Gayteacher's Blog

We don’t need permission July 29, 2009

Education isn’t supposed to be about the teacher’s agenda; it’s supposed to be about the children.

All of the children are excited.  Soon dismissal will be upon them, and two glorious weeks of winter break will begin.  

A thoughtful child asks, “Ms. Rosenberg, what do you want for Christmas?”  

Without hesitation, the teacher seizes the teachable moment.  She smiles and explains, “I’m Jewish, so my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas.  Can anyone recall what holiday Jewish people celebrate this time of year?”

Another child raises his hand, eager to be chosen.  The teacher calls on him and he proudly displays his knowledge, “Chanukah!  You light the candle thing every night for eight nights because that’s how long the oil thing lasted in the story.”

“It’s called a menorah,” a little girl adds.  She had been quiet, but now she is animated and makes eye contact with her teacher.  “I’m Jewish too!” she adds.

As the bell rings, the teacher wishes everyone a safe and happy break, reminding them to try to do a bit of reading each day.

In one sense, the scene represents a nonevent.  There will be no repercussions. When the children mention that their teacher is Jewish, parents will not pull the car over on the way home demanding to know what made the child say such a thing.  The principal will not have to interrupt the teacher’s break for a somber meeting in which the teacher is informed that she’s on very shaky ground; that she has no right to reveal such a controversial aspect of her personal life; that parents have the right to decide when and if their children will be exposed to religious ideologies incongruent with their own.  The teacher will not spend her break in fear, wondering if she just cost herself a career.  

Reporters will not swarm upon her, demanding to know if it’s true that she’s Jewish, pressing for a confession that she did in fact tell impressionable children that she was.  Talk shows will not debate the issue, allowing the argument that these Jews, despite representing a miniscule percentage of the population, or perhaps because of it, are constantly trying to undercut traditional values to force their views on others in a blatant effort to recruit innocent young children to their religion.  Radio pundits will not point out that Judaism is a choice,or that Jews are in a regressed state, calling for Christians everywhere to enhance their efforts to bring nonbelievers to the light and compassionately guide these misguided souls to make the right choice.  

In another sense, the exchange changed the world.  Observers might be quick to point out that, yes, it is good that the little Jewish girl was able to take pride in her own identity by seeing a part of it reflected in a respected authority figure.  It is, but the bigger picture is that all of the children in the class were able to put faces to something that may have previously seemed unrelated to their lives.  Their views on Jewish people are forever changed, and it will affect their attitudes and interactions for the rest of their lives.

We gay teachers know that it would have the same positive consequences if we were to state as a matter of fact that we are gay; but we are immobilized by the real fear that making our own simple declarations actually would result in backlash.  That is our greatest evidence of inequality.  Many of you are shaking your heads reading this, thinking that my words may ring true, but that where you live, there is no inclusion of sexual orientation and/or gender identity as a protected group–and that even where there is, there are other ways to fire teachers or make our lives miserable.  They may not legally be able to fire you for outing yourself, or teaching gay history, but that one day your car breaks down and you are late arriving to school will be their justification, or you will be subjected to a surprise evaluation in which your teaching abilities are called into question.  After teaching 5th grade for decades, suddenly you’re “needed” in kindergarten.  

It’s scary for all of us.  It’s easy enough to point out that social change requires sacrifices, but much harder to volunteer to become a martyr for a cause.  Besides, being sentenced to a book repository won’t do much to help children see that we are all entitled to equality.  We have mortgages, car payments, perhaps children of our own, not to mention little desire to subject ourselves or our loved ones to any negative consequences.  There are crazy people out there who could cause us real harm.  

The problem with this thinking is its direction.  We know what is right, and what we need to do to be good teachers.  Education isn’t supposed to be about the teacher’s agenda; it’s supposed to be about the children.

Gay Education July 28, 2009

I can picture images of Harriet Tubman in my mind, furtively glancing around for near certain danger, risking her life to help slaves who fled a system that held as a matter of course that people could be property.  Elementary school teachers taught me about the Underground Railroad, where the slaves passed messages through songs, and looked to the night sky for direction; and about The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated by a madman filled with hatred.  There was no rebuttal.  People did not share their views that it was a good thing King was silenced, and unfortunate that it led to black people being treated as though they were equal to whites when they simply did not believe that was true.

