Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Curriculum, Cultures, and (Homo)Sexualities Series) [Paperback]

William J. Letts IV (Editor), James T. Sears (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0847693694 | ISBN-13: 978-0847693696 | Publication Date: October 27, 1999

Queering Elementary Education is not about teaching kids to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight. ItOs not part of a sinister stratagem in the Ogay agenda.O Instead, these provocative and thoughtful essays advocate the creation of classrooms that challenge categorical thinking, promote interpersonal intelligence, and foster critical consciousness. Queer elementary classrooms are those where parents and educators care enough about their children to trust the human capacity for understanding and their educative abilities to foster insight into the human condition. Those who teach queerly refuse to participate in the great sexual sorting machine called schooling where diminutive GI Joes and Barbies become star quarterbacks and prom queens, while the Linuses and Tinky Winkies become wallflowers or human doormats. Queeering education means bracketing our simplest classroom activities in which we routinely equate sexual identities with sexual acts, privilege the heterosexual condition, and presume sexual destinies. Queer teachers are those who develop curriculum and pedagogy that afford every child dignity rooted in self-worth and esteem for others. In short, queering education happens when we look at schooling upside down and view childhood from the inside out. This groundbreaking volume demands we explore taken-for-granted assumptions about diversity, identities, childhood, and prejudice.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Provides an in-depth examination of the ways children's lives are hurt by homophobia and an inspiring array of strategies educators can use to turn this problem around. A must read for parents, educators, and administrators alike. (Debra Chasnoff )

This brilliant anthology is crucial reading for anyone committed to ensuring that our schools become physically and emotionally safer and more educationally relevant for students and staff of all sexual and gender identifications...Destined to become a classic, Queering Elementary Education offers a well-reasoned way out of the pedagogical and curricular restraints that have inhibited true liberatory education in our elementary schools. (Warren J. Blumenfeld )

This courageous collection of essays presents an articulate and passionate challenge to the repressive state apparatuses such as schools that professionally administer homophobia and reproduce state-sponsored heterosexism. Will Letts, Jim Sears and their contributors have provided educators with compelling arguments supporting gay and lesbian perspectives, multiculturalism, and gender and class equality. This volume marks the beginning of the queering of critical pedagogy and is long overdue. (McLaren, Peter )

These path-breaking essays are addressed to every present and future educator who would model honesty, civility, fairness, and respect for their students, colleagues and communities.... Provides readers with standards for achieving the kind of dignity that is rooted in self-worth and esteem for others and encourages us to imagine societies with more democratic space for all. This collection does all of this, and is also fun to read. (Sandra Harding )

Queering Elementary Education is a ground-breaking book. Here we have, for the first time, a wide-ranging collection of articles on sexuality and elementary (or, in British terms, primary) schooling. Together and individually, the chapters of this book make a compelling case for Queering Elementary Education, to the benefit of all children in all their diversity. With sections on children, the curriculum, educators and families, the book offers a rich resource of teachers, student teachers and teacher educators and for anyone with an interest in sexuality, social justice and schooling. (Deborah Epstein )

As an educator and gay parent, I found this collection fascinating and inspiring, to be widely read and widely taught. (Pinar, William F. )

An important new anthology.... The articles in this book are arranged in just such a way that they offer us some very astute 'queer' observations while, almost simultaneously, providing us with very practical suggestions.... An incredible accomplishment. (Glorianne M. Leck )

In this groundbreaking volume grounded to cutting edge scholarship that is plainly written, Will Letts and James Sears have pointed us down the path to a brighter tomorrow. Here they bring together a diverse range of writers who offer both theoretical constructs and practical advice to those who believe our schools should actively foster the values of justice. Queering Elementary Education gives us tools we need to move ahead. (Jennings, Kevin )

Queering Elementary Education is an important contribution to nourishing the ethical heart of teaching, reminding us how anemic and cold and partial our embrace of our students has too often been. For some readers this collection will be an affirmation, for others a surprise and challenge. But it is a book for all teachers and parents, indeed for anyone concerned with the healthy development of children and schools. And, yes, it has an agenda: it stands straight and strong for fairness, for respect, for humanity, for simple decency. Jane Addams and the dauntless women of Hull House extended our sense of what childhood might be one hundred years ago. Addams asked: How shall we respond to the dreams of youth? This book is built around the same question, extending it in critical and powerful ways. (Ayers, William )

Probably no other title in the pantheon of liberationists literature will evoke more controversy than Queering Elementary Education. Queering Elementary Education is the first carefully constructed work written for educators who are ever on the front lines in the worldwide struggle to eliminate prejudices born of societal ignorance. This extraordinary book was conceived in the summer of 1997 when its editors envisioned what one of them, William J. Letts, IV called: 'a project that would take into account the lifeworlds of children, their families, their teachers, and their schools.' (Jack Nichols Gay Today )

Queering Elementary Education is a must-read for all teachers and, perhaps more importantly, for preservice teachers. It is a smart, clearly written collection of essays exploring the complex interactions of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation. . . . Begins to map out some solutions to the homophobia in American schools. (M. J. Carbone Choice )

About the Author

William J. Letts IV is a lecturer in science education at the Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia. James T. Sears is an independent scholar. He is currently a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (October 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847693694
• ISBN-13: 978-0847693696
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,675,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What the hell?, October 1, 2009

By 

Thomas Leeman - See all my reviews

This review is from: Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Curriculum, Cultures, and (Homo)Sexualities Series) (Paperback)

Really you can't be serious. With all the problems of achievement in our education system we need to spend time on this?

Can you say indoctrination?

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Is this what we send our kids to school to learn??, November 24, 2011

By 

Mommy of 3 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Curriculum, Cultures, and (Homo)Sexualities Series) (Paperback)

Are you kidding me? What ever happened to the 3 R's? With Americans trailing behind almost every other developed country when it comes to education, I cannot believe administrators and educators would actually have the time or interest to entertain this nonsense.

Children are their parent's responsibility, not the government's. Let parents teach their children what is morally right and wrong, not the government.

14 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Seriously troubling advice, December 16, 2009

By 

JB Monteray "Monteray" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Curriculum, Cultures, and (Homo)Sexualities Series) (Paperback)

Teachers shouldn't need an education in biology, and the descriptions in this book that breach basic Judeo-Christian foundations, of our society, and government are at best whinny. Who is creating the stero-types here?
Every teacher should possess the ability to be fair and unbias for every aspect of their jobs. Sexual orientation curriculum doesn't fit the the job description. There are no feelings or emotions in Math. Reading is fundemental. Writing ability improves with the practice of putting words together, not content. Maturity of all varieties happens over long periods of time. This author want to promote "Change and Exploration Education" rather than dicipline and humility. There are no alternatives to pro-creation. Are kids in school to be tolerated or be taught tolerance? This publication is way off script. Grade: F (there is no F minus)