Allan et al- "Speaking the unspeakable in forbidden places: addressing LGBT equality in the primary school"

These authors, Allan et al, argue that teachers should implement gay affirmative books to educate young children about LGBT awareness. They state that lesbian teachers make themselves indivisible to protect themselves from prejudice and violence. Teachers are responsible for their own safety and fear they would lose their credibility if others knew they were gay. However, it would be very beneficial to have a gay role model when speaking about LGBT. It would be much easier to teach about LGBT awareness in a much more private setting like an after school club rather than a classroom because the meeting is more informal and children are there by choice. They also argue that schooling is public while sexuality is private and teachers fear they might offend parents. If a teacher brings a private discussion such as homosexuality into a public setting like a classroom, the public setting thus becomes private. When the private discussion leaks outside the classroom to parents, the discussion becomes public. These boundaries of public and private spheres then seem to be permeable and justifies why there should be no issue in bringing a private topic to a public scenario or vice versa. These two spheres should never be kept apart because their boundaries are continuously open. The beauty of educating the children on gay affirmative issues, is that the open boundaries make it possible to change the prejudices on homosexuality within our community. I believe that LGBT must be part of classroom discussion to eliminate prejudices against homosexuality.

I do not recall reading any books on homosexuality in my childhood, have any of you read any books on LGBT? How can we implement more reading on homosexuality in classrooms?

This video sparked my interest because it addressed many points from the reading and argued what should be done to bring more gay affirmative books into classrooms.

When educating children about LGBT awareness, we can create a safe zone within our schools and hopefully it can "leak out" and make our entire community a safe zone.