By high school, my textbooks talked about Brown vs. the Board of Education, Southern states that maintained separate but equal drinking fountains, and studies showing that a century after slavery was ended, little black girls still chose the white dollies as superior to the black dollies.  I remember pictures of the Little Rock Nine.  A black girl clutching her book, looking determined (but, oh, she must have been terrified), as angry white faces contorted around her.  The message was clear–those white people were wrong, hateful; the frightened teenaged girl the hapless victim of unthinkable bigotry.  There was no rebuttal.  No one pointed out that the white people were just trying to keep things the way they ought to be and should be viewed sympathetically.

I’ve learned a great deal more about this part of our nation’s history since my days in public education, and have much more to learn; but those are the childhood memories that come to me most readily, memories that I imagine many of us brought up in the U.S. education system remember.

Even with all of the prejudiced views in our country, by the time my schooling was under way in the 70’s and 80’s, allowing that another perspective was valid had been relegated to niche groups such as the KKK or neo-nazi sects that were regarded by mainstream society as dangerous fringe lunatics.  Quietly, amongst friends and family, mainstream society did often express outright disdain for African Americans, characterizing the culture in only negative terms, giggling over racist jokes…but the numbers of people who agreed that the jokes weren’t funny anymore were starting to swell.  Society was becoming less segregated, and personal associations were starting to change beliefs.  It’s gotten to where making a racist comment just isn’t safe anymore, because the white recipient just might have an African American mate, child, friend…  People are entitled to their beliefs, and we do still see evidence of blatant and de facto hatred and discrimination today.  What we don’t see is the rebuttal.  

Teachers still educate children about the ongoing history of African Americans, and then as now, we do not allow for opposing points of view.   If the First Amendment protects people whose opinion is that slavery was bad, shouldn’t it also secure the rights of people to speak their beliefs that African Americans are inferior, are subhuman, and that we should go back to the good old days?  In a predominantly Christian nation armed with a bible that indicates that slavery is as old as humanity and is perfectly acceptable, does the majority populace and its religious doctrines hold no weight whatsoever in the public schools?   That is correct.  It does not, and no amount of raging against the irony of free speech applying only to minority groups can change it back.  

Opponents who rally against this way of thinking, quite rightly racing to point out the double standard, have ignored that which they detest about the public schools:  our doctrine is designed to offer a liberal education.  They bandy the word about as though it’s an epithet, something a few renegade teachers have turned the school system into as opposed to its mission.  

We are assigned the job of changing society to be less discriminatory, more open to understanding differences, and to promoting diversity whether we like it or not.  It is no coincidence that the vast majority of teachers in the public school system lean to the left politically: believing what we’re supposed to convey makes for a more pleasant day.  Those who gripe over it have missed the point.  

The First Amendment does allow people to think and say that they do not believe women should have won the right to vote; just not in the public school system, where our directive is to show minorities achieving equality in positive lights.  To do that, we teach children about very sensitive subjects.  Slavery is an emotional topic.  The Holocaust also elicits strong feelings.  History isn’t always pretty,or distant.  We do this because we need knowledge to make connections, and because we value students having an understanding of their place in the universe  in relation to the other people in it.  The intention is to reduce prejudice and bigotry by indoctrinating children as young as we can get them to believing that all people have inherent worth and dignity.  Therefore, we do not permit a rebuttal. Hitler wasn’t an inspirational leader with a legitimate plan to reform his country:  he was a monster.  You can teach your children that a woman’s role is to be a wife and a mother, but we must teach her that she can have every opportunity she seeks, and help to prepare her for them.

