Teaching queerly: the social educator as an agent of gender subversion in the school

Abstract

This paper presents in relief the practices of otherness which occur in the school environment, analysing the particular case of bullying from the perspective of gender. Also it emphasises the role of the social educator as a subversive agent promoting a transgressive pedagogy which allows the educational community to transcend the injustice of inequality in order to avail itself of the value of the difference. This transgressive pedagogy, furthered by the social educator, is based on two important concepts: Critical Pedagogy, which provides a new interpretation of social reality, making visible the “others”, the oppressed, to those who have a voice; and Queer Theory which offers an interesting theoretical account able to comprehend sexual identity beyond its traditional essentials which ascribes to biology not only the difference but also the inequality; and making this frustrate any attempt to convert the oppression to liberation. Both, Critical Pedagogy and Queer Theory, utopianly combined, must be understood in terms of possible reality.

Keywords: Social Education; School; Gender; Practices of Otherness; Critical Pedagogy; Queer Theory.