24/02/2022 | Writer: Dilek Çankaya
According to many studies, LGBTI+ students, who are defined as “at risk”, may experience academic failure, emotional distress, depression, turn to other risky behaviors and even think about suicide and try.
It is very difficult to write in a work carried out for equal rights, and yet it is also easy if we make common sentences. Here, saying "every individual is equal and has equal rights" from a human centered place will be a phrase that comes naturally to all of us. In fact, we live in all kinds of inequalities. We notice some of them clearly and have an attitude against. What I will try to do in this article is to discuss these situations, which we realize as educators or not, and open up our educator identity to a bit of discussion, and to investigate whether it is possible to strive to build an egalitarian education environment with small moves in the school environment…
While we, those who try to be a part of the struggle for equal rights, are trying to build our lives free from discrimination and exclusion, we do not do anything easy, especially in such a historical process… “The more dominant the hierarchical organization, injustice, construction of power, and the discursive structure about power in a society, the more prejudice and discrimination against disadvantaged groups will emerge.” (Göregenli, 2012, p. 22). In times when authoritarianism and heteronormative social relations gain more intense power, it is more difficult to relate to the “non normal” while it is relatively easy to take refuge in “normal”. On the one hand, we try to follow the footsteps of the comedy writer Terentius, a freed slave who lived in the BC 190-160s, who said, "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.”; however, on the other hand, we live in this world, in a society where all discrimination and exclusion are experienced, inured and even seen as legitimate. So we are a part of this social construction… We can adapt the following definition from the introductory part of Ünlü’s Turkishness Contract (2018, p. 17) book, that he made over Turkishness;
“The states of not seeing, not hearing, not knowing, not being interested and not being moved, which I will describe as the negative states of Turkishness, can be seen as a deficiency, but they are actually a privilege. Because in a country, in any country, only the dominant group has the right not to see, not to hear, not to know, not to be interested, not to be moved, and more importantly, has the power. There is a close relationship between seeing and not seeing, hearing and not hearing, knowing and not knowing, being interested and not being interested, being moved and not being moved, and one's ethnic and class position in the power hierarchy… The lower class have to know what the upper class think and listen to what they say; because this knowledge is the basic condition for survival and keeping up.”
In addition to the ethnic, linguistic, and religious identity that predominates in the power hierarchy, we can define other types of acceptability: such as native (i.e. not immigrant), robust (i.e. not disabled, but also not fit-fat in general appearance), heterosexual (i.e. not LGBTI+), male (but not feminine), perhaps female (if she is an acceptable woman and mother), neurotypical (i.e. not neurodiverse), middle and upper class (i.e. not poor), adult (i.e. not child or old)… When we look at ourselves, how “acceptable” are we?
Meanwhile, those who fall outside of these definitions of acceptance are labeled as “a-normal or irregular” when they actually want to actively participate in social life or when they “claim” that they have a right to something. This becomes more evident when we look at the struggles of different groups for their rights and how they become "human" afterwards. This becomes more evident when we look at the struggles of different groups for their rights and how they become "human" afterwards.
At this point, I find it valuable to think that who we accept more human and individual. I guess this is a question I constantly ask myself while writing this article or looking through any social phenomenon. And every time I notice the discriminatory aspects in myself, I feel both sad, ashamed and also happy that I can finally see it… As Freire defines it in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, praxis is “to think and act on the world with the aim of transforming it”. I would like to add that I define small or big all kinds of interventions to the exclusion practices that we notice in ourselves and around us as “taking action”.
The life of an educator, a teacher is much more challenging in this respect. They are very likely to encounter all the "others" and not acceptable ones of social life. In fact if they work in formal education, they interact with children and young people. Age discrimination against children and young people is an issue that is not discussed much in Turkey. Adults use extreme control and power over children, knowingly or unknowingly, by saying that they want the child's well-being. This excessive control in the family and at school (and in all social life) is one of the most important obstacles for the children/teenagers to find and build themselves. Contrary to the groups that organize and establish their own language and struggle in all the types of domination mentioned above, children and childhood cannot be organized because they are not even considered as citizens.
In 2014 The Agenda Child Association, which was closed with a decree law, published a report named Discrimination Against Children Report in Turkey. In this report, the discrimination arising from the perception of children in the society is defined as follows:
“Childhood is a temporary period in a person's life. It is lived and passed. In a patriarchal society based on the ideal of a 'middle-aged, white, rich man', childhood is perceived as a process that must be overcomed as soon as possible and the destination (success!) is seen as adulthood, an inevitable disease almost like epidemic parotitis. Coming out of childhood is kind of like being promoted. This distorted perception about childhood confirms the conclusion that children are regarded as a kind of deficient human being.”
Such a definition of child and childhood brings along the definition of their needs and to speak on their behalf. The life experience of the “deficient person” is also defined integrally by adults. In fact, we see the same deficient human attitude in the case of disability and handicap. “In this form of perception, a disabled person is a 'weak, pitiful being in need of help from others’” (Akbulut, 2015, p. 23). Like childhood, disability brings along the ability limitation and not being perceived as a qualified part of social life.
Heteronormative society and culture refers to an order in which heterosexual orientation, which considered as "natural" and "normal", is defined according to lifestyle and values; all sexualities and sexual orientations outside this definition are “marginalized, ignored, exposed to oppression and violence or, at best, absorbed as ‘submissive others’” (Çakırlar and Delice, 2012, p. 11). It would not be an exaggeration to say that education life is not easy even for children and young people who are accepted as "normal" by the society, but it is the center of "pain" for those who are different from the majority or the dominant one in the school/society for any reason. Schools and education at schools act as the transmission center of the dominant culture and values.
