A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling

Status Quo or Status Queer?

By (author) Eric Rofes

Paperback - £38.00

Publication date:

06 April 2005

Length of book:

180 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780742541948

A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling: Status Quo or Status Queer? offers a startling and original critique of unexamined assumptions and liberal notions about sexuality and education in the United States. Professor and long-time community activist Eric Rofes argues that liberal approaches to gay issues and public schooling are inherently doomed to fail and that a radical approach is needed that addresses core issues of power in education in a meaningful way. Tackling issues ranging from anti-gay harassment in school to children's literature on gay themes, gender performances of teachers to HIV education, graduate school programs in education to gay men's sexual cultures, Rofes presents a compelling argument for the creation of a second generation of activism focused on queers, schools, and education, one that truly empowers young people and educators and one that has the potential to truly transform power relations in our nation.
A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling challenges all the cant and cliché swirling around the lives of those who 'opt to be otherwise,' living outside and beyond the hetero/patriarchal paradigm. Eric Rofes upends the dogmatic dominant narrative of childhood innocence and its contemporary twin, childhood trauma, exploring the possibility of childhood as much more complex, dynamic, propulsive, conflicted, contradictory, and contested. This revolutionary book will change the way you look at childhood, sexuality, and yourself.