Queering Our Schools

Talking Points

“How do we create classrooms and schools where each child, parent, and staff member’s unique, beautiful self is appreciated and nurtured?”

Something I’ve noticed in my classrooms is that my students seem to be fairly accepting of other classmates and students in the school who are LGBTQ+, but the same acceptance isn’t always afforded to teachers.  There is a long term sub in our school who is an openly trans woman and I’ve overheard some very disrespectful conversations regarding her that I’ve had to shut down.  I’ve not had to make similar corrections regarding trans and non-binary students.

“Despite the recent advances in LGBTQ rights, most schools aren’t safe for queer students.”

This is critical and follows the ideal of Maslow before Bloom, where students' needs need to be met before learning can be effectively implemented.  Safety is one of the lowest tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy, meaning it is one of the most important needs to be met.  If our LGBTQ+ students are not able to feel safe, they will not be able to effectively learn.  As we saw in the case studies from last session, trans students and staff were being made to feel less safe by their school administrators who attempted to put a spotlight on their personal gender identities when they wished to be who they were in their school communities.

“As the movement has developed past its early “gay liberation” beginnings, it has become more complex; teachers who felt comfortable talking about lesbians and gay men need to wrap their hearts and minds around transgender issues and challenges to the socially constructed gender binary.”

While it is true that there are more categories to be recognized in the LGBTQ+ community than just those identifying as gay, I don’t see how it greatly complicates the situation.  No one is asking the general population to know anyones preferred pronouns without prior information, we are just being asked to be considerate.  If you make a wrong assumption about someone, accept the correction and use the individual's preferred pronouns now that you have been made aware of it.  As Johnson noted in Privilege, Power, and Difference, and Armstrong and Wildman discussed in “Colorblindness is the New Racism,” ignoring the issue and taking offense when your own privilege is challenged does not lead to progress or equity, it reinforces the inequities that exist in society rather than extending privilege to all.

Argument Statement:

Despite progress, the acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals in society in general, and in the education system specifically, has a long way to go to provide safe places for all queer students.

The Silenced Dialogue

Talking Points: 

“I tell you, I’m tired of arguing with those white people, because they won't listen…”

“No, they listen, but they don’t hear…”

“The more I try to explain, they just look and nod, just keep looking and nodding.  They don’t really hear me.”

Three examples of minority individuals trying to explain their experience to white people and not being heard.  These are examples of what happens when people in positions of privilege are unwilling to recognize or acknowledge their own privilege.  They assume everyone has their same experiences and ignore the evidence to the contrary when it is made glaringly obvious by those with different lived experiences.  It would seem to be that there is a great lack of empathy, or perhaps an unwillingness to shed ignorance for the sake of enlightenment.  A poor characteristic for those who are supposedly professional educators.

“To provide schooling for everyone’s children that reflects liberal, middle-class values and aspirations is to ensure the maintenance of the status quo, to ensure that power, the culture of power, remains in the hands of those who already have it.”

This statement is very reminiscent of the observations Jean Anyon made of school education strategies in the different socio-economic neighborhoods described by Finn in Literacy with an Attitude.  Public education institutions seem more successful at reinforcing the existing socio-economic divisions in our society rather than providing equitable education and opportunities to all children.

 “If such explicitness is not provided to students, what it feels like to people who are old enough to judge is that there are secrets being kept, that time is being wasted, that the teacher is abdicating his or her duty to teach.”

I found this interesting in light of the teaching policies that the Providence District is pushing on teachers.  Their goals are to have teachers spend less time on direct instruction and focus more on student lead and generated learning.  I wonder now if the students' reluctance to participate in this form of education is originating not from apathy, but a cultural incongruence between students and school.

 

Argument Statement:

As long as the reins of education policy are held by the culture in power, there will continue to be a conflict between students of non-dominant cultures and the educational institutions that are supposed to serve their needs.

Literacy with an Attitude

 This was a rough read.  I'm absolutely witnessing the exact same types of behavior and practices in my school as Anyon describes in her observations of working class schools.  That these patterns are so pervasive and reinforced, whether intentionally or subconsciously, is the antithesis of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It reads more like an instruction manual for building a feudal caste system.

Talking Points:

Another fifth grade teacher who was asked she had students endlessly copy notes from the blackboard in social studies replied, "Because the children in this school don't know anything about the U.S., so you can't teach them much."  Another teacher said, "you can't teach these kids anything.  Their parents don't care about them, and they're not interested."

I can say that this is definitely how it feels most of the time in my classroom.  I'm trying to teach the material in the curriculum, which is grade level, but all I get from about 90% of the students is resistance.  They will not do the reading or the writing unless I'm standing next to them watching.  This is exacerbated by the fact that roughly 25% of the student in each of my classes either speak no, or very little, English.  Everytime I turn my attention to help an individual EL, the rest of the class takes the opportunity to stop working.  The few students who do have a good work ethic and classroom behavior suffer since all these other instances of resistance means progress through the curriculum slows to a crawl.  I'm at a loss at the moment of what to do.  The district and administration have all number of policies and practices in place that are supposed to help elevate the students academics, and address things like more rigorous types of learning, critical thinking, experiential learning, etc.  These all seem like techniques that should bring the school more in line with a middle class or affluent professional education.  However, these practices have no effect if the majority of students refuse to engage, and the district continues to put us in over crowded classrooms without the specialized supports many of our students need, and continues to slash an already insufficient budget.  I feel like the teachers and building admin are trying to help, but we keep getting more and more criteria that we as teachers are supposed to accomplish that it impedes our ability to actually teach effectively.  Trying to fix the problem at the secondary education stage is not going to work, especially if we are required to meet grade level standards when the majority of students entering 9th grade are below grade level in skill, practice, and mindset.  The only way for children in working class schools to catch up is by starting at day one at the elementary or even pre-K stage.  This, however will be fruitless without the cooperation and interest of parents and families, who if are working class probably have more pressing matters of survival to worry about.

