Queering the Body; Queering Primary Education

A free one-day seminar presented by the No Outsiders research team

Sponsored by the Society for Educational Studies
for the Education and the Body seminar series

Tuesday 16th September 2008, 12.00 – 6.45
University of Exeter

This seminar is timed to follow the Queer in Europe conference at the University of Exeter from13th – 15th September. For details of Queer in Europe, see www.sall.ex.ac.uk/centres/cissge/

I will write a briefer article shortly and I thank you for investing your time in reading a few facts and thinking about the true state of the English education system and considers whether or not you consider this to be bollocks 2...
Since September 2006, the No Outsiders research team (a collaboration of primary teachers-researchers, university researchers and equalities facilitators) has been breaking new ground in equalities education by exploring approaches to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the primary school. The 28-month ESRC-funded project supports primary teachers in three regions of the UK in challenging heteronormativity, homophobian and transphobia in their own schools and classrooms. Practical approaches within the project include the use of stories, drama and the visual arts, as well as revisions to school policies and the development of guidance on challenging homophobia at primary level. Underlying these activities, however, is a much deeper interrogation of the discourses which keep the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990) and its elision of sex-gender-sexuality in place.

One of the most fundamental questions the research team has been addressing since the start of the project concerns the problematics of the body. The team is concerned to interrogate the desexualisation of children's and teachers' bodies, the negation of pleasure and desire in educational contexts and the tendency to shy away from discussion of (sexual) bodily activity in No Outsiders project work. The danger of accusations of the corruption of innocent children, particularly in the context of the world-wide media attention the project has received, has led team members to make repeated claims that this project is not about sex or desire – and that it is therefore not about bodies. Yet, at a very significant level, that is exactly what it is about and to deny this may have significant negative implications for children and young people.

Through ongoing debate and exploration during the project, members of the project team have challenged the pervasive images of romantic love and life-long monogamy portrayed by the lesbian and gay characters in the children's books used in project schools; have questioned the denial and/or repression of their own sexual identities, pleasures, desires and investments; have explored the underpinning cultural and religious discourses which banish sex from sexuality; have raised the need for and purpose of strategic essentialism in relation to sexualities and gender identity; and have challenged each other to go beyond imagined possibilities into queer practice. In addition, the team has explored the multi-layered ways in which sex/gender/sexuality are written on and performed through the body through the repetition and appropriation of specific social and cultural codes and symbols; and ways in which such performativity might be interrupted/disrupted in order both to queer the norm and normalise the queer.
The seminar continues this process, aiming to trouble us – and the seminar participants – out of our comfort zones and to question the taken-for-granted of the supposedly sexless, bodiless (except for running noses, leaking bladders and untied shoelaces) and desire-less primary classroom. Drawing on project data, the seminar will address these questions:

• What sorts of border work (Thorne, 1993) do children and teachers engage in as they work (consciously or subconsciously) to maintain the heterosexual matrix and keep the body in its place; and what shifts and negotiations does this border work require?
• How might we create primary classrooms where gender-queer bodies and queer sexualities (for children and teachers) are affirmed and celebrated?
• What would it take to teach queerly? How would teachers' and children's bodies be implicated in this? What sorts of subversions and reversals might it entail?
• At what cost do we deny children's and teachers' sexuality? What do we lose if desire and pleasure are banned from the classroom?
• In what circumstances is strategic essentialism regarding the sexed, gendered and sexualised body necessary for change to principles and practice, and who might be harmed by an insistence on fluidity and non-unitary identities?
• What is the place of the research team members' own bodies, desires and pleasures in this research?

