Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Issues in Education: Programs, Policies and Practices.

GAY, LESBIAN AND TRANSGENDER ISSUES IN EDUCATION: PROGRAMS, POLICIES AND PRACTICES

Edited By James T. Sears. Harrington Park Press, 2005

Culled from the pages of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education, the articles comprising Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Issues in Education: Programs, Policies and Practices offer a broad perspective on the challenges and possibilities facing educators of queer students--perhaps too broad a perspective, depending on your level of experience. With secondary school through university students as its focus, the anthology also covers quite a bit of methodological and geographical territory, jumping from a historical approach to a sociological one, and from the United States to New Zealand and Japan. The effect is not so much disorienting as lacking in satisfying depth in any one subject.

The volume is potentially most useful to educators who may feel unsteady in their preparation for consciously tackling the myriad issues--academic and otherwise--lived by queer students on a daily basis, and who are looking for a straightforward introduction to anything from gay-straight alliances to bullying (keeping in mind, of course, that "issues" is the code word we too often use to describe the unfair or uncomfortable, that which we feel we cannot positively effect). The anthology's articles are consistently jargon-free without sacrificing theoretical insight, making them very accessible. In addition, the histories and cultural valences of key terms such as "queer" and "GLBT" (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender) are laid out deftly, as are reviews of the pertinent academic literature, which can so often drag. For more critical readers--as a queer student and teacher I had few epiphanies while reading--the issues introduced are generally not translated into specific, portable practices as often as one might require. Brett Beemyn's article on transgender college students is outstanding, balancing history and theory and beginning to sketch out practical solutions to serving this underserved community. However, as coordinator for GLBT student services at Ohio State University; I expected more specific advice than, "develop policies and procedures for addressing transphobic violence and harassment." What types of policies? How does one ensure they are enforced?

There is enough in the text to get your wheels turning, though, and references for further reading are available at the end of most articles. Several look beyond the United States for answers to sensitively yet effectively teaching queer students. And while cross-cultural comparison can often break open tough pedagogical roadblocks, local specificities are too often paved over in this anthology in favor of reading familiar expressions of queerness as evidence of a global, monolithic identity. While some experiences of queer students in Japan may ring familiar for North American audiences, the structural factors behind these experiences are not necessarily commensurable. There are some fine other details to the text worth noting. The list of contributors (boldly) includes e-mail addresses. The index makes finding a particular issue near effortless, although, given the book's introductory nature, reading it as a whole rather than piecemeal is recommended. So while many issues are presented in Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Issues in Education, and we have an increasingly better handle on them, the next and more difficult step is to translate issues into praxis, into solutions.