As we end LGBT+ History Month in the UK, I have been thinking the last couple weeks about Section 28, the law that banned local government, including school districts, from the “promotion of homosexuality” in England and Wales between 1988 and 2003 (Scotland repealed it slightly earlier, in 2000).
Hi Emily! This is super interesting and, as it's somewhat in my wheelhouse I thought I would comment on some of the ideas you share here.
Firstly, I agree that the impact of Section 28 was (and is) primarily pastoral rather than curricular per se - and as with everything in this country it's relatively mild-mannered veneer acted and acts as a part of the lasting impact it has primarily on queer students and teachers' experiences of school rather than what they learn therein. (Though this does bleed through into curricular questions, as the nervousness with which a lot of the teachers I speak to about including queer history attests.)
As for your points on the teaching of queer history in schools, there's a couple of things that struck me while reading your commentary, the first is the idea that queer history is especially difficult and complicated to navigate within schools. This is something I've heard a lot from people outside and within the teaching profession and I've recently felt the need to push back against it a bit. The fact is, we engage with very complicated historical work even in the most 'established' and 'traditional' aspects of the curriculum - to give an example, we routinely expect to teach the reformation to Year 8. This involves communicating to twelve/thirteen year olds not just a whole lot of unfamiliar religious language but also a mindset and way of looking at the world that may be entirely alien to them. That's before we even get into the disciplinary questions of how historians use evidence to construct their accounts, how this knowledge relates to their broader picture of the past and the engagement with both popular and academic interpretations which we routinely get into with our students (both because it's good practice and because the National Curriculum requires it). Bearing this in mind, while approaching queer history may require specific approaches, and more crucially may have fewer teachers that are familiar with them, I don't think it is inherently more difficult to manage than any other historical topic in the classroom - it's just that structural barriers (including our old friend Section 28) have left us less well-equipped to do so.
The second thing I found really interesting was your idea about the importance of queer-led community spaces in teaching queer history. I tend to agree that the ideal would be for queer history to be present within a school and a community context, but I was just wondering about some of the pitfalls of the latter? I guess this mainly struck a chord because I've just been re-reading Trouillot's 'Silencing the Past' and I got really caught up on the idea of 'silences of resistance' that he put forward. I do sometimes wonder if, for all the strengths of community history, it can also sometimes be a site of myth-making (the idea that 'Section 28 is the reason we don't know our history' would be a good example of this) and while institutions like schools, museums and universities are guilty of this too, it is sometimes easier to hold them accountable for it? As you will guess, I haven't fully developed my ideas on this, but I think it's interesting to think about.
Anyway, apologies for writing such a lengthy comment! I very much enjoyed reading it, as ever, and I hope you are enjoying the unseasonal warmth in spite of the lurking unease about climate change that it provokes.
Hi Claire, thanks so much for engaging with this and sorry to be slow replying! I really appreciate your thoughts - and your point about taking seriously students' capacity for greater complexity in historical thinking generally is well taken, as is your point about the perils of myth-making. There are a lot of questions to work through (that don't have clear answers) about who queer history is for and what it means to mainstream it. I love teaching queer stuff to all students and certainly don't think it should be only for queer students (though queer students often respond with the most enthusiastic/meaningful engagement, and I find that personally gratifying). Which means that school can be a good place for it, though I think we all have to make sure we're doing what you're doing so well and putting it actually in the history curriculum (in all its complexity), rather than as part of diversity box-ticking initiatives that feel more tokenising. Ironically, after I wrote this I happened to get an invitation to speak to a school history society for LGBT History Month next year, so I will have to report back about what I've learned in a year's time!
Thanks for taking the time to reply! The point you make about box-ticking and tokenism is so important, and I'm certainly not complacent about this, as the fact is that this is probably still the level at which the majority of work including queer history is at in a lot of schools. (I have had frequent requests for help with stand-alone assemblies and tutor periods that seemed to be designed in this vein during his month, alas.) One of the things that gives me hope are some of the groups of trainee teachers I have spoken to, many of whom have obviously engaged with queer history as part of their degrees and who are therefore in a much better position to do a good job of including it. It's great to hear that you're going to be speaking to a school history society next year, they are an awful lotto fun and I'm sure the students will really benefit from hearing you speak!
