Troubling Education

"Queer" Activism and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy

Kevin Kumashiro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781136745430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Few books have addressed research for teachers to turn to as a resource for classroom practice but here Kumashiro draws on interviews with gay activists as a starting point for discussion of models of reading and challenging oppression.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Queer Desires in Education

In the spring of 1999 I had the opportunity to work with future teachers at a large university in the Midwest. I was teaching an introductory course on the relationship between school and society to thirty-three undergraduate students, most of whom were working toward certification in the teacher education program. We spent the first few weeks of the semester examining the paradoxical nature of schools that strive to give students equal educational opportunity but function to maintain various social hierarchies. As we discussed examples and theories of how and how often this happens, my students seemed to move, at least in their discussions, from feeling surprised to critically reflecting on their own schooling experiences to strategizing ways to address these problems. For this reason, I believe my students, just as I, honestly desired to teach in ways that were not oppressive.

Although I did not realize it at the time, our desires, while perhaps well-intentioned, revolved around affirming ourselves and remaining the same. For example, my students’ desire to learn about issues related to social justice seems to have been limited to those issues that did not confront them with their own complicity with oppression. Some students (as written in their response papers on this topic) felt that schools are not responsible for social change and, instead, should follow the course set by others in society, as one student noted:

I don't think that schools are responsible to initiate change. I think that artists, writers, lobbyists, activists, performers, the news media, thinkers of all types, spiritual leaders and political leaders are all responsible to initiate the social change attitude. Education can then take it from there.

Another felt that teaching in ways that address different forms of oppression will detract from that on which schools are supposed to focus–namely, academics:

All the approaches deal so much with integrating racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism into the curriculum, but will this take away from the true intention of schools to teach children academics?

In order not to detract from academics, some felt that teachers should be morally neutral. One student wrote,

There are only eight hours in a standard school day. If cultures, races, sexual orientations, etc., are going to be added to the curriculum, what is going to be taken out of the present system? The school day is already jam-packed with the basic classes. How can a curriculum incorporate all ideas and still leave room for math and science? Will not it seem like teachers are teaching their values on different ideas to their students?

Some felt that teachers are not part of the problem, as exemplified by this student's comment:

I don't think that I have ever experienced a situation when students were directly oppressed by teachers in any way. The teachers were there to teach, not to impregnate their own beliefs or biases upon the students.

Many of my students acknowledged and condemned the ways schools perpetuate various forms of oppression, but asserted that, as teachers, their jobs will be to teach academics, not disrupt oppression. By separating the school's function from the individual teacher's role, they were able to maintain their belief that they do not–and, as future teachers, will not–contribute to these problems.

Some of my students did agree that teachers need to address issues of inequity through their curriculum. However, they equated doing so with teaching about “minorities” and the disadvantaged in society, not about their own privileges and about themselves. They seemed to believe that their privileges did not make a difference in their education, and instead would shift the focus of our conversations to the people who were different from the norm at their school–they wanted to talk about them. As several students kept repeating in class discussions and in their final projects, if people can learn about different groups and develop empathy for them, then ignorance and the prejudice based on it will be effectively combated. For example, students who felt they were becoming more “open-minded about homosexuals” talked about realizing that there is “nothing wrong” with them, that they are just like normal folks, and that they hurt just like everyone else. As one student noted,

This article made me sad. I had an uncle who was gay. I realize that he wasn't treated equal when he was in school. He was one of the greatest guys I ever knew. He died last year, so it really hurt me to know that other gay people are experiencing what he had to experience.

The expectation that information about the “Other” (i.e., groups who traditionally are marginalized in society) leads to empathy is often based on the assumption that learning about “them” helps students see that “they” are like “us” (Britzman, 1998a). In other words, learning about the Other helps students see the self in the Other and, thus, does not change how they see themselves.

This is especially the case when students learn about the Other in comforting ways. For example, one student stated,

I started the semester much more close-minded about the issue of homosexuality. After hearing many stories and reading the class materials, I finally have come to realize that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. I think it helped that I got to know Kevin before he told us his sexuality, by that time it did not matter if he was gay or not.

Significantly, this student, like most of the other students, referred to me as “gay,” despite that I had discussed, in some depth, my bisexuality earlier in the semester (when I described my own experiences in school as a prelude to their autobiographical essay assignment). As I will soon argue, this tendency to think of sexuality as either/or often reflects a desire to stabilize and normalize a person's own sexual identity. To see me as gay is comforting because doing so put me on the “Other” side of the gay-straight binary (or on the same side for those who identify as gay/lesbian), while seeing me as bisexual or queer is to acknowledge that sexuality is more fluid. Students are not always willing or able to trouble their own identities, and in my class, perhaps some desired seeing me as “gay” because they could not bear the implications of seeing otherwise. This is not to say that such a change is insignificant; for many people, it is a big step. However, as my subsequent experiences illustrate, education cannot stop there. The desire to learn only what is comforting goes hand in hand with a resistance to learning what is discomforting, and this resistance often proves to be a formidable barrier to movements toward social justice.

