riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/11/83)
Mary-Anne Wolf (yale-comix!mwolf) asks:
Should the behavior of teachers in the classroom be such that it is
possible for students to determine the sexual preference of their
teacher?
Allen England (ihuxb!alle) replies:
Teachers should not be displaying sexual behavior in the classroom ever.
Isn't this a bit extreme? Maybe we have a semantic problem here: just what
is "sexual behavior"?
If by "sexual behavior" you mean all-out sex acts, then I agree wholeheart-
edly: copulation doesn't belong in the classroom. But I can think of a lot
of milder forms of "sexual behavior" which are appropriate in other public
places -- why not in a school?
During my years in school there were various married couples represented on
the teaching staff. You didn't have to catch Mr. and Mrs. X giving each
other a good-bye kiss in the morning or holding hands (behavior which they
usually hid, although I'm not sure why) to know that they were married --
it was obvious in the way they spoke to each other that they were more than
professional colleagues or even friends. It was all perfectly natural.
>From the time I was in the first grade on, my (usually married, usually
female) teachers would mention their husbands at some point in the course
of the semester. Why not? They would also tell us about their kids, their
dogs, their neighbors and myriad other innocuous details of their personal
lives. I knew that my first grade teacher was a widow, that my fourth
grade teacher's husband owned a plumbing supply store on Main Street, and
even that my sixth grade student teacher, a man, was married to a Maori woman
he had met at the University of Hawaii. Big deal. If you saw a person every
day in any other relationship than that of pupil/teacher, you would expect to
learn at least as much about that person's personal life. Why not at school?
Now to the point of Mary-Anne's question: enter the gay schoolteacher.
Suddenly he/she has a Big Secret which must be kept quiet at all cost. Even
if his/her boss knows, the school board mustn't know. Even if the school
board knows, the parents mustn't know. Even if the parents know, the kids
mustn't know. Gone is the candor usually found in a good, working classroom.
Now, I don't want to exaggerate this. I'm sure that it's possible for gay
schoolteachers to do a good job teaching kids from within the closet, just as
they've done a million other jobs that way. And I also suspect that given the
number of people out there who'd rather burn gays at the stake than see them
teaching school, it's unrealistic to hope that gay teachers could be as open
about their sexual orientation as the straight ones are. But it's a shame.
A final note: has anybody ever seen the film "For Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the
Year 2000" by Alain Tanner? Remember the scene involving the history teacher
whose class asks HIM a few pointed questions? Maybe sex can sometimes have a
place in the classroom after all.
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Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP