Tyrone Reid, Enterprise Reporter

Officials from the Education Ministry have distanced the ministry from the controversial textbook that ostensibly presents homosexual unions as a viable family option, but the teachers from a prominent high school that uses the book are insisting that the book was recommended by technical experts from the ministry.

"The Ministry of Education wishes to advise that it does not endorse the text CSEC Home Economics and Beyond (Management) by Rita Dyer and Norma Maynard," read a section of a release issued by the ministry yesterday.

It added: "We wish to make it clear that the publication is neither recommended nor approved by the ministry for use in schools. We recognise the sensitivity and concern which parents would have with the publication of the named text."

The ministry also noted that the Education Act, 1980, gives it the responsibility to make regulations regarding the curriculum to be taught in public education institutions. Therefore, schools that wished to use books that are not on the approved list "must inform the Ministry of Education, in order for a thorough review of the book to be done prior to its placement on their schools' book lists. This procedure was not followed in the case of the book mentioned. Schools will be held accountable for breaches of these regulations," the release stated.

When The Gleaner visited the Ministry's website yesterday, the book was not on its 'Approved Textbooks List 2008-2009'.

Highly recommended

However the book is not on the ministry's approved list, a vice-principal from a school that uses the textbook told our news crew that the book was highly recommended by specialists from the ministry at a training session some two years ago at the Ministry's Caenwood Complex.

"If something is recommended at a Ministry of Education workshop, put on by experts, one would expect that they would have done their homework," the vice-principal said in response to the ministry's declaration.

When informed of the school's declaration late yesterday, the ministry was unable to respond immediately. The ministry's communication department is now investigating the school's claim and is scheduled to respond at a later date.

Yesterday, The Gleaner broke news that several secondary school teachers were currently caught in a bind trying to explain homosexual unions as a viable family option as presented in a textbook teachers said was recommended by the Ministry of Education. The controversial clause in the book reads: "When two women or two men live together in a relationship as lesbians or gays, they may be considered as a family. They may adopt children or have them through artificial insemination."