The New Frontier in LGBT Inclusion in the Schools.
By Robben W Wainer
Open Mindedness the key to willingness, and the steps to inclusion, begins with a non-biased three-fold relationship in children between, child, parent, and Teacher. Grasping concepts of inclusion and teaching Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender students begins with a sense of community. It is one that says we are not going to base our conclusions, on same-sex attraction as a psychiatric condition, but it is one that is going to reinforce this as a beginning towards relationships that work. This book will be discussing Educational means and psychological principles that reinforce teaching LGBT students a method of sustaining a community that is based on theirs and our interests. It is not pressing for further rights in the world of Civil Rights Activism, other than utilizing these key concepts of inclusion to look at the Global Community as LGBT Friendly.
The bell rings at 8:30 or 9:00 am as students make their way towards their seats in the classroom. The Teacher says good morning and invites all the whole class into the center to review the day’s assignments. One student is bashful, others work in pairs, others try to form small cliques based on what they feel is trendy. One student says if he is to learn reading English text it will require working with a girl. Other’s group together to form circles of bullying. Before they all sit down, the whole class knows each other, they are familiar with the limitations, strengths, weaknesses, but even more so with their character. The class is given the assignment to write a page by free writing, the class smiles the day is about to begin.
Teaching LGBT inclusion means acceptance as a practice, it refers to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender students, teachers and same-sex parents, to broaden our interest in developing an inclusive LGBT community we must look outside of the patriarchy we grew up in. We must look outside of politics and religion, and see that our make up, can be less competitive, less combative, and less of an intrusion on our public and private lives. How then do we instill these concepts that we are among our peers in equality, in same-sex relationships, that lead to relationships which can be life long, that can work, and sustain psychological health and well being. How do we practice, and promote inclusion among towards a Transgender dynamic, so limitations are not placed on them as a means of circumstance? The goal then of this book it to demonstrate how we may reinforce, foster, enhance and support our LGBT students so that they may grow up and develop as a part of, and not apart from the society in which we live and the homes we were raised in.
In consideration of the subtleties of LGBT inclusion, one may ask themselves if the acronym of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender is binding. Meaning that we do not change, that no amount of human will can have us go astray from a course of affairs that is set in stone. Being that the acronym is based on experience, we may also ask if we will always, and only have one type of experience. Clearly, we will see that the LGBT acronym is based on our relationship to ourselves, and others involved. At a closer look, we will see that it describes relationships that are not binding. I feel it is this consideration that may be worthy of being taught to LGBT students in education. That the elements of pain, guilt, and shame that were so dreaded by the use of these labels, based on having had the experience, or experiencing them in the present were never intended to bring about such a result. That the scope of permutations in how we see ourselves in relation to ourselves and others is endless, and that we ought to grasp the concept that it is always, and will always be changing. That the acronym LGBT does not define binding terms may be a relief that leads to the recognition that as we learn about life, we learn aspects and elements, or traits about our personalities that we may not have thought were there before, and as much as understanding their meaning they may help us define the facts of life as it relates to the sense of being in the present moment.
When searching for an approach to teaching what defines LGBT understanding, we may determine that homosexuality is as natural as it is instinctual. That in this sense we offer an emotional balance, that is based on feelings that indicate character development, ones we have always had, and ones we may always have. This emotional balance and these feelings derived from fantasy, attraction, mutual affection, and basic human interest may be reinforced to instill a sense of our identity that has always been there but is based on behavior that develops over time. In this sense LGBT instincts begin with impulse, are spiritual, as well as deeply entwined in the human psyche. It is not as simple as deciding these feelings begin with the need to try something new when they are based on models, impressions, and soul searching. When searching for cues on modeling LGBT behavior, it is perfectly acceptable to say that they are appropriate depending on the person. That human psychology and LGBT psychology is vast. Whereas like spiritual beliefs we do not ask you to have to accept anything about yourself that is not clear to you already. Modeling LGBT behavior begins by stating its appropriateness depending on the person. Appropriate in a more far-reaching sense, LGBT emotional balance begins by looking into the human heart to ask to understand an experience, how it has lead to others, and how contiguous the individual feels his sexuality is based implicitly on the desires and freedom of choice that they have.
