Education Commons^™

Antihomophobic Pedagogy: Some Suggestions For Teachers, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

Too often as teachers we feel that we are doing the right thing by assigning our students "open-ended" essay topics or by inviting students to argue "both" sides of a controversial current event. The ideologies and institutions of liberal pluralism tell us that this is the way to promote "free speech," "democratic" argument, etc. But these kinds of topics and discussions have the effect of privileging dominant power relations and of further silencing our queer students. For example, if we ask our students to debate whether homosexuality is "wrong" or not, we are expecting our queer students to justify their …