in an article in December's Commentary: It is a good bet that substantial numbers of children have the capacity to grow in either [a homosexual or heterosexual] direction...
...Of these, thirty-nine were educational bureaucrats, most of them in the sprawling State University of New York...
...Murphy was also seeking to incorporate his retirement package into his pension formula, which would allow him to retire on an annual pension payment of $300,000 a year...
...Asa Hilliard, professor of black studies at Emory University and a pioneer of Afrocentrism.1 Also sitting on the committee was Dr...
...that they are mysteriously able to "think for themselves" without serving any apprenticeship to reality, without in fact learning to think—as distinct from feel or want—they will never, never escape poverty...
...The job titles of these trustees tell all anyone needs to know about how the schools are run...
...Such is the power of the bureaucracy to act unilaterally that it turned out the central school board had never voted on the curriculum...
...The community school boards themselves are an ironically appropriate battlefield...
...This follows a pattern found nationally in the teachers' unions, where vocational educators form a powerful rump faction (20 percent of membership) and are extremely powerful at shaping union policies and manipulating federal and state programs to their advantage—proof of the theorem that those who have the least challenging jobs have the most time to spend on union activities...
...school bureaucrats are of course imposing multiculturalism on disaffected parents everywhere...
...Chairing the committee was Dr...
...that skin color and gender are, genetically determined, whereas it is certain that—often, if not always—the postnatal environment influences sexual orientation...
...they booed him anyway...
...Leonard Jeffries of City University of New York, originator of the "sun people/ice people" theory of black supremacy, noted more recently for his anti-Semitism...
...And while the educators made a yeoman effort to characterize the debate as one of "minority rights," in fact it was New York's "people of color" who were among the most outraged...
...Their aides expressed open skepticism that there was any newspaper or magazine in the country willing to report their point of view objectively or sympathetically...
...And the difference is profound...
...It may be hard to believe such cohesiveness can exist in a district of 17,000 students...
...While the New York Times applauds liberal causes politely like spectators at a tennis match, Newsday is all cheerleaders and marching bands...
...Unnoticed in all the controversy is that the racial and ethnic aspects of the Rainbow curriculum had been accepted without controversy...
...Hilliard told the gathering that the movie E.T...
...Be that as it may, there was in New York at least a reasonable rationale for multicultural reform...
...Mayor Dinkins offered his support...
...To the bureaucracy's surprise—and alarm—minority groups were in the lead...
...One parent, who probably spoke for the majority, summed it up when he told a community board: "I think we should be teaching homosexuals about the benefits of heterosexuality...
...It was also pilloried in the press...
...He once apologized to an NAACP group for "standing before you as a white male...
...While it seemed benign to educational bureaucrats, to a locally elected school board in Middle Village, Queens, and to a growing chorus of parents, it was the ultimate outrage—the virtual sexual molestation of children barely old enough to read...
...And these are only state officials...
...Funny how democracy and free discussion manages to prevail...
...How many curriculums like this have we seen come by...
...Created under Mayor John Lindsay in an effort at "decentralization," New York's thirty-one community school boards are given—in theory—complete control over the curriculum in New York's elementary and junior high schools...
...New York City, as it happened, had been dickering over a multicultural effort under chancellor Richard Green since 1985...
...The new conservative majority on the board was quickly dubbed by the newspapers as the "Gang of Four...
...In a world without the heterosexual imperative, maybe kids would try on different forms of sexuality as they now try on musical styles, career choices, and haircuts...
...Children of the Rainbow" was for the most part fairly innocuous...
...Thomas Sobol, the $131,000-a-year state commissioner of education, a man well known for groveling before black audiences...
...She has since won over the entire board by sheer intellectual brilliance...
...SUCKING: A lot of guys still enjoy sucking and getting sucked...
...it has the strange cultural property of reducing members' desire to escape...
...They come in different colors, sizes, flavors, and styles to be more fun for you and your partner...
...ality—not on any grounds of prejudice, but on the simple observation that acceptance of homosexuality as just another "alternate lifestyle" might tend to make them more accepting of homosexual impulses in themselves...
...Among other things, this means we will teach them that it is extremely dangerous to engage in IV abuse, and when it is age-appropriate we will also teach them that it is extremely dangerous to engage in anal intercourse...
...Educators have the potential to help increase the tolerance and acceptance of the lesbian/gay community and to decrease the staggering number of hate crimes perpetrated against them...
...After incidents in which blacks were killed by white gangs in Howard Beach and Bensonhurst, the New York State Department of Education in 1989 decided to introduce a "multicultural curriculum" as a way of reducing racial tensions...