As we moved to the next section of the course, we studied how teachers and schools might address the ways they function to maintain social hierarchies. At the end of this section, I asked students to read an earlier version of what is now this volume's chapter 2, and had planned an in-class activity to discuss and extend what I described in my essay as four approaches to challenging racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression in schools (in other words, four approaches to “antioppressive” education). While planning my lesson, I had assumed that my students knew little about addressing oppression in schools but were committed to doing so, could implement the four approaches if they learned them, and therefore, should read about them and discuss their definitions and applications in depth. However, when the class session began, all did not go as planned. Almost immediately, we got stuck at my use of the term queer. One student wrote,

You use the term “queer” throughout the article and it struck me as derogatory and actually really upset me until you clarified why you used it on page 11. As a suggestion, maybe you should explain how you use the term “queer” for a feeling of “self-empowerment” at the beginning. It would make the reader feel more comfortable. The more I think about it, maybe you should not use the term at all. I don't really think it's appropriate for this type of paper. I know that I personally cringed every time I read it.

Another said,

Really don't like the word queer. I understand better why you chose the word queer but it's still a bit much [when said] over and over again–it just has a negative feel to it.

I had hoped to discuss the range of ways in which various forms of oppression play out and can be challenged in schools, but in a conversation where even some of the normally quiet students were speaking, many kept expressing feelings of discomfort and even anger at my use of a term that often meant something derogatory. Although I neglected before assigning the essay to discuss the history of the term, I did explain in the essay that queer has been claimed and appropriated by some people to emphasize a conscientious distancing from what is considered “normal” and a sense of self-empowerment (I will define the term in more depth later in this chapter). Nonetheless, many were offended that I used a term that they had been taught was “politically incorrect.” For some, this may have meant reading the essay and disregarding the queer applications, while for others, this may have meant feeling no need even to read the entire essay. What they kept repeating in the class discussion was the notion that queer meant something negative, and that I should instead use homosexual or gay since those terms will not upset the (presumably) predominantly straight readership of my writing.

I believe there are two main reasons why we were stuck on queer. First, the notion that the term can be an affirming self-identification for some people reveals the socially constructed nature of identities. It can remind us that identities–including queer sexualities, but also including heterosexualities–can change in meaning and sociopolitical value in different historical and cultural contexts. To understand queer as an affirming and politically transgressive self-identification, my students would have needed to acknowledge the similarly socially constructed nature of heterosexuality, which for many of them was a self-identification considered normal and natural. Such a move is often difficult to make. Second, it is difficult to hear or see the word queer without feeling reminded of the culture and history of ignorance, bigotry, and hatred that often surround that term. In other words, queer often reminds us of the existence of heterosexism/homophobia, the severity of heterosexism/homophobia, and, if we have ever used the term in a harmful way (or failed to intervene in such a situation), out participation in heterosexism/homophobia. The preferred terms homosexual and gay do not stir up such connections, since the use of such terms does not carry as many harmful intentions and effects that queer does in everyday speech. By silencing the oppressiveness around the word queer, my students were able to more easily disregard heterosexism/homophobia as a significant form of oppression. Indeed, several students asserted that they did not believe that heterosexism/homophobia was as much of a problem as racism, classism, and sexism, which were the other forms of oppression addressed in my essay. As one student noted,

I saw the title about Anti-Oppressive Education, but the majority of the examples used to explain the approaches dealt with homosexuality. I do not see homosexuality as the main problem. I would find it more helpful if more oppressive topics were discussed.

It is true that heterosexism was discussed in the essay more often than any other form of oppression, but only slightly. I could not help but wonder if the reason students felt that heterosexism was given “too much emphasis” was because it was not given the kind of emphasis that it is normally given, by which I mean only marginal attention. I do believe my students desired to learn. However, I also believe their desire for normalcy and for affirmation of their belief that they do not oppress others was stronger, preventing many of them from confronting and tolerating these new yet discomforting forms of knowledge. In desiring a sense of normalcy, they desired a repetition of silence surrounding heterosexism/homophobia, including their complicity with it, and thus, entered a crisis when they met queer.

