What's in a Word: Queering Children and the Classroom

A response to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education's action plan, "Building Bridges: Queer Families in Early Childhood Education."

If a people can be made to accept and promote a blatant and transparent lie, and be coerced to call it ‘truth,’ not only have they been humiliated and stripped of their dignity, they are subjects of a totalitarian order. Now for almost all of us, if a friend or family member has a baby, our first question is usually, “is it a girl or a boy?”, and then we typically ask how mom and dad are doing. Yet such normal, everyday language is now anathema to many cultural elites and curriculum crafters in Canada, where the terms ‘boys and girls’ and ‘mom and dad’ are increasingly regarded as manifestations of ‘injustice,’ expressed by people who are located in homophobic and heterosexist ‘discourses’ linked to religious and outmoded moral and cultural beliefs.

In my weekly buffeting in the eye of the culture storm, a veritable social vortex to match our weather system, there are always some stories and events which not only still surprise but cause moral revulsion. This week was no different as news broke concerning OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) which is responsible for teaching and training Ontario’s public school teachers. Their new action plan for helping teachers “queer” classroom spaces, is called, ‘Building Bridges: Queer Families in Early Childhood Education.’ It tells teachers (and thereby society) that children should be exposed to so-called LGBTQ ‘families’ starting at age two.  (more...)

What's in a Word: Queering Children and the Classroom

H/T to Socialist Studies