...They are: "Chief Executive for Monitoring and School Improvement," "Executive Director of the Division of Instruction and Professional Development," and "Deputy Executive Director of the Division of Funded Programs...
...The only way to be totally safe is to lick only the shaft or to use a condom...
...Parents argued, quite legitimately, that this constituted an unwarranted appropriation of religious materials...
...S o things stood last spring when Chancellor Fernandez rolled out the city board of education's own multicultural effort, "Children of the Rainbow...
...Nor was Murphy the only vocational educator in that range...
...Citing Newsday, Fernandez argued once again that the Queens board was unrepresentative and that "other parents in the district" were on his side...
...Another speculation is that Mayor Dinkins will use Fernandez's self-immolation as an excuse to demand that the mayor himself, rather than the board of education, appoint the next school chancellor...
...Don't share toys...
...In other districts, the pages mysteriously disappeared before or after the volume had been filed on the shelf...
...Every time I read about a gay-bashing or some homosexual being beaten up, I feel the schools are partly responsible because we haven't taught tolerance to our children...
...In a state where public employment is exceptionally common and remunerative (the number of public employees per capita in New York City is more than triple the national average), school bureaucrats stand head-and-shoulders above the crowd...
...Before we begin, it might be worth noting why New York's educational establishment might be inclined to teach the ins and outs of homosexuality to first-graders.administrators to collect two salaries (state and local) with very little public oversight...
...Impellizzeri did the best job of summing up what the battle is over when she quoted Chesterton: The family instinct is the indestructible minimum of morality...
...Even when learned in childhood, it often falters in adolescence, when desire takes on new forms and an anarchic intensity, and when the young brain is awash with hormones and with the erotic imagery of popular culture...
...In some ways, the nine-member Queens board seemed equally unrepresentative...
...Mary Cummins and Donna Minkowitz agree about one thing: they both regard homosexuality as an adventitious condition that—apart from a small residue of hard-core cases—is strongly influenced by the culture in which a young person grows up...
...TOYS (dildos, butt plugs, etc...
...The representatives of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island (all white) opposed...
...Moreover, the whole effort was given a tone of absurdity in that the curriculum guide's first volume—aimed only at the first grade—ran to 472 pages...
...May, Impellizzeri gave a speech to the Cathedral Club of New York that may eventually stand as a turning point in New York's cultural wars...
...When the New York Post recently ran a cartoon portraying School Chancellor Joseph Fernandez as a dirty old man hawking pornographic books to little children in the park, it came close to describing the sense of desperation felt by most city parents...
...There is aggregation—the forming of groups...
...After a bitter series of public hearings, the condom measure was adopted 4-3...
...A "reconciliation" meeting of the central school board broke up in disarray after the first speaker—a black woman—charged that the curriculum was written solely "for gay white males...
...Even the Black Muslims entered the fray, arguing that sodomy violated their religious laws...
...represented an "Afrocentric Transformation," because E.T...
...In 1987, Sobol appointed a Task Force on Minorities to find out why minority students do poorly in the school system...
...It is made up of seven members, one appointed by each of the five borough presidents and two appointed by the Mayor...
...Guys can get used to the feel of condoms while masturbating...
...The effect, however, was the opposite...
...In District 24, in Middle Village, Queens, however, the school board decided to take a stand...
...This included a $100,000 "retirement incentive," plus $860,000 in back pay he had accumulated by working most of his ninety paid vacation days a year...
...The central school board controls finance, but has complete jurisdiction only over the high schools...
...Both Impellizzeri and Cummins declined to be interviewed by The American Spectator for this story...
...Of thirty-seven BOCES superintendents in New York, twenty-six make over $100,000 and six make over $125,000...
...Be creative and be safe...
...it is learned from adults, sometimes subconsciously, sometimes painfully...
...Just a unanimous vote, nine board members who apparently all agree that the guide contained inappropriate reference for first grade students," wrote Liz Willen, both reporting and editorializing on the subject...
...Every year, Billy House, a reporter in Gannett's Albany bureau, pulls together a list of the New York state officials who make more money than Governor Mario Cuomo, who at $130,000 is himself the nation's highest paid governor...
...Classes should include reference to lesbians/gay people in all curricular areas...
...In New York, the vast, sleeping giant of normality was stirring at last...
...Ordinary superintendents generally make between $95,000 and $120,000...
...It is indubitable...
...Fernandez has already suspended two local school boards for financial mismanagement...
...Murphy made news recently when he announced his retirement from his $200,000-a-year position—and was promptly awarded a $960,000 retirement package by his local board...
Vol. 26 • February 1993 • No. 2
