ABSTRACT

Much the same could be said of most people’s attitudes towards education in the United Kingdom. Yet when I was at school in the 1960s the subject of homosexuality only existed as a pretext for sniggers and insults. Little has significantly changed in either country. Two subsequent decades of debate and action in the direction of multi-culturalism in the classroom have had, at best, only uneven results. But the question of homosexuality remains in total abeyance. Which is to say that the question of sexuality remains in abeyance, since our respective education systems manifestly fail to acknowledge the actual diversity of human sexuality within the curriculum or outside it. In effect, children are taught that homosexuality is beyond consideration. This is bad for everyone in education, but most especially for lesbian and gay teachers, and lesbian and gay students. In this article I want to consider

briefly the immediate legal and ideological circumstances that frame the subject of homosexuality in schools, for unless we understand the historical and institutional dimensions of anti-gay prejudice, we will not be able to develop effective counter-strategies.