ABSTRACT
From the early 1970s women’s liberation and gay liberation have questioned the schools’ part in the communication of ‘sex roles’ and gender stereotypes. The historical change in gender relations has now reached the kids as well, remaking their relations with teachers. The most visible part of this is the hotting up of sexual politics among the kids and the changes in sexual mores that teachers like Margaret Atwill try to grasp with the term ‘permissiveness’. Teachers’ feminism is, nevertheless, of a particular kind. While teachers’ place in sexual politics is still largely untheorised, it is different with their place in class politics. Given the importance of academic knowledge in teachers’ collective self-image, a powerful motive for rejecting such criticisms exists. The depth of feeling is illustrated in hostile comments about ‘child-minding’, ‘babysitting’, and ‘entertaining’ the kids. Thus there are both industrial and cultural reasons for conservatism on curriculum and control issues among teachers.