So, where’s the gay history?  Where’s the gay culture in our schools?  Kindergarten children know about King; have they ever heard of Milk?  Could your students identify and describe the factors that led to the Stonewall Rebellion?  Are they aware that every species of animal that has been studied has gay subsets just like people do, as a simple matter of better scientific understanding?   Do they have a clear view of the legal scope of the land?  We don’t read Langston Hughes without remarking on his color or the fact that he was part of the Harlem Renaissance, yet we skip over the fact that his being gay may have also influenced his writings.  We hold Whitman up as an exemplar of early American writers, but become very uncomfortable at the prospect of mentioning that he was a gay man.  That part isn’t in our texts.  It’s not in our curriculum.  

Our edict to keep our children safe and provide them with the best conditions to reach their potential cannot be met if our only action is weak attempts to keep ignorant people from beating them to death instead of doing our job of actually dispelling ignorance.

As long as gay culture is whispered about instead of presented as a matter of curriculum in our schools, we can do nothing to achieve equality: the most human and loftiest objective of our nation’s public school system.  When history looks back on us after equality is inevitably reached, at least de jure equality if not de facto, will we be proud of the roles we have played?  What side of history do you want to be on?  

(Translation for pedantic English teachers:  On which side of history do you want to be?)

On tolerance July 27, 2009

It is one thing to teach children to be tolerant, but you have no right to teach children that being gay is acceptable.

This objection is often wrapped up in the guise of several underlying issues, with religious beliefs used to justify a “love the sinner, hate the sin” mentality.  This poses an etymological conundrum in itself, as “accceptance” is a synonym for “tolerance;” but in common usage, “tolerance” has come to mean putting up with something rather than embracing it.  Most people will grant that anti-bullying campaigns do have a place in the public school system; what they reject is the paradigm shift that calls for changing children’s thinking so that they no longer view being gay as a negative attribute, or as a benign trait that can be overcome, but as a positive aspect of a person’s life to be celebrated.

However, the bullying that children who are perceived to be gay receive is directly tied to the belief that being gay is unacceptable.  The goal of preventing abuse in school cannot be achieved without directly offering our youngest students positive affirmations and representations of gay people.  Imagine the outcry if the only message we gave to our students regarding any other minority group was that not all of them are bad; that while your parents have the right to teach you that all members of of that group are in fact bad, taunting those people is impolite at school.

When incorporating gay culture in the classroom is addressed at all, it is usually at the high school level, by which time it is too late to be truly effective.  High schools offering gay clubs and alliances create vital links for teens who are at the greatest risk of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, truancy, unplanned pregnancies, and violence.  Unfortunately, they come into place, if at all, after eight years of education in which the absence of gay culture in schools and a laissez-faire attitude to anti-gay slurs has been fully ingrained in our children.

Tolerance is in itself an obstacle to understanding, not a gateway.  This becomes clear when we apply the terminology to any other group of people.  Is it our goal to teach students that women should be tolerated?  Do we merely tolerate the fact that  some children do not celebrate Christmas?  Are we charged with the task of telling children of all colors that people who are not caucasian are to be tolerated?

Putting up with people who do not fit a rigid construct is a backhanded attempt to appear sympathetic to that which is deemed undesirable.  We tolerate a traffic accident that impedes our travel, unabated pain that we must ignore to finish a job, or any other repugnancy we wish we could do away with but must accept as an unfortunate reality.  Our mission as public school teachers is to foster thoughtful appreciation of diversity, not to convey a message of having to endure the fact that we are not all the same.

That’s something we cannot tolerate.

The need for openly gay teachers July 25, 2009

(Note:  here, the term “gay” is used to be inclusive, solely due to the author’s discomfort with the cumbersome acronym, “GLBTQ,” and similar efforts to linguistically group all of us whose sole binding factor is defined more by what we are not than what we are.)  

Decades ago, before becoming a teacher, the civil rights movement played a much larger role in my life.    To further that end, I had gone to  upstate NY for a conference designed to help gay activists better handle the media.  A stranger approached me at the conference, calling me by name.  Putting names to faces is a shameful weakness of mine, and I apologized to the stranger, asking if we had met before.

“You wouldn’t know me,” he said, “but I know you.  We didn’t go in the same circles, but we went to high school together.  You changed my life.”

