Talking points #3 on Carlson

Premise:

• Invisible
• Silent
• Teaching
• Community
• Public Schools
• Sexual identity
• Privilege
• Marginalized
• Gay
• Lesbian
• Homosexuality
• Homophobic
• Discrimination
• Criticism

Author's argument:

Carlson argues that gay people have been held back in the school community for too long and that "gayness" has been made absent in the school curriculum.

Evidence:

1. Carlson says that "normalizing texts exclude and neglect the culture of those outside the norm for the purpose of ratifying or legitimating the dominant culture as the only significant culture worth studying." So Carlson believes that texts only include the dominant culture and avoid any mention of gays.
2. Carlson says that "no state currently recognizes gays and lesbians as legitimate minority to be considered in textbook adoption or to be included in multicultural education."Teachers like to avoid discussion about gays.
3. Carlson tells a story of how a male substitute teacher was greeted by one of the students as she shouted across the room, "that man's a faggot, right?"This is one of the ways how gays have been held back in the school community. Gays stay away from the school system because they feel afraid to stand up for themselves because they are a minority.

Questions/Comments/Points to share:

Reading this article I felt sad because gays are discriminated against all the time and this article shows how. In school we never really talked about "gayness" except in health. In health they made it sound like the reason there are Aids are because of gays. In this article Carlson touches on this too. The article says that homosexuals were the first group in the U.S. diagnosed with Aids. An interesting thing that Carlson mentioned is how major textbook publishers avoid gayness. In textbooks they talk about other minorities, but never homosexuals. On page 239 where the teacher was discriminated against reminds me of high school. It reminds me of how gay teachers and students were insulted and discriminated against because they were gay. Kids can be very cruel and this is why many people try to hide their sexuality. Kids in my school would be beat up because they were gay and would be scared to come to school. There are very few gay teachers because teachers are also afraid to stand up for themselves. It seems like everyone is against gay teachers including other teachers in the school. I understand that gays are considered a minority, but they should be allowed to do whatever they want without being discriminated against. This makes me wonder if people will ever change their homophobic ways. Personally, I am not homophobic, but many people are and I am not really sure why people are so against gays. Maybe they are so against gays because they are different from them and they are disgusted by the thought of two men together. I do not care because whatever they want to do is up to them and nobody else. If they want to gay they can be gay. So what I am trying to say is that people should learn to accept gays because gays are going to continue to be gay no matter what is said to them.