As an educator, you can approach a group of students or a classroom the same way. To enable their understanding of sexual diversity to mean you may employ drills to help ease them into the process of becoming comfortable with the conversation. Let the group know the plan is that for the next hour we are going to learn about ourselves by learning from each other. Have them tell their stories, let them know we would like to know about your peers, any secrets you feel comfortable sharing, and what your perception of equality means to you. Let the group know this may be a good time to address anything they may feel is an issue with them. Have them include themselves in the stories, in a way which includes gender roles, and preferences now is a good time to say you are not in the driver’s seat. As the student talks about his likes and dislikes, ask them to include any behaviors that build the self image, self-esteem, and self-assertion. Let them know that even right and wrong is a man-made concept, it is concerned with human safety. Use this opportunity to disclose any conflicts you have with your own self-interest. Let them know it is not selfish to have feelings and ask how to have the student’s feelings helped them to decide for themselves who they, are and their own story of identity and the behaviors that have shaped their lives.
The foundation of education comprises of the philosophy of education and applies the principle that human beings have as much variation, as can be found in nature. History proves that those who were shamefully disgraced yesterday will stand firm today to be counted as those of the most honored by academics today. The LGBTQ population is not an emotional issue. It is not a crisis that requires resolution. The LGBTQ polis or constituency among civilization is expressed in all of our variations and walks of life to some degree. LGBTQ people ought to be referenced, as a race, ethnicity, denomination, sex, gender, and creed. Since for many of us our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer identities are affiliated with each description of humanity that one can conceive of. That to blanket that fact, whereby to smother its flame would be an act of injustice. Education has proved and will prove again, that it’s resourcefulness academically is accessible to anyone who is up to the task. The LGBTQ population is unique and yet sympathetic to a universal inclination. Let’s not defeat our principles, whereby defeating our purpose. It is the business of Education to assimilate each characteristic, of each person that makes them human. It is the business of Education to teach humanity, embrace, integrity so that civil unity can take place between a person who relates to themselves and civilization. Let’s not forsake our own moral voyeurism, by making claims, that expression of human jurisprudence exists, that ought to be shunned, separated from, and divorced from the global community.
In the next section we will be looking at Jungian theory, in an attempt to explore diversity in the minds, bodies, and spirits of LGBT youth, we will be looking at the psychodynamics of everything contained in the personality to get a better sense of who these LGBT youth are how we are essentially all very complex people and how the dynamics of the soul work to differentiate between personality and achievement.
Introversion and Extraversion
While both theories are broken down into the four aspects of the psyches. Which are thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Extraversion describes a person who is good with other people in a crowd. One who is more prone to objectivity. One who likes to trend set in society by relying on his/her presence among people. Thinking for the extravert is a matter of conscious condescension. It is a motive of the thought process of the extravert to see themselves placed in a social setting. Feelings for the Extravert depend on how well his communication is received, and the impact of influence they can make by expressing a point of view. Sensations in the Extravert is one that feeds off stimuli from the public. Emotionally they may be ill-equipped to reciprocate in matters of the heart and intimately. Intuition for the Extravert is one which is self-centered when they emphasize the importance of their status, and their ability to arouse the attention of others.
