(Mis)adventures of a Queer Student Teacher

My tutorial instructor is a big fan of something called Imaginative Education, a framework based on the idea that people see the world differently depending on the developmental phase they occupy. By tapping into developmentally-appropriate worldviews, teachers can engage students’ imaginations and entice them to learn. According to this framework, kids in their mid- to late- elementary school years are in the ‘romantic’ phase of life. In this phase, they love to learn about the extremes of reality – the biggest, the hottest, the oldest, the richest – the kind of thing you’d find in the Guinness Book of World Records. Imaginative Education encourages teachers to frame knowledge in these terms in order to capture their students’ interest.

One day in tutorial, we were discussing gender non-conformity when the term ‘intersex’ came up. My tutorial instructor asked the group, “Do you think kids are interested in learning about intersex? Of course they are! It’s like something out of the Guinness Book of World Records!”

When I think of that particular book, the image of the world’s longest fingernails comes to mind. I remember being horrified but fascinated by the way those fingernails twisted and turned – they were really gross! Now I try to imagine a picture of the genitalia of an intersex person next to that. It occurs to me that this is not an extreme at all, but actually the middle ground. Extreme would be ‘full-on’ male or ‘full-on’ female, wouldn’t it? His logic was problematic, but I still knew what he meant. The Guinness Book of World Records, like Ripley’s Believe it or Not, is a modern-day take on a centuries-old form of entertainment – the Freak Show. ‘Hermaphrodites,’ as intersex people were formerly known, were a mainstay of these exhibitions. Around the 1970s, when human rights were extended to more than straight white men, freak shows became less common. But I think the freak show is often brought back to life by educators seeking to prod their students into, well, paying attention. My instructors remarks made perfect sense in this historical context.

While I’m sure the idea of a ‘hermaphrodite’ lingered in my consciousness from a young age, the first time I was introduced to people with genitalia that weren’t easily classifiable as male or female was in Grade 11 Biology. In a dark laboratory, a British man in a white lab coat put images on the overhead projector of naked people whose bodies were neither male nor female. The class gasped and groaned and laughed, and the teacher seemed quite satisfied with himself for capturing the interest of his otherwise apathetic students.

Today, I wonder: Where did those images come from? Who were those people whose naked bodies were cast on a screen for gawking teenagers to laugh at? Who took the pictures and why? And couldn’t my teacher come up with a more sensitive way to discuss the topic? It was less about education than about creating an atmosphere conducive to a freak show.

I bring this up because there is a big push in Teacher Education to make lessons that are interesting, engaging, and fun – which is great. But I think we need to critically reflect on what constitutes an ‘interesting’ or ‘engaging’ lesson. What emotions are we hoping to evoke and how does this shape our students’ relationship to those who are different from them? These are particularly relevant questions for educators seeking to bring queer issues into the classroom.

Filed under: Teacher Education Program Tagged: | freak show, imaginative education, intersex