Speaking the Unspeakable in Forbidden Places: adressing lesbian, gay. bisexual and transgender equality in the primary school

Alexandra Allan, Elizabeth Atkinson, Elizabeth Brace, Renée DePalma and Judy Hemingway

There are many parts of this article I found interesting. To start off, I would like to discuss the idea presented in the article on the idea of "spaces" where it is safe and unsafe to talk about sexuality. There is a quote from the article that is quite telling of this idea:
"What is interesting to note, however, is they way in which these relations constituted and were constituted by social space; the ways in which the school corridors, in particular, were being recognized as public, mobile, child-inhabited and therefore, dangerous places to talk about sexuality."
I disagree with the well known phrase that "there is a time and a place for everything", and using that reasoning maybe we shouldn't talk about gayness in the hallways, or in a classroom. I would instead prefer that for large social issues such as gayness, there is always a time and place for the ideas to be addressed, and rather a strategic and intelligent way of going about it. I don't think we should hold open debates or seminars in elementary classrooms about whether or not it is okay to be identified as something other than heterosexual. However, if instead the idea was brought up in classrooms through ideas such as role play or books as expressed in the article, then there should be no part of a school that is "private" or "public" when it comes to addressing these important issues.

The second point that caught my attention in the article was when it began to discuss parental resistance to educating elementary students about homo(sexuality). This was something that was in the back of my mind while reading the entire article, and was finally brought out towards the end. The article states that "Here, the fear that a number of "No-Outsiders" teacher-researchers have articulated that parents might be offended or upset by the discussion of sexualities in primary classrooms- is counte3red by positive parental reactions. As suggested, the session prompted a meaningful discussion between one child and her mother that might have not happened otherwise". While I think it is a very positive thing that educating students on this issue resulted in a positive family experience outside of school, I think the article severely underestimates parental response. The experience compares the negative parental impacts equally with positive ones and says that they will basically balance one another out. In my experience, however, with previous parents of classmates of my own, and parents I have met while volunteering in other classrooms, the ratio of conservative, religious, parents who would disapprove of such discussions is way higher than that of more liberal and perhaps gay/lesbian parents who would approve of the same discussions. This is a point I would be interested to bring up in class. I believe it would be interesting to see if other people's experiences are similar to mine, or different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J06NpqnvZ0