Introversion is the personality trait which focusses on self and subjectivity. The introvert is more self-reliant thus often times perceived as more reliable and responsible. The introvert is a soul searcher making connections and drawing conclusions based on relationships as to how they perceive themselves in the moment, and the effect of the environment on their self-esteem. Thinking for the introvert is one where making sense of emotions fulfills the need to affirm their sense of self-hood and personal understanding. They project more about the quality of their life, how they are perceived and where they will be years into the future. Sensations for the introvert are an internal drive, which brings conscious and unconscious drives into motivational factors which determine how they perceive themselves. Feeling for the introvert may actually be more self-confident as the individual is assured by their own actions, with an understanding that they can take charge of their own life. Intuition for the introvert while maybe narcissistic, are ones that affirm their own behavior as it is felt as something pleasurable or not. While perhaps less likely to take risks, the introvert assesses their own behavior to inquire into which actions and behaviors work for them, and which do not.
I will attempt to break down the four dimension of the psyche to show the diversity between introversion, and an extraversion in LGBT youth. Here, thinking may be based on popularity, but it may also be based on achievement. The LGBT youth may be very bookwormish and try to play the teacher’s pet, their relationship is overly dependent on adults, whereas their secrets of favoritism may be far-reaching. LGBT youth may be trend setters, and thinking about becoming popular themselves, they may place an emphasis on looks and exchanging masculine and feminine roles. They maybe concerned with what’s chic and focussed on who is doing what, and who their partners are going to be going into class. LGBT youth’s feeling maybe experienced as anal or genital, they may be competing for sex, and maybe losing at their game, they may find they have no interest in the opposites sex, and only search for their peers to feel fraternal and sororal intimacy, and rely on these feelings for gratification. LGBT youths sensations maybe very interpersonal, deeply affected by the results they achieve, and their success and failure. LGBT youth maybe totally reliant on the response from adults, teachers, parents, and mentors who determine the results they get from their incentives. Intuition for LGBT youth may be one which makes for very deep thinkers, or they may be winning a popularity contest to disguise their homosexuality, they may have secret turns ons, or discovering them, or maybe developing crushes on people without the need of reciprocation.
Anima and Animus
Carl Jung proposed two fundamental roles of the unconscious. He perceived masculine drives in women as the animus and female drives in men as the anima. Jung proposed that to communicate the drives from the unconscious masculine and feminine dynamics must be balanced. The anima in men demonstrates that without feminine sensitivity a mans life will never find balance. Without inquiring into his femininities he will always be the object of himself from others. That without feminine dynamics he will always have to feel outside of himself, and out of touch with his center and what causes him pleasure and pain.
Jung proposed that when women are not in touch with masculine dynamics they form a sense of neurosis, one that is submissive only. That women without feeling male dynamics get trapped in their lives akin to their spirit without a body, they detach from the strengths and motivations required even to be sensible and have sensibilities. Jung claimed that women who have shown an aptitude for feminism are women who have developed a strong and healthy animus. She is a woman who sees how her own relationship to masculinities is inherent in all of her drives and motivations. Jung proposed that the conscious role of the unconscious requires us to see ourselves with character traits that are influential and referential to the drives from the opposite sex. That without meeting this requirement we will be based, imbalanced, and live in what he called the shadow whereby instincts mask over the ability to address our lives in a physical and psychological means of achieving harmony and thoughtfulness.
LGBT youth may have an overdeveloped, or underdeveloped anima and animus, or they may be completely balanced. They may be young men who are used to female leadership, who see women as more intelligent and more productive, and who feel the female sex to be dominant in all choices of right and wrong. Female LGBT youth may need to feel more physical drives and strengths, they may need to resume the role of leadership, and see themselves as equal at every level to more masculine incentives. Male LGBT youth may have an underdeveloped anima and animus they maybe young men who only relate to other men. Displaying a lack of sensitivity they may risk their lives with foolish behavior unceasingly, they may be girls who feel they need to be domesticated or who are concerned only with feelings, and their relationships to other females, and how this is seen by the outside world. Transgender LGBT youth may only feel their bodies physically as the opposite sex. They may have a deep need to express the flaws they find in their gender assigned at birth and look to the opposite sex for role models and examples of self-perception.
