Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice

If you read my blog post yesterday, you know that I mentioned having less time for television these days. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. For one thing, I’m working more and that’s a very good thing. I’m reading more…which is good for this blog and, finally, I’m trying to get more involved in my local community and in the greater LGBT community. Am I an activist? Not yet, but the prospect is there.

I’m auditory in nature. I learn best from what I hear and what I read. Writing further helps to cement what I’m attempting to learn and remember in my mind. I don’t just read books for the sake of this blog. I read them to gain understanding and to help myself.

It was with great interest that I read the book,Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education) by Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners. Don’t let the long, academic title fool you; this book is a call to action. It just happens to deal primarily with activism involving education but it’s much more than that. Stick with me for a couple of minutes and you’ll see.

Here’s the publisher’s synopsis of the book:

This groundbreaking book provides examples of on-the-ground organizing and academic activism, drawing attention to the militarization of public schools, the erasure of queer lives at private institutions with anti-gay lifestyle statements, and the failure of professional educational organizations to act for social justice. Flaunt It! offers a constructive and timely analysis of the local, felt impact of neoliberal policies on the lives of those most marginal in schools and in communities.

At a slim 134 pages with only 5 main chapters, this quick read will open your eyes and your mind to the ills of public education and the havoc those failings bring to the greater community and, therefore, the need for social change. But the need for change that the authors, two Chicago based educators, highlight isn’t only about public education. It’s also about education in the broader sense and about justice. For example, they take a position right away, in the introduction, on same sex marriage. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you what it is! Let’s just say they’re actively engaged in the pursuit of “human” rights – justice – regardless of a marriage scenario.

Yes, you’re going to read a lot about what’s going on in education, especially with regard to the LGBT community and other queers, in this book but, you’re also going to read a lot about what these two brave educators and others like them are doing to change it. The positions they take and the methods they use can easily be applied across a broad spectrum of social ills and injustices.

I got quite a bit out of this book. It’s well worth a read and it certainly will give you something to think about.