Fit to Teach

Same-Sex Desire, Gender, and School Work in the Twentieth Century

By Jackie M. Blount

Subjects: Women's Studies, Lesbian / Gay Studies, Gender Studies, Education
Paperback : 9780791462683, 238 pages, July 2006
Hardcover : 9780791462676, 238 pages, November 2004

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Gender and Sexual Transformation of School Work

2. Passing Through That Phase of Homosexuality

3. A Spinster's Profession

4. A Rising Threat

5. The New Moral Menace to Our Youth

6. Sometimes You Just Have to Take a Stand

7. How Sweet It Is!

8. By the Students

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Examines the construction of gender in public school employment.

Description

Honorable Mention, 2006 History of Education Society's Outstanding Book Award
Winner of the 2005 Critics' Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association

Jackie M. Blount offers a history of school workers in the United States who have desired persons of the same sex as well as those who have transgressed conventional gender bounds. Despite recent impressive social and political gains for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons, schools remain a zone of great vulnerability for the larger LGBT movement. This thoroughly researched, vivid, and engaging book details the largely untold story of how this state of affairs developed during the twentieth century. It also profiles some of the remarkable people who have risked their careers by brilliantly organizing for LGBT rights, openly challenging discriminatory laws and practices, and educating their communities about conditions for LGBT school workers and students alike.

Jackie M. Blount is a Professor in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership at the Ohio State University and the author of Destined to Rule the Schools: Women and the Superintendency, 1873–1995, also published by SUNY Press.