A history teacher at a Seattle high school reportedly told students that identifying as “straight” is “offensive.”
Ian Golash, who recently came under fire for lessons on sexual orientation, told some male students they are a “product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care,” according to a complaint filed by an angry parent.
The mother, who chose to remain anonymous, provided a copy of a “Social Identity Wheel” worksheet Golash assigned to his class to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH.
The worksheet requests the student to self-reflect on their identities, which included:
Racial
Ethnic
Gender
Socio-economic status
Physical
Emotional or developmental disabilities
Sexual orientation
However, the parent said that when her 15-year-old son labeled himself “straight,” Golash told him to pick a less offensive term.
Fox News obtained emailed communications from the mother raising her concerns with Golash and Chief Sealth Principal Ray Garcia-Morales.
“When filling out a Social Identity Wheel, he [her son] was told that if he identifies as straight, he needed to pick a term that was less offensive,” the mom wrote in a Sept. 24, 2023 email.
“It is completely inappropriate to dictate what terms a student can and cannot use to identify themselves with,” the mom wrote in a Sept. 24, 2023 email.
The school responded to the mother’s emails, thanking him for her feedback, but Golash denied that he specifically targeted her son.
“I did not tell anyone what words they should use to identify themselves,” Golash wrote.
“In fact, I stated explicitly that I was not going to tell them how they should identify except to explain the difference between race, ethnicity and nationality.”
However, Golash admitted telling the entire class why he prefers not to use the term “straight.”
“Because I think language has power and that it shapes the culture that we live in, I did say to the class, in response to a student, that I do not use the term ‘straight’ because it implies that to not be straight is to be ‘crooked’ which could have a negative connotation,” the teacher wrote.
The mother went on to claim that Golash singled out her son during a discussion on Florida “banning ethnic studies.”
“I’m told that rather than converse about the topic and provide him with information and an actual answer, he was told that he was a ‘product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care,'” the mom wrote in the email.
“You missed an opportunity here to teach your student about current events and instead shamed him for being a male. To assume that he’s being raised in a patriarchal household is a very mistaken one.”
Golash disputed the claims but did not deny that he told children they were a “product of the patriarchy.”
“My response about patriarchy was not directed at one student, it was connected to discussions of systems of power that we had been having in the previous few days and the behavior of several boys in the class,” he wrote in the email.
“I certainly wasn’t making any implications about your household,” he wrote. “I was referring to a system of power that we all live in.”
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