Leaving Some Children Out Behind the Right ’ s Attack on Safe Schools

Introduction One purpose of public schools in the United States is to foster democratic citizenship. On this basic purpose progressives and conservatives agree, although there is great disagreement regarding what type of citizenship should be encouraged as well as what types of activities will promote or foster citizenship. It is in part this politically charged nature of public schools that makes them sites of great social and political contestation. During the so-called “culture wars,” of the 1980s and 90s schools were certainly a site for confrontation between social conservative and Left/progressive forces. Disputes over the teaching of “values” in schools, and over, for example, the history standards in the early 1990s, are evidence of the ways in which conservatives see schools as a place for preserving their vision of U.S. political life and practice. By the same token, progressive groups have seen schools as sites for political transformation. And, although these disputes are evidence of political disagreements, they are also the result of fundamental disagreements regarding the nature of politics itself. Whereas progressives generally see schools as already political and politicized institutions, where socialization of young people into democratic life occurs, conservatives tend to see schools as neutral sites for the inculcation of basic “American” values and socialization for normalized adult social roles. Thus, conservatives see progressive arguments regarding, for example, gender equality and schools as the introduction of politics into the school curriculum, whereas progressive see schools as already infused with conservative political values and practices. Of course, schools, collectively and as individual institutions, divide students along racial, gender, and class lines and socialize them to particular social roles. To describe this function of schools, progressive curriculum theorists argue that, in addition to the official curriculum of schools, schools have a “hidden curriculum.” This curriculum consists of the messages that are communicated to students through the school environment and policies; as Julie Webber calls it, the “hierarchically and normatively inspired values policed by the school.” Gender, sex, and sexuality are all sites and concepts deeply contested in contemporary U.S. political culture. Thus, efforts to change or challenge the reproduction of gender relations in schools have met with controversy and resistance. Similarly, efforts to teach sexuality education in schools have provided a touchstone for right-wing organizing, as Janice Irvine has shown. And, as discussed in this essay, efforts to make schools less homophobic and safer locations for GLBT identified youth have similarly met with organized right-wing resistance. Indeed, Berlet and Lyons note this very trend with respect to the culture wars, when they argue that right-wing populists “redirected the legitimate concerns of parents over the quality of education in the public schools to the scapegoats of modern curricula, sex education, materials tolerant of gays, and AIDS awareness programs.” Points of social conflict also provide grounds for understanding the nature of the political disputes between conservatives and progressives. This is especially the case in the United States, when conflicts have both local or grassroots elements and national salience. Thus, the programs discussed below, and the organized rightwing response to them, can be seen as illuminating the struggle not only over gender roles and sexuality that plays such a significant part in contemporary disputes between progressives and the Right, but over democracy itself.