The 1996
documentary It’s Elementary showed
teachers talking about gay people with their students. A
decade later, its impact can be seen in classrooms,
state laws, and the kids -- now grown -- who appeared
in it.
Brandon Rice
remembers the day 11 years ago when filmmakers came to his
Madison, Wis., school and taped his fourth-grade teacher
talking to his class about gay people. Among the
topics: whether students were ever picked on for
seeming gay.
“People
say that I act like a girl,” Rice said at the time.
“Because
you’re artistic and you dance a lot?” his
teacher asked gently.
Today, Rice, 23,
still dances a lot. The Madison Area Technical College
photography and performing arts major began coming out in
junior high, but he recalls that day in fourth grade
as a turning point: “There wasn’t a
single person talking when she asked my question and the
camera was on me,” he recalls. “And
everyone was like, ‘Oh, wow, he’s gay -- I see
it now.’ Afterward people came up to me and
apologized. It was a big weight off my
shoulders.”
That
transformative moment was captured in It’s
Elementary, a 1996 documentary by lesbian
filmmakers Debra Chasnoff and Helen Cohen that
showcased a then-small group of elementary and middle
schools -- in Madison, San Francisco, New York City,
and Cambridge, Mass. -- teaching students about LGBT
people and the discrimination they face. The first
look inside schools that dared such a curriculum,
It’s Elementary was wildly controversial at the
time -- Brent Bozell in the New York Post
called it an affront to “common sense and
decency” and “vomitous stuff” --
but the film has since had a tremendous impact in American
education. Ten-year anniversary screenings of the video,
along with the brand-new follow-up, It’s
STILL Elementary, were held in New York City
and San Francisco this October.
Despite the
initial hoopla, It’s Elementary was eventually
distributed in thousands of schools nationwide and was
“a tremendous catalyst for the discussion of
LGBT issues in elementary-age education,” says
Eliza Byard, interim executive director of the Gay, Lesbian,
and Straight Education Network. There are now some
3,600 gay-straight alliances in high schools
nationwide, for example, up from 300 or so before the
video’s release.
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