The key here is self-modification, that LGBT youth shall not be discriminated against because of their own self-perceptions, and which sex and gender they feel fulfill their drives and incentives. A lesbian girl may know early on that she sees her life being fulfilled, by and with other or another woman, a Transgender youth, may be completely preoccupied with how their lives would turn out if they lived under the identification of their perceived gender preference. LGBT youth see differentiation among the sexes that may be seen as specific and oriented to their own personal needs. It may be that to change this behavior would be incorrect and be felt like an act of severe punishment.
The Collective Unconscious
Jung states that the psyche is interwoven with symbols, and figures that when actualized, and received by the personality, instills a sense of self, oneness, and well being with the soul. Jung says the soul, the psyche, and the unconscious are conceived from the first atoms of conception. That the personality draws from the unconscious what it needs to have a formidable representation. The unconscious is the bestowal of fantasy, and psychic phenomenon which addresses the baring with all that is perceived in the universe, with the unique qualities of character traits, and behavior that is determined by the soul. Jung described the anima thus as possessive of man’s nature. He says the psyche determines if he is balanced or imbalanced, disturbed, or at peace with his psyche. Jung saw the unconscious as a rite of passage, as a doorway into which perception and creation find its way to allow the soul to respond in such a way as to determine their character traits based on our personalities. The psychic unconscious defines more than how we perceive what our behavior is. Our self-perception and our state of the condition become the foundation which defines our personality, and the composition of character that is based on the psyche.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender youth do more than exhibit sexual, and gender preference and orientation. They exhibit behavior, it may be that youth may not ascribe to the expected roles of their sex which are seen as normal. It may be they have a certain orientation for destiny, fate, or fantasy that arouses same-sex behavior within their psyches. That homosexuality and nonbinary behavior may be perceived early on, and often times it is instilled by parents. Archetypes may not necessarily be homosexual for the LGBT youth to be normative, they maybe archetypes of the opposite sex, or based on a universal notion that acts unconditionally with the thought that their behavior has to be accepted, and is no less normative than having preconceived notions of sex roles in the first place. That anima and animus drive maybe so strong in the LGBT youth that their drives and passions are clearly seen and can be defined as LGBT. that somehow an interpersonal connection to our drives, psyches, and unconscious almost facilitates an LGBT submissive, that LGBT youth maybe demonstrating behavior that is most natural, and fulfilling to them.
In this very consensual summary of Jungian theory, I included it here to show how the personality is vast, that attractions, instinctual impulses, affectations, and transitions in many of us become part of the thought process, and a general state of revelatory beginnings synonymous to cause and effect. In examining human behavior Jung says we can do more than show that sexual release of inhibitions is akin to human nature and that LGBT responses bestow on all of us a kind of release from personal dissatisfactions and personal claustrophobic dependencies that are derived from an ambiguous sense of self. Jungian theory may be more appropriately conditioned to feelings, perceptions, sensation, thoughts, and consciousness. It shows how tribunal, and retrospective emotions can bring about amorous conditions that are just, meaning equally likely, to be homosexual, non- binary, lesbian or bisexual, since these suppositions and supplementation of arousal are reconciled as a release of a fear that can become pathological, unless reciprocated by the installation of these home erotic visions and dreams.
On Moral Behavior
In this next section, I will be discussing the three stages of moral behavior presented by Lawrence Kohlberg. These being Pre-conventional Morality, Conventional Morality, and Post-conventional Morality. The studies of these three stages categorize moral behavior, or moral thinking, to be inclusive of a wide range of attributes, which include distinguishing between right and wrong, role-playing and rules, general universal qualities, making sense of content, justice, and care. Studies indicate that there is no general consensus of who passes through this easier male or female, being boys or girls. The general consensus is that they differentiate from person to person. Demonstrating more masculine or feminine aspects of concern. More masculine attribute focus on rights and authority, while more feminine attributes center on responsibility and care. The qualifying method shows boys passing through the stages at an earlier age easier than girls, but that boys are apt to make more regressions than say a more fixed understanding of moral values found in older girls.
