In one of this weeks articles, Elizabeth Ellsworth talks about learning experiences in relation to places of learning and the embodiment of learning. Ellsworth’s outlook on experiencing education was interesting and new to me. She suggests against teaching for only curriculum outcomes and stresses importance on experiencing learning in a personal way, which is not something that can be easily assessed. I really like this idea because I think it is much easier to learn and really absorb what you are learning when you are experiencing it rather than just being lectured at. Many, if not all of my most memorable school experiences in relation to learning were experiential and involved different pedagogy than just sitting in a traditional classroom setting. Although a lot of my classes were “AP” classes so this was not something that I was able to experience regularly since our main focus was a specific test. I think it is important to get away from “normal” ways of learning if we want to be proactive in new and progressive ways of thinking.
In the second article (Loutzenheiser) we see “How Schools Play Smear the Queer”. This article was really eye opening in terms of suicides and other issues among the homosexual, bisexual, etc. community. I really agreed with the section of this article that talked about how we are very sure to not be racist or use oppressive racial stereotypes in our classroom even if it does not line up with our true beliefs, but for some reason it is not the same with gender and sexuality issues. The article blamed this mainly on not wanting to upset the religious community which doesn’t seem to be a huge problem where we live. So why does it still happen here? Our population does not have as huge of a homophobic religious following as somewhere like the states, but gender and sexuality issues are still pushed to the side and not addressed.
I think that making “life livable” is an interesting term. Shouldn’t our goal to be to make life more than just livable? Especially for groups that are traditionally marginalized I think that it is probably time that homophobia takes a back seat to acceptance and equity. I think it is very important to bring in gender and sexuality topics into our classrooms along with all of the other racial and anti-oppression subjects that we have been talking about. I think that if you’re going to be an advocate for social justice I don’t think you get to pick and choose which social justice issues you get to include. For example, you may believe strongly in certain issues but if you are going to be fighting for a more present role for Treaty Education in all classrooms, then you need to also include other social justice issues.
Madison Handford's Blog 