Once upon a time, there were two princes who fell in love, married and lived happily ever after. Thus unfolds the plotline to King and King, a children’s book by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland. It’s also the fairy tale at the heart of a nightmarish situation: Third-grade teacher Omar Currie submitted a letter of resignation to Efland-Cheeks Elementary School in Efland, North Carolina, last week after falling under intense criticism for reading the book to his students. Meg Goodhand, the assistant principal who loaned Currie her copy of King and King, also resigned last week.
Currie read the book to his class after hearing some of his students call a male classmate “gay” and “girl” for acting “too feminine.” Currie’s responsive decision to read the fairy tale was met with criticism just hours after he opened it. Parents lodged formal complaints, prompting—per school policy—a review committee to host a public meeting to discuss King and King. The News & Observer reported that over 200 people attended this meeting, many of whom expressed support for Currie. But some parents and guardians voiced objections, including the argument that they should have been notified prior to Currie’s reading of the book. One parent is quoted saying, “What gives you [educators] the right to tell me what they [students] can listen to and what they can hear in our school? That’s bullying.”
The public review process resulted in Currie’s use of King and King being upheld, yet Efland-Cheeks Elementary’s principal implemented a new directive that requires teachers to send out book lists to parents and guardians before any content is read in class. This step did not appease naysayers: The review committee received additional formal complaints. A district-level conversation on whether King and King is suitable for the classroom was scheduled for June 18, but this meeting did not take place since the complaints were withdrawn.
Clearly, the situation in Efland calls into question the LGBT-inclusivity of both the building and the district. And, sadly, when students return to Efland-Cheeks Elementary this fall, it is likely their school will be even less responsive without Currie and Goodhand on staff. GLSEN has shown that educators who support LGBT students and use LGBT-related content in their curricula send positive school-wide messages about visibility and inclusion—and these practices help build safer school climates. The loss of Currie and Goodhand sends the opposite message to other staff members and to students and has the potential to negatively impact Efland-Cheeks’ school climate, particularly for LGBT students.
The controversy surrounding King and King and other LGBT-related content is nothing new. In 2006, parents sued school officials in Lexington, Massachusetts, for teaching their son King and King and other diverse texts on marriage. A federal judge dismissed the suit. Recently, Michigan State Representative Gary Glenn announced that he wants to hold educators legally liable for teaching students about homosexuality in public schools when students hear, “It’s okay to be gay” and then contract a sexually transmitted disease.
The list of attempts to ban LGBT-inclusive content in public schools goes on and on. But while the controversy over King and King in Efland will likely, in a few weeks’ time, be seen as just “another incident,” the impact of this incident and others will have lasting effects. Until schools adopt practices that explicitly protect students who identify as LGBT, they cannot promise that all students will be safe or that all teachers and administrators will be will be protected from contempt or hostility when they support LGBT students.
Lindberg is a writer and associate editor for Teaching Tolerance.
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