Radical Education Work at Jane Addam’s “Hull of a House” Museum

Last night’s forum, Anti-Gay Pledges and Teacher Education: A Dialogue About the Tensions Between Private Beliefs and the Public Good, was beautiful to behold. About 25 people participated in the event, which took place at the Jane Addams (pictured here with her life partner, Mary Rozet Smith) Hull House Museum on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, but no “official” Wheaton reps showed up. They sent a letter that arrived four days before the forum, to say they wouldn’t be there since they hadn’t helped plan the forum. But that is exactly what they were invited to do, two months earlier; they just didn’t ever contact us. Too bad for them, though, because we aimed to “speak with the expectation that we would be heard, and listen with the possibility that we could change” and the chat was wide-ranging and lively.

A queer teacher who grew up in Wheaton (or, as she said they affectionately call it there, “the 9th circle of hell”) talked about the distance of Wheaton College faculty and administrators from the lives of the school’s students and grads; a Chicago public school teacher described how changes in employment structures and the ongoing weakening of the Chicago Teacher’s Union contract have made queer teachers even more vulnerable; an administrator reminded us that we have to press the state and professional organizations to change, because they shape what happens in our public schools—if they ignore sexual orientation and gender identity, you can bet most schools will, too. After hearing why people came to the forum and what they wanted to talk about, we broke into small groups and talked about these and other questions:

Private Practices, Public Educators
What are the consequences when a private agency (NCATE) sets standards for public education?

Should private colleges with discriminatory “covenants” be supported (accredited) by the state to produce teachers for public schools?

Why are non-normative sexual and gender identities considered “private” and not worth public protections?

The Profession
What is the responsibility of the education profession--teachers, teacher educators, professional organizations, administrators—to challenge discriminatory practices, even when these are embedded in private institutions?

If “multiculturalism” can’t be or at least, isn’t consistently used to include sexual and gender identity in schools, what frameworks can be?

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?
How is resistance to challenging and changing these policies connected to other movements for justice and equity for all, including LGBTQ, people?

What are the consequences of the distinction Wheaton makes between “acts” and “beliefs”—“love the sinner, hate the sin”?

Youth, Schools, Teachers
How do discriminatory policies—like Wheaton’s— contribute to the dehumanization of LGBTQ bodies in schools?

What effect could knowing their teachers believe they are condemned have on LGBT youth—would this knowledge be damaging emotionally, academically, or in other ways?

The forum ended with plans—we are only just starting this project, so join us. You can hear the large-group parts of our discussion online:

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_AMP_Segment.aspx?segmentID=10199

I mourn Matthew Shepard’s actual death, caused by the unimpeachably civil ‘we hate the sin, not the sinner’ hypocrisy of the religious right, much more than I mourn the lost chance to be civil with someone who does not consider me fully a citizen, nor fully human.

Tony Kushner, 1998

Who Would Jesus Tattle On?

After our visit to Wheaton College for the big Illinois teacher education conference (see below for story and picture), Erica and I were "censured" by the school. What follows is their letter to us, followed by our response. Inspired by Starhawk's wonderful SF novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, we've invited the teacher educators of Wheaton to join us "at the table." We hope they will.
--
November 21, 2006

Dear Dr. Quinn,

It was quite distressing to learn that several weeks ago during the IACTE meeting held on our campus, fliers vilifying the Wheaton College Teacher Education Program were distributed with your contact information at the bottom. The title of this flyer, Accredit Love Not Condemnation, and its contents allege that our teacher preparation program and its candidates condemn individuals who choose to practice homosexual behavior. That information is both inflammatory, patently inaccurate, and appears to be based on a cursory reading of our Community Covenant and an ignoring of our Conceptual Framework. It seems that if the author of this flyer had a significant concern regarding our teacher preparation program, the appropriate action would have been to speak with us directly. The surreptitious distribution of the flyer was an unprofessional act that reflects poorly on the author of this flyer, you as signatory, your institution, and IACTE.

