Comments | oursin: It all depends what role you want to model, surely

oursin

It all depends what role you want to model, surely

Jan 20, 2009 20:32

A poll has found that one in six young children from single-parent families do not spend enough time with a father, grandfather or other male role model.

I cannot help feeling that there are questions here about what sort of role the males might be modelling, and also about the quality of the interaction with, rather than the mere quantification of ( Read more... )

gender, education, adolescence, bullying, masculinity, childhood, parenting, homosexuality, difference

Comments 13

rosathome January 20 2009, 20:36:33 UTC

m-r-ms?

rosathome January 20 2009, 20:37:55 UTC

Dim moment. Just worked it out.

(I had thought it must be some new version of miss/ms/mrs.)

serrana January 20 2009, 21:30:07 UTC

Earlier this week C. got to introduce his peers in the young adult librarianship class to Why Orson Scott Card Is A Problematic Author For Us To Recommend.

Unsurprisingly, everyone was much more keen to yell about censorship than they were to talk about how GLBTQ teenagers might feel about having Card set up as a role model. *sigh*

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nineveh_uk January 20 2009, 21:57:20 UTC

It is in the Times and it is about families or relationships. Therefore it is in the women's section. It is always thus.

oursin January 20 2009, 22:03:19 UTC

Hmmm - interesting. Especially perhaps the tone of the male journo...

Thread 5

nineveh_uk January 20 2009, 21:56:36 UTC

My high school in the early 1990s was very good at addressing (preventing?) homophobic bullying. There were two openly gay teachers and - at least by c. the 5th form - openly gay pupils. No doubt there was bullying that non-target children didn't know about, but in general in those Section 28 days that particular school was to the best of my knowledge a fairly safe environment for LGBT teenagers.

Of course, IAMC. The kid whose clothes were ragged and who smelt a bit still got a chair bashed over his head every day at break. The teachers knew it went on. I suspect some of them of tacitly encouraging it. So when people say "You can't stop children doing/saying X" I think "Yes you can, if you care about it." Where there is homophobic bullying, there are teachers/adults who are choosing not to stop it. Maybe not in 100% of cases - I don't expect them to be miracle-workers - but in an awful lot.

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nineveh_uk January 21 2009, 08:04:48 UTC

Sometimes one wonders just how stupid schools think we are.