Seminar timetable


12.00 – 12.45 Free lunch
12.45 – 1.30 Deborah Youdell (Institute of Education, University of London): Childhood and Pleasure: sexuality, the body and the primary classroom
1.30 – 2.15 Fin Cullen (Institute of Education, University of London) and Laura Teague (Teacher-Researcher, No Outsiders): Subversion and the carnivalesque: breaking rules in the queer classroom.
2.15 – 3.00 Elizabeth Atkinson (University of Sunderland) and Andrew Moffat (Teacher-Researcher, No Outsiders): Bodies and minds: essentialism, activism and strategic disruptions in the primary school.
3.00 – 3.30 Tea/coffee
3.30 – 4.15 Alexandra Allan (University of Exeter) and Elizabeth Brace (University of Sunderland): Queer spaces, queer places: locating ideas and bodies in anti-heteronormative education.
4.15 – 5.00 Nick Givens and David Nixon (University of Exeter): From the park to the pulpit: the body, sex, religion and children.
5.00 – 5.45 Guest keynote speaker: Professor Susan Talburt (Georgia State University, US): Queering the body; queering primary education: new imaginaries and new realities.
5.45 – 6.45 Social/networking opportunity

To book a place at the seminar, email  sylvia.briggs@sunderland.ac.uk
Tel 0191 515 2380 (Mon-Wed)



then... think about this...



Further info on Psychosynthesis and Guru Assagioli
24.09.2008 20:14

Psychosynthesis is dodgy as hell.

It was founded by Roberto Assagioli, who was a disciple of the Western Occultist Alice Bailey, herself a student of the Theosophists founded by the charlatan and mind bender Blavatsky.

Theosophical and Baileyite organisations operate under an number of charitable, pseudo-political (Peace movement) and "spiritual" guises.

It is worth noting that theosophical occult ideas around such things as "root races", higher beings and Atlantis were very important to the philosophical founders of National Socialism in Germany.

Despite all the "world peace" rhetoric the theosophical cults are at root hierarchical, reactionary and often pseudo-racist. They are also, like most cults, dishonest and manipulative, shown by their use of innocent sounding fronts which they use to gain access to international bodies and organisations (such as some supported by the UN and other bodies).

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosynthesis

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Assagioli

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-cult_movement

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Bailey

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky


"I don't know who Common Purpose are. Their web site is also very boring, but I think I just formed the opinion that I don't like anything called "Common Purpose". I don't like an organisation that looks political and descusses:-

"We develop leaders who can lead beyond their authority," It sounds like working outside democracy to me."


then think about this last bit...


Ark Academies are involved with the charity 'Children Our Ultimate Investment', who work with The Psychosynthesis Education Trust. Ark have not made it clear to the public that it is working so closely with these charities and what these charities are about.


ARK ACADEMIES

* The ARK Master Funding Agreement states:

24) The core subjects of the National Curriculum (being Mathematics, English and Science) must be taught to all pupils in years 7-11 except where, in the opinion of the head teacher, it is inappropriate for an individual pupil or groups of pupils to be taught one or more of those subjects.

ARK does not say what students will study instead.

It also states:

100) Subject to article 101, the Directors shall ensure that a copy of:
a) the agenda for every meeting of the Directors; b) the draft minutes of every such meeting, if they have been approved by the person acting as chairman of that meeting; c) the signed minutes of every such meeting; and d) any report, document or other paper considered at any such meeting,
are, as soon as is reasonably practicable, made available at every Academy to persons wishing to inspect them.

101) There may be excluded from any item required to be made available in pursuance of Article 100, any material relating to ……..c) any matter which, by reason of its nature, the Directors are satisfied should remain confidential. (1)

So, any minutes, documents, notes etc from Directors' meetings, can have information withheld from the public, at the decision of the Directors.

* ARK Academies are involved with the Teens and Toddlers programme, also known as 'Children Our Ultimate Investment' (COUI). (2)

* ARK, Teens and Toddlers, Children Our Ultimate Investment and Psychosynthesis Education Trust work together:

Diana Whitmore MAEd, Founder, Teens and Toddlers UK
Diana is a director of Children Our Ultimate Investment UK, vice-president of the Board of COUI (USA) and the international director. She is President of the Psychosynthesis and Education Trust and is one of the UK's leading trainers of counselling and psychotherapy.(3)

* ARK funds Children Our Ultimate Investment and sets targets; from the website Guide Star, where charities' details are recorded:

COUI UK continued adhering to its four year business plan, compiled with the ARK, the major funder. We consistently met all of the ARK performance targets in terms of number of teenagers reached and number of Teens & Toddlers Sustainability Replication Programmes sold. Performance targets for selling programmes for 2007 2008 have already been achieved. (4)

* The Psychosynthesis Education Trust, from the website 'Guide Star';

The Trust's main purpose is to gain recognition for the central role of Soul and Self in psychology and to renew the soul in the everyday life of individuals, the family, groups, organisations and society.

