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Sexual Diversity and Public Schools in Canada and the United States
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“Dear Fag-Boy: You will DIE!!! if you do not LEAVE my school. I PROMISE!”
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Youthful sexuality is the most untouchable of all hot buttons associated with the “gay agenda.” Social conservatives recoil at the very notion that an institution with responsibility for young people recognize the sexual diversity among them. They envisage vulnerable children drawn towards unnatural practices, and abused by predatory adults who will ruin their lives.
Of all the institutions influencing young people, public schools are the most important and scrutinized. They care for and teach vast numbers of children and adolescents during formative stages when they are rapidly absorbing facts, reasoning styles, and frameworks. Throughout the schooling period, whether in the classroom or the school yard, they are learning lessons about the society they live in, and their place in it.
Debates over how schools should respond to diversity generally, and this form of diversity particularly, evoke long standing disagreements about what schools should teach and what values the community as a whole should uphold. The stakes are large indeed, and mobilizing on all sides of the debates over sexuality bring to the table a wide array of stakeholders.
Exploring the politics of sexual diversity in public schooling requires first an understanding of the emergence of activism among equity seekers and their opponents, and of the larger debates over schooling they evoke. Analysing the impact of such activism on what schools actually do then requires attention to three policy clusters. The first deals with students, and includes the schools response to harassment and bullying – often the first issue to be placed on the agenda. The second cluster focuses on the rights of teachers, including the right of openly lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered educators to teach, and of all teachers to speak about sexual diversity. The third cluster takes up what is often the most challenging of issues – the creation of a more inclusive curriculum. Change in one issue area does not necessarily entail change in others, and we will see that the patterns of response in Canada and the U.S. varies from one cluster to the other.
What will emerge is an unusual pattern in the cross national comparison of sexual diversity politics – one which shows more change in at least one of the school issue clusters in the U.S. than in Canada. Anti-gay harassment has been on the American schools policy agenda for a longer time, and more widely, than north of the border, and it is quite possible that more curricular change has ensued.
Arguing that more has happened in the U.S. than Canada does not mean that school systems anywhere have done more than begin to address marginalization in a thoroughgoing way. The possibility of school students being queer and acting on it is routinely ignored. The idea of students having lesbian or gay parents is even further off the radar screen. In even the most forward looking of jurisdictions, most students and staff are hemmed in by traditional gender and sexual constructs. As a result, schools still provide what well may be the most pervasively anti-
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3
“Dear Fag-Boy: You will DIE!!! if you do not LEAVE my school. I PROMISE!”
1
Youthful sexuality is the most untouchable of all hot buttons associated with the “gay agenda.”
Social conservatives recoil at the very notion that an institution with responsibility for young
people recognize the sexual diversity among them. They envisage vulnerable children drawn
towards unnatural practices, and abused by predatory adults who will ruin their lives.
Of all the institutions influencing young people, public schools are the most important and
scrutinized. They care for and teach vast numbers of children and adolescents during formative
stages when they are rapidly absorbing facts, reasoning styles, and frameworks. Throughout the
schooling period, whether in the classroom or the school yard, they are learning lessons about the
society they live in, and their place in it.
Debates over how schools should respond to diversity generally, and this form of diversity
particularly, evoke long standing disagreements about what schools should teach and what values
the community as a whole should uphold. The stakes are large indeed, and mobilizing on all
sides of the debates over sexuality bring to the table a wide array of stakeholders.
Exploring the politics of sexual diversity in public schooling requires first an understanding of
the emergence of activism among equity seekers and their opponents, and of the larger debates
over schooling they evoke. Analysing the impact of such activism on what schools actually do
then requires attention to three policy clusters. The first deals with students, and includes the
schools response to harassment and bullying – often the first issue to be placed on the agenda.
The second cluster focuses on the rights of teachers, including the right of openly
lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered educators to teach, and of all teachers to speak about sexual
diversity. The third cluster takes up what is often the most challenging of issues – the creation of
a more inclusive curriculum. Change in one issue area does not necessarily entail change in
others, and we will see that the patterns of response in Canada and the U.S. varies from one
cluster to the other.
What will emerge is an unusual pattern in the cross national comparison of sexual diversity
politics – one which shows more change in at least one of the school issue clusters in the U.S.
than in Canada. Anti-gay harassment has been on the American schools policy agenda for a
longer time, and more widely, than north of the border, and it is quite possible that more
curricular change has ensued.
Arguing that more has happened in the U.S. than Canada does not mean that school systems
anywhere have done more than begin to address marginalization in a thoroughgoing way. The
possibility of school students being queer and acting on it is routinely ignored. The idea of
students having lesbian or gay parents is even further off the radar screen. In even the most
forward looking of jurisdictions, most students and staff are hemmed in by traditional gender and
sexual constructs. As a result, schools still provide what well may be the most pervasively anti-
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