Our getting stuck on the term was a crisis for me as well. I was completely surprised by their emotional reaction to my piece and unprepared for the resulting conversation. Ironically, this lack of preparation resulted from my desiring to be what many educators would call well-prepared. I had planned a lesson that proceeded rationally: first, summarize the essay; second, extend the theories in the essay to other forms of oppression. Furthermore, I had planned a lesson with a clear, desired end result: the selected reading and activity would help students think critically and teach subversively (the manner in which I try to think and teach). Finally, in trying to tailor my lessons to my students, I presumed to know my students: what they already knew, how they would respond to the lesson, where they needed to go, what would get them there. By leaving little room for what is uncontrollable and unknowable in education, and by expecting my knowledges to be affirmed and replicated by my students, my preparation also left little room for addressing ways that learning can be unexpectedly difficult, discomforting, and even emotional. While I did anticipate a crisis, I was expecting a different kind of crisis, one based on learning about the many ways oppression played out in their schooling years, not one based on resisting the very theories being presented.

There were a few students who expressed support for my use of the term queer and who thought positively of their experiences reading the essay. As one wrote,

Upon reading the essay, I felt very happy. For once, I was reading an essay that dealt directly with the topic of discrimination in schools (especially with homosexuality).

Another even felt the essay and its queerness was educationally useful, and wrote,

Personally, I had no problem with the use of the word “queer.” I was not offended by the word. I was actually intrigued to read on and find out what the actual meaning of the word “queer” is.

Another wrote,

This is a voice that I've never heard before. This brought a whole new dimension to my frame of thinking. I'm not sure what it is but information like this gets my mind going. It has been true for me that when I had to work through a crisis, I grew and gained from the experience like no other time in my life. This is what life's all about for me: learning.

One student wrote of not initially understanding why I was using queer, but reasoned that feeling discomforted was perhaps part of the learning process of reading my essay. According to the student, wanting to learn meant wanting to learn something new, hear a different voice, imagine what has yet to be said, do the “unexpected.” “Learning” meant learning things that are uncomfortable because they complicate a person's “frame of thinking.”

As the class discussion ensued, I encouraged my students to enter into discomforting places and to think of learning as taking place only through crisis. Modeling my own advice, I forced myself to enter an uncomfortable place, departing from my lesson plan and teaching the unpredicted. Such a move, I should note, is very difficult for me, as it is for many teachers who desire control over the direction of the lesson and over what students learn. Patti Lather (1998) tells us that educators often try to avoid crises and close off stuck places in order to maintain a sense of control over what students learn (and, for that matter, over how they behave). Yet, we can never control what students learn. In fact, as my experiences show, attempts to control education can actually hinder antioppressive change.

Not until the end of the lesson did we discuss the four approaches. In retrospect, not expecting to address crisis not only led me to plan a lesson that could not be “achieved,” but also, had I not departed from it, could have prevented me from working with my students where they were. This experience has led me to question what it means to teach in ways that challenge different forms of oppression. I am curious about what it means to address our resistances to discomforting knowledges, and about what it means to put uncertainties and crisis at the center of the learning process. I wish to explore new ways to think about antioppressive education. The goal of this book is to address such questions.

Troubling Educational Research

Educational research has contributed much to our understanding of the dynamics of oppression in school and the promises of some forms of antioppressive curriculum and pedagogy. As the above section suggests, more must be done to disseminate this research to classroom teachers and future teachers who traditionally respond to calls for antioppressive education with resistance, defensiveness, and fear. This is not to say, however, that existing educational research is itself unproblematic. Although some researchers speak with certainty and confidence, suggesting that they have found the answers to our problems, the “strategies that work,” I will argue that every educational practice makes possible some antioppressive changes while closing off others. Furthermore, much in education remains unknown and underexplored, including perspectives that can significantly contribute to, critique, and offer alternatives to existing theories and practices in antioppressive education. Educators, therefore, have an ethical responsibility not only to learn and use the troubling or discomforting research already in existence, but also to engage in further troubling or complicating that research by looking beyond the theories and methods that we already know.

To this end, this book describes what I see as four primary approaches to antioppressive education suggested by the current field of research. Simultaneously, this book looks beyond these dominant frameworks for conceptualizing and addressing oppression, and explores insights and changes made possible by some of the theories and stories that are traditionally marginalized in educational research. One set of theoretical perspectives that I will explore is the recent feminist and queer readings of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. As I will argue in chapter 2, I turn to these theories because they offer ways of thinking and talking about education, oppression, identity, and change that I find helpful for working against traditional ways of thinking and acting, teaching and learning. My exploration of these theories should not imply that these theories are the best theories for antioppressive education, since this body of writings is but one of many possible frameworks that can be helpful to such research. Poststructuralism and psychoanalysis will not give the answer, the panacea, the best practice; rather, they will help us imagine different possibilities for working against oppression.

Similarly, one set of stories or voices traditionally marginaliz...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Deication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Permissions
• CHAPTER 1 Introduction
• CHAPTER 2 Theories and Practices of Antioppressive Education
• CHAPTER 3 Readings and Rereadings of Identity, Culture, and Oppression
• CHAPTER 4 Addressing Resistance through Queer Activism
• CHAPTER 5 Conclusions
• References
• About the Author
• Index