To the editor:

An open letter to the Lee County School Board:

Dear Fellow Residents of Lee County, Administration and School Board Members of Lee School District,

One of the most tragic and incomprehensible things about the tragic and incomprehensible beating and subsequent death of Nex Benedict, a non-binary 16-year-old, is that their assailants, fellow students in their Oklahoma HS, did not even know Nex.

Where did the hate, the rage, the urge to punish a person different from themselves come from? Some groups are shouting (yes, really shouting) that the schools are indoctrinating students by letting them learn that individuals, families, cultures may be different from their own experience and are worthy of respect. We hear that “Don’t Say Gay” laws will “protect the innocence of our students.” The idea, I guess, is that if we pretend that people aren’t different, in a myriad of wonderful and sometimes confounding ways, maybe we can subside back into our comfortable, smug, self-righteous bubble and just hope “they” will go away.

Tacitly or actively accepting the notion that learning in school should remain silent on differences is not a way to achieve respect for and acceptance of differences. In fact, this approach can be just as insidious as an active hate campaign. Why? When we choose to look the other way we are sending a terrible message to our young people. They learn these silent lessons well.

Where does this hate and rage toward “the other” — whether the persons be non-binary, from a different culture, a different color or a different religion — come from? Logically, not from instruction at school, but, may I suggest, from indoctrination at home, on social media, from sermons at “Christian” and other “houses of worship.” We have heard self-professed “Christians” at School Board Meetings yelling that homosexuality is an “abomination.” How terribly cruel and how terribly false.

What to do? What good educators have been doing for years — teach students about the rich diversity that exists in a classroom, in a school, in a community, in the nation, in the world. Embrace students’ curiosity about differences, let them learn, open their eyes, open their hearts to a different world view. Actively teach them to respect others — don’t just mouth platitudes — help students learn that because a person, their family, their culture is different from one’s own they need not succumb to blind FEAR and HATE. If we all follow this example, we might even learn to LOVE one another and treat others as we wish to be treated.

Madelon V. Stewart

Fort Myers