Prejudices are generally not limited with a single subject and affect entire view of life. Social standart of judgments are reproduced when talking about family, social environment and school. Studies of social psychologists on prejudices and personality traits also support this. “Characteristics such as domineeringness, rigidity, inability to tolerate uncertainty, and the need for cognitive closure often emerge together with prejudice” (Göregenli, 2012, p.10). We can also evaluate the domineeringness mentioned here in terms of the teacher who has to "manage the classroom”. On the one hand, the information that is required to be given, and on the other hand, the expectations of the management, the teacher somehow assumes the role of authority in the classroom. Apart from the curriculum in which the roles are distributed, now on the implicit curriculum is also active.
According to almost all critical educators, “values that feed discrimination and inequality such as obedience to authority and power, sexism, racism, and class hierarchy are 'inoculated' with the implicit curriculum” (Aras Kaya, 2018, p.123). These discriminations, which are not very visible in written sources and in the curriculum, brace up their real power from the hidden/implicit curriculum.
Basil Bernstein is a very important educational sociologist who has studied the relationship between social class, academic achievement and the language of the school, in general. He says that the language of the school was built by and for the middle and upper classes. Bernstein defines two different language codes: elaborated and restricted codes… Restricted language codes are frequently used by the working class and are more concrete, context-based. However, elaborated language includes much more abstraction and the language of the school is constructed in this way. This means that when children of worker-labourer enter school life, they encounter a language structure they don’t know and are doomed to failure (Bernstein, 1971). This definition also states that the language of the school is "implicitly" regulated as discriminatory.
This language also does not incorporate differences into the school and its culture through the curriculum and the implicit curriculum. In societies that are more authoritarian and more conservative, a language and existence other than the language of the binary gender regime cannot be seen within the borders of the school. LGBTI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex) identity was saved from being defined as a psychological illness as a result of struggles (DSM 1973, World Health Organization 1990), but this could not be reflected as a major change in the lives of individuals. It is known that LGBTI+s are exposed to discrimination and hate crimes in Turkey and in many parts of the world. School life can be defined as an important center for LGBTI+ students where they are exposed to systematic bullying, stigma and hate crimes.
Those who do not comply with heteronormative society values are more likely to be victimized, especially in adolescence (Toomey, Ryan, Diaz, Card, & Russell, 2010). According to many studies, LGBTI+ students, who are defined as “at risk”, may experience academic failure, emotional distress, depression, turn to other risky behaviors and even think about suicide and try. Like any group hang by a thread, LGBTI+ students also experience problems not because of an inner problem, but because of the pressures and lack of social acceptance. In addition to the pains of adolescence itself, we cannot explain the experience of social exclusion only through peer bullying alone. On a research about the frequency of prejudice-based bullying, school seems to be the most important socializing area for young people, especially during adolescence, while it is a dangerous social space for those who staying outside gender norms (feminine men or masculine women) and LGBTI+ youth. This danger is also exists for fatter people and different ethnic identities.
In a study conducted by Rusell (2005), he criticizes that focusing only on the situations where LGBTI+ students are victimized may only cause their resistance mechanisms to not be understood, but also make it unclear what needs to be strengthened/changed at school in order for them to gain resistance. According to this research, LGBTI+ students can be resistant to bullying if there are rules against bullying, a teacher who prevents bad words, a club dealing with LGBTI+ identities and gender issues, a resource where they can get information about sexual orientation and gender identity. It can be said that the development of this type of teacher profile will also empower all young people who have the potential to be excluded.
In Australia, a study was conducted to examine the extent to which the lesson content of teacher candidates includes the life experiences of LGBTI+s. Although most of the educators say that anti-homophobic and anti-heterosexist education is important, they stated that they find it more important to include, for example, anti-discrimination content based on racism or ethnic identity (Robinson & Ferfolja, 2008). In other words, it can be said that a mental hierarchy is formed between the experiences of exclusion. It is a very common situation in Turkey that individuals and groups compare the pain and distress they experience with the distress and exclusion of another. As if all exclusions do not feed from similar social sources and are completely independent of each other… In fact, the attitude itself stands out in the theoretical development line of critical pedagogy. First, studies on discrimination based on social class started, and these studies mostly did not primarily include different types of discrimination. Especially thanks to the criticisms of queer pedagogy against class-based critical theories, the fields of thinking and action of those who struggle for a more democratic educational environment have also expanded.
When it comes to queer pedagogy, it can be felt as if the information to be obtained through very deep theoretical studies is necessary. Of course, queer pedagogy has deep philosophical and intellectual foundations. However, it can also have very practical methods in practice. An important part of queer pedagogy is the concept of disassembly. This means taking back concepts or ideas and revealing them in their bare form so students can see how that concept/ idea came to be. For example, asking and leaving a question where they can question the concept of binary gender, or using a concept that is used intensionally in the language in a different and surprising way… Asking “naive” questions about a discriminatory expression embedded in language and practice and giving space for the learner to confront their own stereotypes… So asking questions before answering… The concept of queer fragmentation is not only key in terms of gender, it can offer many different opportunities when tried in this form.
Translation: Merve Engür
*This article was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Kaos GL Association and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Tags: human rights, education