This cycle's readings are both timely and perennial. They are timely because of the continuing patterns of exclusion that gay, lesbian, and transgender children face in our society. According to the Human Rights Campaign:
LGBQ young people are more than twice as likely to feel suicidal, and over four times as likely to attempt suicide, compared to heterosexual youth . . . the rates may be especially high for bisexual teens . . . According to one study, a third of transgender youth have seriously considered suicide, and one in five has made a suicide attempt . . .
These are alarming statistics. People of my generation grew up with the tragedy of the Matthew Shepard case. And nearly ten years ago now, the tragic case of Tyler Clementi brought growing awareness to the links between bullying, social media, and LGBTQ mental health. The fact that such things can still happen in our country, some would say, speaks to the pressing need to address the issue of homophobia in our schools—as this week’s introductory reading from Erik Eckholm helps explain.
As teachers, we perhaps now join our students in watching shows such as Glee, Modern Family, or Stranger Things—where issues of sexuality, gender identity, and sexual orientation are openly portrayed for a "primetime" audience. The first time I taught this course, gay marriage was not yet a reality—since 2015, it has become the law of the land. A major candidate for the US Presidency is an openly-gay, married man.
Responsive teaching and curriculum-making would seem to require that we help students sort through these issues, to think about the ways in which sex, love, and inclusion are played out in both families and nations. Pre-school children are asked to think about these issues: for example, when a classmate starts wearing dresses to school and asks to be called by a different name and set of pronouns. Elementary children are asked to think about these issues: for example, as they look around their schools and neighborhoods and realize that some men love other men, and some women love other women. Middle and high school children are asked to think about these issues as they themselves start to form sexual attachments that may or may not fit heteronormative assumptions.
Should the curriculum address controversial issues? By asking this question, in connection with these readings, am I somehow implying that queer sexuality is controversial? That it might be, in some cases, acceptable to sidestep these issues? That is, that there is any room for debate when it comes to the human rights of queer folx?
No, that is not my intent.
Yet we must ask what approach to sexuality the schools will take. If sexuality education focuses on birth control and preventing unwanted pregnancies, isn't a very specific message being implied? If we never think about Joan of Arc or Hua Mulan in the context of their gender and sexual identity, have we left something out of history? If locker rooms and restrooms continue to enforce a gender binary, what message are we sending? It is in the context of these issues that I wish us to read the Thornton and Eisner pieces--both classics in the history of curricular thinking.
All of these difficult questions can and should be raised in the course of this week’s readings. But, as the readings this cycle should make clear, this week is as much about what we don’t say as what we do say—about our silences and omissions as well as our lectures and homilies.
Childhood should be preserved as something special, but to construct it as a time of pure innocence—and to thereby justify a curriculum that does not help students sort through the problems they bring into our classrooms—seems to me wrong. This week’s readings should ultimately challenge us to consider just how responsive our curriculum is to those children who walk into our lives each and every day.
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