I\’m fascinated by this
Children are to be taught about homosexuality in maths, geography and science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to \”celebrate the gay community\”.
Maths – teaching statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population,
Because that could be an extremely interesting set of lessons in how careful you\’ve got to be with statistics and definitions.
For there is very definitely a tendency for some to rather over estimate the number of gays in the population: Peter Tatchell has been known to insist upon 10% of the population for example. His definition seems to be anyone who has ever had a same sex sexual experience: a slightly odd definition, given that defining anyone who has ever had an opposite sex (or perhaps these days we\’re supposed to say other sex) experience as heterosexual would probably define Mr. Thatchell as such.
Then there\’s attempts to actually count the people who are what we might call \”really\” homosexual, people who are exclusively pursuing same sex relationships. More like 1-2% of the male population and a little less of the female.
Our statistics lessons could explore these problems of definition, explore how even using the same definitions we find that different methods of counting give us diferent numbers and even, if we were to be trying to actually teach children something useful, why certain sets of numbers are touted by those with one or another political axe to grind, others by others.
Sadly, the lesson plans aren\’t ready for download as yet so we can\’t check and see whether they\’re doing this.
Or, as I suspect, just telling the kiddies that there\’s \”lots\” of gays you know.