Colliding Realities in America's Middle Schools
The past couple of weeks have brought the American public two very different perspectives on how lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues play out in our middle schools, from extremely different sources.
On Sept. 19, at the "Values Voter Summit" in Washington, DC, Michael Schwartz, chief of staff to Senator Tom Coburn, averred that 10-year-old boys have "less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people." (And, by the way, that's a good thing, Schwartz said, because it reflects the fact that they don't want to be gay.)
Then on Sunday, the New York Times Magazine published a cover story on students coming out in middle school, in which students reported knowing that they were gay or lesbian by the age of 9, 10 or 11. Imagine the clash of those two realities--10-year-olds intolerant of gay people and 10-year-olds realizing they are gay--playing out in both hidden and public ways every day in school hallways.
Unfortunately, the picture might even be worse than what our imaginations could cook up, considering findings from a newly released GLSEN Research Brief. The brief reveals that middle school LGBT students reported rates of harassment and assault that were significantly higher than those reported by high school LGBT students: more middle school students had been verbally harassed, and a shocking 63% had heard homophobic remarks made by school staff. About two of every five LGBT middle school students had been assaulted - punched, kicked or threatened with a weapon - at school, as compared to "only" one in five of the high school respondents.
The fact that so many high school students had been assaulted at school is harrowing enough--now picture things nearly twice as bad for students even earlier in their lives, and farther from having that crucial high school diploma. The bad news continues as you look to critical indicators of academic success, such as school attendance. Middle school students were more likely to report having skipped school in the past month out of fear for their personal safety (fully half of the middle school students surveyed had done so, about one-third of the high school respondents had). Their grade point averages, not surprisingly, suffer as well--averaging a half point lower than those of their peers.
Things are so bad in middle schools, at least in part, because they are much less likely than high schools to have addressed these issues head on. In other words, students like those profiled in the New York Times article are much less likely to be getting the help and support that they need to have equal access to an education. Fewer middle school students than high school students can identify supportive faculty members, and almost no middle schools had a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). This last fact is particularly unfortunate in light of what Kendra Wallace, principal of Daniel Webster Middle School in Los Angeles, told the Times about the GSA at her school. The GSA "is a club that promotes safety, and it gives kids a voice," she said, "And the most amazing thing has happened since the GSA started. Bullying of all kinds is way down. The GSA created this pervasive anti-bullying culture on campus that affects everyone."
I suppose the good news here is that there is such a clear path to creating a safer school climate. Over time we have seen signs of improvement in school climate in those schools that haven't shied away from this issue and have taken action - instituting explicitly inclusive anti-bullying policies that are clearly articulated to the full school community; providing training to school staff to ensure that all students are safe and supported at school; supporting student efforts to speak out about these issues and improve school climate through GSAs; and using curricular materials that accurately and appropriately reflect LGBT people, history and events.
This crisis in American middle schools is a part of the huge challenge that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seeks to tackle, armed with $100 billion in stimulus funds and a general acknowledgment that our schools are not currently living up to our societal obligation to provide all young people with a fair shot at a good future.
As schools heed his call to address gaps in achievement and turn around our lowest-performing schools, they must not lose sight of the fact that there are some very basic steps to be taken in the middle grades before that can become part of middle school reality.
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I don't think that I thought a heck of a lot about girls when I was 10 in 1966.
Sure, I guess I liked some but when you are ten and a guy, what the heck do you know?
So it's been 42 years since then...hey I wasn't that much liked either being a runt and being a
solid Yankee moving to Texas...kids back then didn't know gay.
My own nephew is going through that crap and he isn't gay either.
At 10 who knows what the heck?
MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHY THE HECK DO WE ALLOW BULLIES IN SCHOOL?
OUR CHILDREN ARE SENT TO SCHOOLD TO LEARN AND WE GIVE THE PRINCIPAL AND TEACHERS THE RESPOSIBILITY TO WATCH OVER THEM AND KEEP THEM SAFE....
AND THEY GET AN F MINUS FOR DOING SO?
WHY DO WE STILL ALLOW THIS CRAP TO HAPPEN?
When you send your children to a "practice prison", such as a typical public school, you get criminal behavior from the "inmates". It is simply not normal for young humans to run around in packs. Young people need to interact with not only various adults, but kids of different ages and different personalities. Having a pack of 25-35 eleven year olds under the direction of eight different adults in a row leads to kids placing too much importance on peer identification. If the kids are under a lot of stress, fights erupt. If we want our kids to treat others thoughtfully, as individuals who deserve respect, perhaps we should try to do the same for them.
Well said. No one raising animals in a sane way would ever dream of corralling a bunch of adolescent animals together. (Not unless you plan to turn them all into hamburger very shortly).
I can barely walk into a middle school without feeling assaulted by the pheromone concentrations of all those kids going through puberty. I have to wonder if the adults who work in that environment cannot sense / are not affected by pheromones, or if perhaps they find those high concentrations stimulating and thus gravitate to that sort of environment. We're nuts to have kids breathe pheromone soup day after day and then act surprised when middle schoolers start having behavioral issues.
A "practice prison"? Not "normal" for children to run in "packs"?
