When we discuss schools today, we generally appear to discuss the evaluations, the games, or whatever new program is being gone for, however what is as a rule ignored is the way of life that is being spread in state funded schools today. As understudies, I am certain that we all needed to endure however a type of open embarrassment, a screw up or gaff that did not go unnoticed by our companions that caused some awkward emotions. Ideally, anyway this was not an ordinary event and we could go on with our investigations unhindered. For gay/lesbian understudies, each day could very well be an irreconcilable situation in school, attempting to fit in to the standardizing society while endeavoring to hold some similarity to self-esteem. In this paper we will look at the school culture from the gay/lesbian point of view, especially with respect to two creators, Nancy D. Kates and Sharon L. Nichols, who composed reports on the predicament of gay understudies. We will take a gander at the instance of Kates, who grew up a lesbian in the white rich rural areas of Boston endeavoring to fit in to what is anticipated from her, and contrast it with Nichols thought of the regularizing school culture and how it influences understudies today.
In schools today, there is a regularly developing clash between the qualities that are being besieged on the understudies by the media, similar to how they should look, what they ought to eat, where they should be so as to be acknowledged. The issue happens anyway when understudies who don’t fit the form in which regulating school culture reveals to them they should be. Those understudies with gay and lesbian propensities need to go to class each day and conceal their identity so as to fit in to stay away from scorn now and again, and viciousness in others. We as a whole recollect the instance of Matthew Sheppard, an understudy who in 1998 was pounded the life out of only for the way that he was gay. In the event that we as teachers believe this does not influence how gay understudies approach their day by day undertakings, we are unfortunately mixed up. Sharon Nichols composed a piece about the standardizing school culture where she looks at the thoughts and practices that are common in our schools today and applies them to those understudies that don’t really fit in to those specialties, once in a while prompting viciousness or suicide. What Nichols implies by the regularizing school culture is that minority societies like gays and lesbians are in any event overlooked, if not out and out restricted. Classes like sexual instruction and AIDS mindfulness has no incorporation of gay propensities and in this way demonstrating this specific way of life has no place in the public eye. (Nichols 1999). She proceeds to appear by utilization of national insights the mind-boggling increment of school savagery and suicides by understudies and a much more prominent increment by gay/lesbian understudies. It has been discovered that gay/lesbian understudies are a few times bound to endeavor suicide than their hetero peers. This disturbing
drift is something that certainly should be tended to, and despite the fact that there are the beginnings of projects that advance subjects of a minding associated network, these projects are a long way from all inclusive and the understudies that require the most help are frequently getting none by any stretch of the imagination.
This thought of the standardizing society, and the accentuation it puts on fitting in, not exclusively to class culture yet society as a rule was a gigantic issue for Nancy Kates as she clarifies in her piece, My Mothers Worst Fears, where she discloses to us what is resembled growing up a lesbian in a place that just esteemed young ladies on the off chance that they wore dresses and played with dolls. As Kates portrays her adolescence, she conveys visit references to the battles her and her mom had about what she would wear, her mother needing pink dresses and twists and Kates needing pants and shirts (Kates 1993). This is a prime model in the public arena that overflow into schools, as even in those days young ladies were not permitted to wear pants, and not until the point when a challenge was arranged might they be able to try and play in the snow in jeans. In any case, notwithstanding when the school yielded and enabled young ladies to wear pants, Kates mother did not, and demanded that her youngster was going to ordinary whether she needed to be or not. This is the issue that we are looking in our schools, endeavoring to fit a square pegs in a round gaps and the sentiments of hatred and outrage, just as hurt and dismissals that those understudy who are simply attempting to act naturally, and are terrified to be so they won’t be prohibited by their companions.