teaching

Right, so I'm back from my trip around the world and at some point I shall post up my experiences as a feminist travelling in some fairly unfeminist places. But for now I'm going to talk about what I'm up to at the moment:

I'm doing teacher training at a pretty prestigous british university in the midlands. that's all I shall say about the institution, but you can probably deduct :) I'm doing Early Years education and boy oh boy having I been getting some serious feminist/ queer/ pagan blogging material out of the whole thing.

The are pretty much no men. There are quite a few reasons for this. Most obviously teaching little children is not seen as the preserve of men in the patriarchy. There has to be something wrong with you, like being gay, or a pervert, if you actually want to spend time with kids, according to the stupid powers that be here. And of course Early Years Education is the least prestigious branch of education... stupidly. I mean of course the start of things, the basic building blocks of all future education are the least prestigous, that makes sense right? But regardless of whether it makes sense it's not as prestigious or as respect, so of course fewer men want to do it. Which in turn makes it less prestigious and respected. And of course the fact that few men would want to work in a women dominated enviroment....

I was at a lecture this week on inclusion. The assumption of whiteness, of straightness, of the patriarchy was pretty sickenly obivous, even in such a pc subject. Everything else was referred to as "the other" even after the lecturer had highlighted the exclusive nature of using such terms. As part of this "other", working in a conservative gender stereotype perpetuating, pro christian, anti queer enviroment is weird..