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While ageism has become common discourse in the workplace, it is seldom used to discuss its youngest class of affected people: children. Jules Yun (Class of 2019) became interested in teaching the subject after taking a similar course two years ago taught by their current co-teacher, Elise Sommers (Class of 2019): “It was the first time I’d thought about centering children in liberation movements and thinking about structures of ageism. I never realized that children were constantly being patronized as not knowing anything, but of course they know a lot, and are not generally given any agency.” Thus, Elise and Jules joined forces to create the first-year Explorations seminar Queering Childhood (EXP-0050-G), an investigation into countering dominant narratives in childhood and the societal ways that adults treat children. For these two seniors, “queering” becomes the need for “thinking of other ways that we can test normality,” which they explore through childhood media, capitalism and family structures, and “protect the child” rhetoric.
Recently, students broke off into peer teaching groups to research individual case studies on “protect the child” rhetoric, including Anita Bryant’s “save our children” campaign in the 1970s and the more recent ballot question 3 in Massachusetts. While the course primarily focuses on deconstructing child norms such as gender deviant cartoon villains (see the PowerPuff Girls or numerous Disney movies) or the capitalist notion of reproductive futurism, another key theme of the course revolves around “rethinking some of the structural pieces of class to be more centered around self-governance, to scaffold away from us [Jules and Elise] as the main authority and see the class more as a collective authority.”
The two seniors are very open about the class structure: for the first project, students were given a rubric for grading, but by the second project, students were actively creating their own grading criteria. For their final project, students will work in pairs to facilitate a piece of discussion with the class about anything within the “queering childhood universe,” which will then be presented at the Queering Childhood Fair on December 4th in the Crane Multipurpose Room.
By trying to “prioritize creative projects and collaborative learning,” Jules and Elise hope that students will individualize their own learning experiences. For Elise, this message is extremely personal:
“I believe really deeply in children’s liberation and that child liberation needs to be central in creating just futures. I’m an educator, and the classroom setting is one place where I found power…my goal for students in this class is to recognize their own power, to take the work we do in this class looking at big systems and how they work, and to continue to identify big stories and push back against the monopoly they have over our imaginations.”
Elise is currently completing a curriculum guide for Queering Childhood centering on children’s liberation, classroom anarchy, and creative pedagogy, but for the first-year students in Queering Childhood, this may be their last chance with the material as the graduating seniors will not be teaching it next semester. However, there is hope for a course revival: “One of our students was asking who’s going to teach this course next semester or in the future,” Jules related, laughingly. “I said I didn’t know, and she was like, well, I guess it will have to be one of us!”
About the Author
Emma Hodgdon is a senior studying English literature. Apart from reading Gothic fiction, she can be found practicing cello for the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, or dancing with the university’s ballroom dance team. She spends her free time experimenting with calligraphy, learning to speak Chinese, and caring for her succulents, Verotchka and Geraldine.
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