First, the Community Covenant is a statement of beliefs and behaviors to which participants in this voluntary community agree to adhere. As a Christian community, we do have moral standards that are entailed by our commitment to the historic Christian faith. Some of these are broadly shared (e.g., viewing theft, murder, and rape as immoral), while others, such as our stance on sexual morality, are not as widely shared. Our stance on sexual morality is to affirm “chastity among the unmarried and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman,” and to recognize that scripture condemns “sexual immorality, such as the use of pornography, premarital sex, adultery, homosexual behavior and all other sexual relations outside the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman.” Individuals who choose to become a part of this community are expected to comply with this covenant. Those who do not agree with its tenets should have the integrity and fortitude to choose to affiliate themselves with another of the many fine universities and colleges available to them.

Second, the Community Covenant in no way condemns any individuals. Condemnation is a decision that only God can make, and any human being who is so presumptuous as to condemn another individual is not practicing true Christian humility. Our Community Covenant, among its other affirmations, calls on members of the Wheaton Community to manifest “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and supremely, love,” to “seek righteousness, mercy, and justice, particularly for the helpless and oppressed,” to “uphold the God-given worth of human beings,” and to “be people of integrity whose word can be fully trusted.” The Wheaton College Teacher Education Program, in its Conceptual Framework, clearly states, “that candidates learn to work effectively with all children and their families regardless of race, creed, religion, national origin, sexual preference (emphasis added), disabling condition, or capabilities.” Our commitment to the inherent worth of every individual is emphasized throughout our programs; and for the author of this flyer and you, as signatory, to imply otherwise, is a blatant misrepresentation of our principles.

Interestingly, the author of the flyer seems to hold precisely the biased behavior of which we are accused. By asserting that Christians who hold traditional Christian views should not be certified and that religious institutions that hold moral views should not be accredited, the author has shown a clear bias against traditional Christians and/or other religious organizations that hold views different than that of the author. By extension, the flyer then seems to imply that anyone who holds a belief different from that of a child he/she is teaching is not qualified to teach that child. For example, should only Muslim teachers be allowed to teach Muslim children; only atheistic teachers to teach atheistic children; only Christian teachers to teach Christian children; only GLBT teachers to teach GLBT children? Such a system would be both discriminatory and ridiculous.

We gladly affirm that “teachers need to be well prepared to teach all students.” We affirm with sadness that GLBT students and adults have been and are at time subject to reprehensible treatment. We affirm that all teachers, including our candidates, should respect GLBT students and GLBT family members. Our Christian belief that all individuals are created in the image and likeness of God requires no less. We also affirm that in our country, individuals, including Christians, have the right to hold and express religious views freely. We understand fully and support the fact that the public school classroom is not a forum for religious proselytization or religious instruction. The public school classroom should be a place of learning, safe for all individuals, and affirming of the worth of each and every child. That is how we prepare our teacher candidates.

In accordance with Biblical principles, we are first contacting you without notice to your respective superiors. We at Wheaton College would be more than willing to discuss this issue with your further. However, the clandestine distribution of inaccurate information is an act that cannot be ignored. We believe that you, as signatory, owe Wheaton College, IACTE, and your institution a written apology for this reckless behavior. We anxiously await your response.

On behalf of the Education Department and Wheaton College,

Andrew R. Brulle, Ed.D. Jillian N. Lederhouse, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair Associate Professor and Chair-Select
--
December 21, 2006

Dear Drs. Brulle and Lederhouse:

We received your letter, dated November 21, 2006, and while we appreciate your communication, we disagree with your interpretations. Here, we respond to the points outlined in your letter and invite you and your students to an event where we propose to continue this dialogue.

For us, and the queer youth, teachers, parents, colleagues and allies we work alongside, the Accredit Love Not Condemnation action at the Illinois Association for Colleges with Teacher Education (IACTE) was a great success. We distributed love-centered flyers and pink teacher-power buttons. These, along with our positive queer presence, countered Wheaton College’s gay-excluding policies. As importantly, we raised questions about the appropriateness of Wheaton as a meeting place for the professional organization of teacher educators in Illinois, and the importance of sexual orientation and gender identity as key aspects of diversity. We believe that IACTE should not legitimize with its presence any institution that dehumanizes and devalues lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people.