He went on to explain that my taking my girlfriend to the prom back in ’84 was a turning point for him, prompting him to come out of the closet and live his life proudly as an out gay man.  His attendance at the conference was evidence of his having gone the step further to activism, where he too was participating in the social changes necessary to create a climate where equality for all could slowly become a reality.  I say this not for self-aggrandizement, as the era was rife with potential catalysts; and my being escorted by a woman clad in a tuxedo wasn’t meant to be a political statement at the time.  However, it goes directly to how some catalyst is often needed for queer youth to accept and embrace their identities.

When we think back on our teachers, the lessons they intended to convey are usually lost on our memories.  Many of us have no specific memory of learning to read or do long division.  What we take with us is the memory of teachers who cared about us by touching our hearts in some way.  In some cases, our experiences were shaped simply by virtue of having misconceptions dispelled.  I was brought up with many prejudices that were washed away simply by virtue of having caring, competent teachers who did not fit the negative stereotypes I had been fed as a child.  

We have known for many years that the number one factor in determining whether a survey respondent is likely to be in favor of gay rights legislation is whether or not they know, and know that they know, gay people.  The perceptions of people who do not think they know anyone who is gay is shaped by an us vs. them mentality rather than a basis in fact.  Statistically, it is unlikely that there be anyone on Earth who does not know a gay person; leading to the conclusion that we are contributing to our own legal and social repression by not being out to those around us.  It is for this reason that it is crucial to have openly gay teachers in the classroom.  

If your reaction to this is fear or anger, that is understandable.  It frightened me to write it.  It frightened me when the subject of my marital status came up in the teachers’ lounge just a few months into my first teaching assignment.  I tried to appear casual despite my heart pounding loudly in my ears, smiled and stated that I was gay and had a partner and two children.  Blessed with an incredibly supportive school staff and administration, in an environment where the focus is on establishing excellence for and in the children, I am aware of how lucky I am that the news was received without much fanfare.  Still, it continues to frighten me each time I come out in the school setting, and that  fear shames me.  Equality should be the norm, not good fortune for which I should be grateful.  I had thought these apprehensions had been overcome in my youth, but the conservative nature of liberal education brought them to the surface. 

When I became a teacher, I was sent for a training for new hires.  I was frightened, but summoned the courage to ask the trainer privately about my rights as a gay teacher.  She grinned broadly and assured me that my district has sexual orientation as a protected class–for teachers and students alike.  My mind raced with hypotheticals.  Could I put a picture of my partner on my desk as straight teachers do?  Could I directly state that I am gay  to students, and that there is nothing wrong with being gay.  “Of course!” she insisted, and added, “There isn’t.”

Ironically, in my experience, that message has been embraced much more emphatically by liberal heterosexuals than ourselves.  In an almost comical display of olive branch extending, once I was out, straight teachers made an effort to point out gay friends of theirs, voiced outrage over inequities for gays, and shared interesting camp and college experiences.  Conversely, a gay colleague and friend pulled me aside with real concern for me, and possibly herself by association.  She was gentle, and had only my best interests at heart.  “They really like you.  They think you’re good at this.  But, you have to stop with the gay stuff.”  I told her that I couldn’t.  This wasn’t just about me–not that my own existence shouldn’t be reason enough.  I have children in the public school system.  There are gay children in the public school system.  There are gay and straight children who will grow up filled with hatred of others or themselves if we don’t put a stop to it.

Yet, still the fear persists.  A child spits out at another, “You’re gay!”  I frown sternly, “I am gay.  When you say it like it’s a bad thing, it hurts my feelings.  Please, stop.”  My heart pounds again.  Now the phone calls from angry parents will come.  So much for finally finding my niche in life.  Then my own anger comes.  Why am I afraid?  I haven’t said anything wrong.  There is nothing to justify but the bold notion that gay people are people.  Didn’t we take care of this nonsense years ago?  Aren’t all the legal protections, for those of us “lucky”enough to have them, testaments to that shift in thinking?  Sure, to a degree; but then why is it still a problem in our schools,and what are we doing about it?