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COURSE DESCRIPTION: Though schools are often places where LGBTQ youth are marginalized and struggle to find acceptance and affirmation, schools are also sites of resistance where teachers and students confront the heteronormativity of policies, procedures and curricula in inspiring and creative ways. This sociology of education course examines both the heteronormative structure of schools and how it reproduces expectations, and the ways queer youth, their allies, and supportive teachers resist this normalizing mode and attempt to replace it with a supportive environment. These issues around the reproduction and production of heternormativity will take up curriculum, pedagogy, enforced social hierarchies, questions of surveillance, and the enforcement of gender norms to patrol sexuality. How are connections between heterogender and heteronormativity central to schools? What strategies do LGBTQ youth use to struggle with/resist the heteronormativity of school environments? What are the differences between “tolerating” and “affirming” differences? What role does policy play in school climate?
As a final project, students conduct qualitative research in a local school district on the LGBTQ student experience and produce a report which they submit to the district.
In 2015, Queer Kids/Straight Schools was taught at Hunter College, in the LGBT Social Science & Public Policy Center at Roosevelt House. It was taught for the first time as a research and policy course. As with previous semesters, the students read research in sociology of education and conducted interviews in the the area school district (NYC), but they also studied policy and made more direct recommendations.
Download the 2006 Queer Kids/Straight Schools report [pdf]
Download the 2008 Queer Kids/Straight Schools report [pdf]
Download the 2010 Queer Kids/Straight Schools Report [pdf]
Download the 2015 Queer Kids/Straight Schools Report [pdf]
“Queer Kids, Straight Schools was an invaluable component of my overall coursework. As a class, we thought critically about the ways that gender policing occurs in schools and discussed how that affects the experiences of all students who do not fit traditional norms of masculinity and femininity. While we studied this in the context of education, these social constructs can be seen throughout society through policies and everyday discourse. We talked about the vast ways that these norms are upheld, and the difficulty of breaking them down when they are so intricate and engrained throughout society. Not only did we study the current research, but we had the unique opportunity to talk with educators and students in local schools and get first-hand accounts of the ways in which gender policing occurs- by students, teachers, and administrators- and how this shapes the daily lived experiences of those in schools. This course was truly unique and highly recommended for anyone going into the education system!” Al Forbes, former student