Wheaton’s “Community Covenant,” which is part of the application for admission to the college, equates “theft, murder, and rape” with “homosexual behavior.” As lesbians, educators and as citizens, we find this an insulting and dangerous comparison, and the kind of assertion that lays the ground for violence against LGBTQ people. In addition, for queer youth, families and educators, the distinction you attempt to make between identities and acts is false and cruel. Sexuality is not divisible from other aspects of our lives as workers, parents, and students; no person should have to agree to forgo loving relationships in order to be safe from hateful characterizations.

It is hard for us to understand why you think the Accredit Love Not Condemnation project shows a “clear bias against traditional Christians.” It is inspired by and grounded in the traditions of critique and resistance exemplified by many Christians at the forefront of the profession of education including Margaret Haley, organizer of the first American teacher’s union in Chicago; Myles Horton, co-founder of the Highlander Folk School who played an integral role in the labor and civil rights movements; and Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Outside this field, Christians have been central to worldwide movements against oppression. The list is nearly endless, but includes Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Desmond Tutu, James Baldwin, Óscar A. Romero, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, Cornel West, and Mel White. We claim their engaged faith traditions as our guides.

We disagree with your letter’s claim that our distribution of the Accredit Love flyers was “surreptitious.” In addition to writing our email addresses on the flyers, as your letter notes, we walked from table to table during the meeting breakfast, passing out and explaining the flyers; wore t-shirts with the same slogan; introduced ourselves to the conference and individuals; and passed out business cards. However, secrecy is a strategic tactic that is respectable and sometimes necessary—the Underground Railroad is a clear example of this—and one that should be familiar and acceptable to Wheaton, which highlights a rich history at the forefront of the abolitionist movement on its website. But, we didn’t choose secrecy for this campaign; we chose visibility to counter the shame and silencing that institutions like yours seem to prefer for queers.

We also reject your characterization of our distribution of the Accredit Love flyer as “unprofessional.” Sexual and gender minority youth are unremittingly subject to violence and hostility in public schools, and we believe it is our professional obligation to raise this issue and seek solutions with our colleagues in teacher education, despite the desire of some to suppress that dialogue. It is the responsibility of the profession of teacher education to affirm and advocate for all students, parents and teachers, including those who are queer. Advocacy requires that problems are made visible. And that is what we have attempted to do.

We regret that you found the Accredit Love Not Condemnation flyers and pledge “quite distressing.” However, imagine how we felt to discover that our profession held a meeting on a campus where every person has sworn that the expressed sexualities of LGBTQ people, including youth and teachers, are the moral equivalent of “rape and murder”? Distressed is the mildest way to describe our reactions: pain, fear, anger are more accurate. Public meetings should not be held at institutions that degrade and exclude entire classes of people.

Finally, we appreciate and accept your invitation to talk further and propose co-hosting a discussion about this topic—Tensions Between Private Beliefs and the Public Good in Teacher Education—in a public venue, with fellow teacher educators and students of education and members of LGBTQ communities. We’ve secured a site [on the campus of a public university] and a tentative date and time. We suggest that we work out other details together—who to invite, how to organize the dialogue, food or not—if you choose to participate. If not, we plan to hold the discussion anyway, and hope you will announce the event to your students and staff. In particular, we would like to invite your LGBTQ students, staff and faculty to attend.

Sincerely,

Erica Meiners Therese Quinn

The Alchemy of Wheaton College

It turns freshmen into bigots.

Bigot:
A person who regards his own faith and views in matters of religion as unquestionably right, and any belief or opinion opposed to or differing from them as unreasonable or wicked. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary.

A few young people might enter college with their “faith and views” fully formed, but it’s probably safe to say most do not—they come to school with some history and plenty of room to learn. College is for that.

