some day I'll write this better
Jan. 18th, 2010 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnyI have a post brewing somewhere in the back of my mind, and all sorts of things feed into it, but mostly it's about how it fucking sucks to be teaching kids about a world in which you are invisible.
There are things I want to teach them, things I want to challenge and take the time to explain and show them how fucking awful what they're saying is, but I don't have the time or the curricular support or the power to do that.
And I just. When are they going to learn? If there is a time it's this, now, because who's gonna challenge them later? If they go straight from school to the working world, if they think of themselves as grown ups with all the arrogance of unchallenged youth, who's going to teach them to respect women and queer people and different cultures and beliefs?
I am arrogant enough to think I could change their minds (and that it's important - even critical - that I do), and I'm idealistic enough to want to. But I can't do it because 'education' in England is too big a thing to take on, and as a bisexual woman... until they're older, if the hegemony of education has its way, I barely even exist.
[this post exists with the caveat that other people will help them, and that some of them will get a hell of a lot of chances, and that I have it better than PoCs who are denied agency by the way in which history is taught. It also exists with the knowledge that beliefs can be reinforced by the way in which the opposite is taught, with the recognition that glossing over things is often preferable to frank and volatile discussion, and the realisation that sometimes teaching can be a fucking popularity contest, and the teacher who makes the most gay jokes wins.]
There are things I want to teach them, things I want to challenge and take the time to explain and show them how fucking awful what they're saying is, but I don't have the time or the curricular support or the power to do that.
And I just. When are they going to learn? If there is a time it's this, now, because who's gonna challenge them later? If they go straight from school to the working world, if they think of themselves as grown ups with all the arrogance of unchallenged youth, who's going to teach them to respect women and queer people and different cultures and beliefs?
I am arrogant enough to think I could change their minds (and that it's important - even critical - that I do), and I'm idealistic enough to want to. But I can't do it because 'education' in England is too big a thing to take on, and as a bisexual woman... until they're older, if the hegemony of education has its way, I barely even exist.
[this post exists with the caveat that other people will help them, and that some of them will get a hell of a lot of chances, and that I have it better than PoCs who are denied agency by the way in which history is taught. It also exists with the knowledge that beliefs can be reinforced by the way in which the opposite is taught, with the recognition that glossing over things is often preferable to frank and volatile discussion, and the realisation that sometimes teaching can be a fucking popularity contest, and the teacher who makes the most gay jokes wins.]