Legal (from the Public Register of Charities)
Date of charity registration:
10 September 1999
Legal charitable objects
TO FOSTER PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH INTO THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION BODY, MIND, EMOTIONS AND SPIRIT AND THE SYNTHESIS THEREOF (KNOWN AS BIO-PSYCHOSYNTHESIS) AND ITS DISSEMINATION TO THE PUBLIC THROUGH EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES. (5)

*) Non Legal version of this charities objects include:
Training Psychosynthesis and non-Psychosynthesis counsellors and therapists.

*) 'Children Our Ultimate Investment' also run 'Project Caressing' : which teaches young children about tactile relationships with men. (6) The founder of 'Children Our Ultimate Investment', Laura Huxley, wife of eugenicist Aldous Huxley, had this to say:

Huxley said bonding between young and old is accomplished through caressing and would like to see more men become involved in the nurturing process.
"It's very good for men to do this because they also need the feeling of being caressed," she said. "Kids need to see men as much as women. It's never too ate to start…………It's makes them feel happy and there's nothing more beneficial than a little tiny hand coming over, touching and reaching out," she said. (7)

Washington Post quotes Laura Huxley, founder of COUI:
"Children are our ultimate investment and also very much the ultimate investment of the tobacco companies, the ultimate investment of the liquor companies and, for sure, of the gun companies," she told an interviewer. …….In practice, the organization featured programs uniting the elderly with babies, based on the belief that both were emotionally needy and could benefit from a healing touch. Liability issues later ended this effort. (8)

ARK is also a part of Clinton's Global Initiative. (9)

References:

(1)  http://www.dfes.gov.uk/foischeme/_documents/DfES_FoI_279.pdf
(2)  http://www.arkonline.org/?p=56
(3)  http://www.teensandtoddlers.org/biographies.htm
(4)  http://www.guidestar.org.uk/gs_activities.aspx?CCReg=HrSAjmXn3v%2bj4Zy8uKa%2f6A%3d%3d&strQuery=psychosynthesis%20education%20trust
(5)  http://www.guidestar.org.uk/gs_organ.aspx?CCReg=HrSAjmXn3v%2bj4Zy8uKa%2f6A%3d%3d&strQuery=psychosynthesis%20education%20trustcontent
(6)  http://www.children-ourinvestment.org/PCpage.htm
(7)  http://www.children-ourinvestment.org/PCLiving1.htm
(8)  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121401997.html
(9)  http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/NETCOMMUNITY/document&183;Doc?&id=108



action???


Supported by the Anti Academies Alliance
Destroying Britain yet we're giving them our schools!?!
DEMONSTRATE NO TO ARK

This Friday 26th September 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Assembling from 4:00 pm Outside ARK HQ.
15 Adam Street
London, WC2N 6AH

Nearest tubes: Charing Cross (Northern &
Bakerloo) Embankment (Circle & District)

Called by
BRENT, ISLINGTON & LAMBETH CAMPAIGNS. Others welcome

"What qualifies us to be doing education? Nothing" Arpad Busson Observer 29.5.03.

"We've shown people that the Hedge Fund industry is a force for good in the world. In the past my industry has been accused of everything from greed to carelessness to downright dishonesty. Now I feel a very different picture is emerging of us working for others". City Spy can't help reading this over and over and cackling madly …

The Evening Standard's City Spy quoting Arpad Busson from an article in The Spectator.


Bring Banners & placards. Fancy Dress – Fat Cats and Spivs (optional)
PP Hank Roberts, 27 Ridley Rd, NW10 5UB
Hedge Fund Speculators – Keep out of our schools

Birmingham City Council agreed that ARK are unacceptable for the children and staff at Harborne Hill. ARK will no longer be sponsoring the proposed Harborne Academy.

Charity Sweet XXX