Yes, young people need to be exposed to various adults, obviously. The adults they interact with at school are only one part of their day. What about advocating that PARENTS expose their children to other adults, and more importantly, responsible adults with open minds and inclusive attitudes?
I remember your posts last week on education. I have a hard time understanding what happened to you to make you so critical of public education. As a public school teacher, I fulfill my daily responsibility of trying to lead my students down a path of conscientious thought, as do a majority of my coworkers. We battle every day with closed minded and reactionary attitudes. Support from the citizens of this country is crucial to the development of our children. Please try to keep an open mind, there are many of us out there who are doing the best we can.
I hate it when people try to insulate their kids from ideas they don't like (like the anti-evolutionists, the right-wingers who kept their kids home when President Obama addressed the nation's schoolkids, the Christian in Massachusetts who sued because his kids were being taught inclusive attitudes toward gays in their public school, or the Yes on 8 crowd in California who were afraid their kids would be taught that same-sex marriage is okay--which it is). Who is it that's trying to brainwash them?
I agree with you that "practice prison" is a rather extreme take on the truth that they are "practice factories".
It is very true that public schools were actually consciously designed to impose systemic social and environmental conditioning in addition to academics, and that the segregation of children arbitrarily by age, and then the grading of these children like they were widgets against arbitrary standards, and the punch clock scheduling and bells and attendance and the hierarchical structure of the school itself with the principle as the pinnacle and unchallengeable alpha, were put in place with a definite picture of what turned a child into a good worker for the industrial revolution.
That structure is relatively new, being that the industrial revolution was not that long ago. Before that, children were not treated like this, and it is unnatural for children and youth to run around in packs segregated by age. That's why we have to teach it to them in the first place.
A good teacher teaches the academics within that structure, but the structure was designed to impart lessons of its own, lessons that some may not agree with, particularly as we move past the need to mold our children into good workers for the industrial revolution, unless we want them to be jobless auto workers or something...
Now, comparing factories to prisons, well, that's another post, but again, the similarities are eerie.
I have many loving, dedicated school teachers in my own family, as well. That doesn't mean that warehousing children is going to be beneficial to them. The system of public schooling is a mere blip in human history. While I agree that it is essential to give every child the opportunity to be educated, that does not make it any more normal to teach a small mob of same-aged kids as a single unit. The problem is with the system as a whole, not with the hardworking teachers or the rowdy, stressed out kids.
To conclude: So anything that improves the climate for GLBT kids in middle school and high school is welcome in my book. It's a human rights issue.
To continue with my previous post (too long to put all in one post):
In my sophomore year, the harassment stopped; in my junior year, they started trying to be friendly toward me, but now *I* was the one who was too good for *them.* Most of them had never spoken a civil word to me in their lives before and I treated them like they were insane and possibly dangerous. Most of them were mature and intelligent enough not to try and talk to me. I developed a dislike for my new school, but I didn't transfer back into my neighborhood high school until just before I graduated. I'd already fulfilled my state PE requirement, so the guys would never have to worry about me being on their team again (actually, it was the other way around), and the girls would only have to worry about sitting next to me in class for about three months (again, it was actually the other way around, and I avoided sitting next to them with dedication). I got my diploma, I left, I never talked to any of them again. No reunions, no alumni websites, nothing, and I don't plan to ever have anything to do with them of my own accord, ever again. I like it when I see them going through tragedies or misfortune or dying. They've been kind of upset over the fact that I turned my back on them and hate them...but, the piper must be paid.
Forgive them and move on with your life:)
Of course, they may turn up on facebook but that doesn't mean you have to even
say hello...they will see your name and when you see theirs you can just laugh at them.
With me it started when I moved to Texas and continued through 7th & 8th grade.
9th..a new high school was a bit better.
Moving to Ohio solved it period:)
And one of the guys that gave me the most trouble is on facebook as a classmate in high school.
Won't even go there:)
I've been there...sort of.
I got branded gay (even though I'm hetero) in seventh grade in 1976 in El Paso, and I was the leper of the eighth grade. Nobody wanted to be my friend. Nobody wanted to be seen associating with me. The girls didn't want me sitting next to them in class, let alone anything else, and the other boys didn't want me on their teams in PE. When they came to me, they'd pick guys who were absent, then pick guys who had moved away, then when they ran dry on those, they'd turn and walk out onto the field, leaving me standing there, and the teacher had to assign me to a team, until he decided to put an end to that nonsense. Then I got picked last. I was called names, yelled at on the street, had various objects thrown at me, was farted on, had guys calling me up on the phone wanting me to perform sex on them, and had spitwads blown in my face. And every new student was told about me so they wouldn't befriend me. I figured that if I went on to the neighborhood high school, I would be screwed up there before I started, so I transferred to another school in another part of town. But that didn't stop the harassment in my old neighborhood, which continued all through my freshman year, and around the end of my freshman year, I decided they could all f*** off.
Texas...
It figures:(
Funny, I always thought I was "weird" because I was having feelings for/crushes on boys as early as age 10 (yes, Im gay, get over it).
Now I know I was just weird for other reasons that have nothing to do with my sexuality LOL
Personally, I think most ten year old boys have less tolerance of heterosexuality than almost any other class of people.
I think the consensus of ten year old boys on kissing girls, for example, is "ew!"
So true, and quite humorous!
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