Hi Emily! This is super interesting and, as it's somewhat in my wheelhouse I thought I would comment on some of the ideas you share here.
Firstly, I agree that the impact of Section 28 was (and is) primarily pastoral rather than curricular per se - and as with everything in this country it's relatively mild-mannered veneer acted and acts as a part of the lasting impact it has primarily on queer students and teachers' experiences of school rather than what they learn therein. (Though this does bleed through into curricular questions, as the nervousness with which a lot of the teachers I speak to about including queer history attests.)
As for your points on the teaching of queer history in schools, there's a couple of things that struck me while reading your commentary, the first is the idea that queer history is especially difficult and complicated to navigate within schools. This is something I've heard a lot from people outside and within the teaching profession and I've recently felt the need to push back against it a bit. The fact is, we engage with very complicated historical work even in the most 'established' and 'traditional' aspects of the curriculum - to give an example, we routinely expect to teach the reformation to Year 8. This involves communicating to twelve/thirteen year olds not just a whole lot of unfamiliar religious language but also a mindset and way of looking at the world that may be entirely alien to them. That's before we even get into the disciplinary questions of how historians use evidence to construct their accounts, how this knowledge relates to their broader picture of the past and the engagement with both popular and academic interpretations which we routinely get into with our students (both because it's good practice and because the National Curriculum requires it). Bearing this in mind, while approaching queer history may require specific approaches, and more crucially may have fewer teachers that are familiar with them, I don't think it is inherently more difficult to manage than any other historical topic in the classroom - it's just that structural barriers (including our old friend Section 28) have left us less well-equipped to do so.
The second thing I found really interesting was your idea about the importance of queer-led community spaces in teaching queer history. I tend to agree that the ideal would be for queer history to be present within a school and a community context, but I was just wondering about some of the pitfalls of the latter? I guess this mainly struck a chord because I've just been re-reading Trouillot's 'Silencing the Past' and I got really caught up on the idea of 'silences of resistance' that he put forward. I do sometimes wonder if, for all the strengths of community history, it can also sometimes be a site of myth-making (the idea that 'Section 28 is the reason we don't know our history' would be a good example of this) and while institutions like schools, museums and universities are guilty of this too, it is sometimes easier to hold them accountable for it? As you will guess, I haven't fully developed my ideas on this, but I think it's interesting to think about.
Anyway, apologies for writing such a lengthy comment! I very much enjoyed reading it, as ever, and I hope you are enjoying the unseasonal warmth in spite of the lurking unease about climate change that it provokes.
Hi Claire, thanks so much for engaging with this and sorry to be slow replying! I really appreciate your thoughts - and your point about taking seriously students' capacity for greater complexity in historical thinking generally is well taken, as is your point about the perils of myth-making. There are a lot of questions to work through (that don't have clear answers) about who queer history is for and what it means to mainstream it. I love teaching queer stuff to all students and certainly don't think it should be only for queer students (though queer students often respond with the most enthusiastic/meaningful engagement, and I find that personally gratifying). Which means that school can be a good place for it, though I think we all have to make sure we're doing what you're doing so well and putting it actually in the history curriculum (in all its complexity), rather than as part of diversity box-ticking initiatives that feel more tokenising. Ironically, after I wrote this I happened to get an invitation to speak to a school history society for LGBT History Month next year, so I will have to report back about what I've learned in a year's time!
Thanks for taking the time to reply! The point you make about box-ticking and tokenism is so important, and I'm certainly not complacent about this, as the fact is that this is probably still the level at which the majority of work including queer history is at in a lot of schools. (I have had frequent requests for help with stand-alone assemblies and tutor periods that seemed to be designed in this vein during his month, alas.) One of the things that gives me hope are some of the groups of trainee teachers I have spoken to, many of whom have obviously engaged with queer history as part of their degrees and who are therefore in a much better position to do a good job of including it. It's great to hear that you're going to be speaking to a school history society next year, they are an awful lotto fun and I'm sure the students will really benefit from hearing you speak!