"In the two working class school classrooms combined, the children's average IQ was above 100 and eight children had IQs above 125."

This is another phenomenon that I have noticed.  While I don't have the IQ scores to back up my observations, the majority of my students are quite intelligent, they are also, unfortunately, either unfathomably ignorant, apathetic, or both.  This extends to their study skills and ability to engage with complex thought processes.  Assigning tasks that don't have clear-cut and defined tasks are either disregarded or induce paralysis.  I'm sure that the vast majority of my students have the intelligence to complete any task I give them, but their skills are so atrophied that they don't, won't, or can't use the tools necessary to be successful.

"In the past twenty years numbers have grown at the top and bottom.  The number in the middle has declined.  Those at the top have gotten a whole lot richer.  Those in the middle are in about the same place economically, and those at the bottom have gotten a whole lot poorer." 

While this information is not news to me, and in the intervening 25 years these numbers have continued to drift in the same directions, it is still incredibly alarming.  It's also very reminiscent of the points made by Johnson in "Privilege, Power, and Difference," and by Armstrong and Wildman in "Colorblindness is the New Racism."  Specifically, those in positions of privilege or power can ignore the plight of those without, and have no incentives to change a system where they are the primary beneficiaries.  However, unlike most other forms of privilege discussed, which could be argued are in better situations than they might have been historically (in general most people think racism and sexism are bad; non binary, trans, and non hetero groups still face a lot of hate but are more accepted than in the past, etc.), socioeconomic divides have continued to get worse and worse.  The haves keep getting more and more, while the have-nots keep getting less and less.  Looking to history, most civilizations that develop such imbalances in wealth do not persist for long, and they generally don't end peacefully.  I genuinely fear for the future of this country, which while I don't think has ever been objectively great, it certainly can be argued was the greatest nation that existed at certain times.  I don't think now is one of those times, and if we continue to devalue the largest portion of the population, there could come a time when they decide to take the reigns of power.  And the way that we are currently educating this swath of the population doesn't lend much confidence to the prospect of whatever comes next being any better than what we have now.

Colorblindness is the New Racism

 Talking points:

"Yet the possessor of the knapsack of privilege could reliably depend on the advantages they provide, even though she or he remained unaware of them."

"People generally possess good will and truly want to see an end to discrimination.  But discrimination cannot end absent an understanding of the privilege dynamic that enables discrimination to continue."

"The idea that students of law should ignore its human and societal origins erases perspective with potentially debilitating results."

Argument Statement:

People in the position of privilege are able to ignore the effects of systemic hierarchical privilege due to the nature of their own privilege.  A problem ignored is one that cannot be addressed or fixed.  Colorblindness reinforces the neglect of the very real and still current problem of racial inequity by those with white privilege without providing any qualitative or quantitative improvement to the situation of subjugated non-white races.

Connections:

The themes presented in this text were verry much in line with those presented by Dr. Johnson in his book, Privilege, Power, and Difference.

Privilege, Power, and Difference

First off, I thought this was a fantastic read.  Privilege is something that I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the last decade, and the way that Dr. Johnson describes and explains this phenomenon, to me, was incredibly clear and comprehensible.  I tend to run in what would be considered liberal and progressive social circles, and the majority of my family that I interact with share similar values.  The concept of privilege however still remains a contentious issue for some that I consider close friends and family.  Particularly white privilege and in rarer cases male privilege.  

The first time I truly grasped and internalized the concept of my own privilege happened embarrassingly late in my life.  It was about 10 years ago, which would put me in my early thirties, when I read an article a female friend of mine had posted on one of their social media pages.  I haven’t been able to find the specific article, but the premise was explaining why women rarely give direct answers when turning down male advances.  At the time I was stewing over a series of interactions I had recently had with a female acquaintance who I was interested in.  I had asked her out a few times, and each time I received a response along the lines of “maybe,”  “I’ll get back to you,” or ”my schedule is really busy this week, but we’ll see when it clears up.”  I eventually realized she wasn’t interested and let it go, but I still felt frustrated, and not because this was a novel experience, in fact it had very similar to most responses I got in those situations up to that point.  I found myself thinking “why won’t she just say she’s not interested?”  “Why all the vague and ambiguous responses?”  

This is where my thoughts were when I read the article I mentioned above, and boy, did I receive an education.  The gist of the article was that, for women, dating is inherently dangerous, and directly rejecting male advances or interest can lead to real harm, and so less direct responses are often used as a means of protection.  It wasn’t something that I had considered before, that I would be perceived as a potential danger, someone that needed to be diffused gently.  The article further detailed many of the realities women need to deal with while existing in a male dominated world, much of which mirror the examples of gender privilege enumerated by Dr. Johnson.  I spent the majority of that day thinking about and trying to imagine, to the best of my ability, what it must be like to live with all of these fears and anxieties every day on top of the other fears and anxieties I already have.  I’ve never thought twice about walking around alone at night, I’ve never worried about who’s around when I’m drinking at a bar, and I’ve never worried that someone I was attracted to could kill me with their bare hands.  

I did start to think about it that day, and I try to hold that realization, that brush with understanding with me in my interactions with women, and other groups that don’t share the privileges that I enjoy.  One thing I came to realise was that while I might not be the problem, I am part of a problem; a culture that allows the perpetuation of privilege and oppression between genders, races, sexualities, and class.  It’s a concept I try to share with others who will listen when the topic arises, and I really appreciate how succinctly Dr. Johnson presents these ideas.