What do these stages imply for less binary students, who may be discovering emotionally how they view morality, and who encounters masculine and feminine attributes differently? It is the role of Educators to reinforce value systems and ethical behavior. It is not one to tell students that their values are normal, but are discriminated against, because it suggests a break in a hetero-normative code of conduct. Humanity ethical, conduct, values, self-perception, interpersonal dialogues all have a very strong influence in the formative instillation of understanding our relationship to the world we live in. Seeing through bias is one means we can instill a sense of personal edification in an LGBT student’s own personal philosophy, and the qualities of life they would hope to achieve. When there is too much discussion on sexual deviance, and who our attraction and infatuations may tend towards, it may be to the benefit of all LGBT students if educators went out of their way to reinforce, the general humanitarian, ethical principles and values they have, to help build perspective on how an LGBT boy or girl may utilize their concept and perception of behavior, to further investigate answers to question, such as who they are, what their perceptions are, and what will be important for them in means of communication to achieve in terms of interpersonal dialogue, and in their self preservation, by aiding our students in their potential to set, and achieve goals.
Piaget proposed that there were essentially four stages of learning development, that lead to moral reasoning. These were Sensorimotor, Pre-operational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational. Piaget distinctly defined his learning and gender theory based on roles and constructing patterns of behavior that were more functional in our very different understandings and undertakings in the world. Communication was the major factor Piaget attributed to learning development, as egocentrism in youth-centered particularly on having one’s needs met, or reinforced, with a need for feeling apart of and included. As the years progressed we found we attributed more to moral reasoning, and to logic, that clearly defined role became an individual and independent venture that answered questions from a more inspired ability to ascribe to our thought processes our own motivations.
It is perhaps this variation within the stages of Piagetian theory that I would like to allude to. That gender preference toward the extent of the same sex and opposite sex modeling can be defined early on. You may be a boy who dresses and acts like a boy, but who shares no interest in sports, peer pressure, or aggression. You may be a girl, who aspires to leadership, but only in a way that is not so permissive, or you may be a girl, who is less concerned about showing self-restraint. It seems the differences are somewhat dated, as both boys and girls share in a love for animals and nature, both reach a kind of moral understanding of justice, and both boys and girls are equally likely to be role models.
Implications for LGBT students would open the possibility that all types of behavior can be utilized to define identity and moral reasoning, that the stereotypes of masculinity and feminity seem to be more pervasive as we learn about them. Both sexes share an interest in creativity, in music and the arts. In fact, it may be said even as far as passive aggression, that some LGBT students for being LGBT, while others were bullied when their sexual orientation was not so defined. The point is we should look as this variation in human behavior. Where role modeling, for youth may have a sexual implication, or at least an egocentric one. Everyone wishes to attain intelligence and to acquire wisdom. It may be along those lines we find that by answering our own questions about having LGBT incentives, we can do well to include the possibility of variance, and how one’s own thought processes when applied to reason and clarity of conscious, leads one to draw these conclusions about themselves, and those who are LGBT in general.
I raise the question of Moral Reasoning by these two great Educators, as a reason for thinking and believing that LGBT orientation, contains its own reasoning and it’s own thought process that is distinct. Inclusion would serve to broaden the scope of human values and ethics, and would broaden the scope of equanimity. It is clear that LGBT orientation is derived from a point of reasoning that is defined, by acceptance, and self-motivation. It is also clear that LGBT behavior may serve in breaking down the stereotypical masculine and feminine roles, as the more telling story, clearly relates definitive values that are more varied and equanimous between the two. If egocentric behavior is based on receiving approval based on its own reward. Then we can say that LGBT sexual orientation in our youth, maybe one that deserves a clear understanding of our individual processes, that have lead to our ability to cope to our learning environment, with the understanding of choosing these roles, and behaviors for ourselves.
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