Higher education invites us to stretch, to experience new things and to look at familiar things in new ways. We get a chance to expand and grow.

But Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, is different. It, like a number of other private religious colleges, requires students to demonstrate, even before they enter the school, that they are bigots. Wheaton does this by requiring applicants to sign a “Community Covenant” in agreement with a statement that condemns “homosexual behavior.” They may be trying to sidestep the implication that they are condemning any actual people (love the sinner, hate the sin!), but that’s crap—we are our sexualities, just as we are our genders and our ethnicities. We are more than those, of course; we can never be reduced to just those qualities, but we are also fully ALL those qualities.

Download an application to read the condemning statement yourself at:

http://www.wheaton.edu/admissions/UndGrad/applying/forms.php4#cas

It’s a shame that any college demands professions of bigotry from young people. A “dirty shame,” John Waters might say. It’s awful that a college requires students to prove their prejudice as a prerequisite to admission. Alchemists aimed to produce gold from base metal. Higher education should, too. But Wheaton engages in reverse alchemy—it produces condemnation, not kindness.

Most citizens could just ignore this situation, if Wheaton weren’t also in the business of producing teachers for our public schools. That’s right, the teachers Wheaton graduates—who have sworn that they condemn lesbian, gay, and bisexual children and families—can teach in public schools. Wheaton’s teacher education programs are accredited—legitimated—by the Illinois State Board of Education, which says teachers should be able to “help all students learn.” But how can teachers educate those they condemn?

If you read my last post you know that the population of gay students is large—as one example, in 2003, 6.3 % of high school students attending Chicago Public Schools identified their sexual orientation as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Schools are uncomfortable, even dangerous, for these students—64.3% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students in 2005 reported feeling unsafe in their school because of their sexual orientation. And many teachers are part of the problem—40.5% of LGBT students in 2005 reported that teachers never intervened when hearing homophobic remarks. Schools are hard on LGBT young people. Colleges like Wheaton make the situation worse.

Wheaton is responsible for the suffering of LGBT youth in schools, and so is the Illinois State Board of Education, which accredits the College’s teacher education programs and certifies Wheaton’s teacher candidates, indicating that they are fit to teach in public schools. But they are not. Teachers who condemn their own students, or their students’ families, on the basis of sexual identity do not belong in public education.

The Illinois State Board of Education should stop accrediting the teacher education programs of colleges that require students to be bigots, and should stop certifying teachers who have agreed to condemn people they will inevitably teach. This isn’t a small problem; in Illinois alone there are several such schools. Greenville College is another example. Download its application and read the “Lifestyle Statement” which condemns homosexuals and dancing at:

http://www.greenville.edu/admissions/application/application.shtml

It’s a grim “lifestyle” outlined here, steeped in fear and privation. Yet, Greenville is accredited and its teachers are certified by the State. But these teachers are not fit for public schools. Wheaton and Greenville’s graduates can teach in private schools—they don’t need certification for that. Our public schools deserve teachers who pledge and demonstrate love and respect for all youth.

To that end, I’m offering every teacher educator and teacher candidate at Wheaton and Greenville (and any similar colleges, including Olivet Nazarene and Judson—you know who you are) a chance, here and now, to retract your vows of condemnation and offer a positive pledge of respect and responsibility, thereby “fitting” yourself for public school teaching. In fact, I invite everyone to take this pledge:

Teachers need to be well prepared to teach all students. Teacher education programs should support candidates by preparing them with the information and experiences they will need to teach and work with LGBT youth and family members. All teachers are responsible for gaining the education they need to teach and advocate for the well-being of LGBT students. All teachers should respect LGBT students, LGBT family members, and the identities and histories of LGBT people in classrooms and elsewhere. I pledge to do so myself. This retracts any earlier statements to the contrary. Sincerely,_____________

Email the signed retraction to the Chair of your Department or Program (at Wheaton, it’s Andrew Brulle at andrew.brulle@wheaton.edu; at Greenville it’s Edwin Blue at edblue@greenville.edu) and cc: it to me at tquinn@saic.edu.