In this episode of The Lancing, Logan explores Navigating Parental Resistance: Learning from Responses of LGBTQ-Inclusive Elementary School Teachers.
This was an eye-opening paper, one that was among the many that inspired me to write The Queering of the American Child. In this paper, the authors lay down a blueprint for “navigating parental resistance” to the queer education children are receiving in schools nationwide. Parents are described as a “significant gatekeeping mechanism” that gets in the way of the “queer work” educators are trying to do with children.
The authors discuss strategies for navigating parental concerns, including couching their radicalism in reading lessons and “state mandated curriculum.” They discuss how they can help parents “come to terms” with their assault on parental rights by hiding their project in larger learning objectives. That way, if a parent has an issue, the radical can tell them that their child is just learning to be a “problem solver.”
If you’re a parent, you need to hear this podcast. The authors detail precisely what educators are doing to gaslight parents, and only by understanding their strategy can we prepare ourselves to combat The Queering of the American Child.
SOURCE: (Hermann-Wilmarth, J. M., & Ryan, C. L. (2019). Navigating Parental Resistance: Learning from Responses of LGBTQ-Inclusive Elementary School Teachers. Theory Into Practice, 58(1), 89–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2018...)
Pickup your copy of "The Queering of the American Child" at queeringbook.com
Visit ItsNotInSchools.com to learn more about what’s happening in classrooms nationwide.
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Navigating Parental Resistance