According to an April 10 article in the Leader-Telegram, a South Middle School health teacher came out as a homosexual to 125 seventh grade students. Stephanie Rowe, an Eau Claire district employee since 1993, held a session with her health students answering their questions about homosexuality. Some parents, according to the article, don’t believe the situation was handled appropriately, specifically how they were not informed of her plans beforehand.

The question here isn’t whether or not this was harmful to her students. Seventh-grade students are old enough to be able to handle talking about homosexuality; if they have watched any amount of TV, they should be familiar with its existence. This was a very beneficial opportunity for students to have questions about homosexuality answered by a real life person as opposed to hearing misconceptions from TV shows or their friends. Rowe’s talk might also have helped any of the students dealing with issues concerning their sexuality, offering them a positive role model of an openly gay person.

The real problem, though, is whether or not the parents should have been informed in advance. Certainly, the parents should have been forewarned about Rowe’s plans so they could talk with their children about the topic if they wished. This practice is done with every other topic discussed in human growth and development classes, so adding this to the curriculum to send to parents would not have been too much to ask of from the school.

But while the school should have informed parents about Rowe’s plans, they shouldn’t have let any outcry from the parents change her intentions. The parents shouldn’t have had the chance to change or prevent Rowe’s talk with her students so as to allow them a unique opportunity to learn about homosexuality from an actual gay person. Parents do have the right to know what their children are learning in school, but allowing them to influence curriculum would rob students of potentially eye-opening experiences such as the one Rowe provided.