Controversial Books in the Middle School: Can They Make a Difference?
The Stonewall riots, a series of violent conflicts between homosexuals and New York City police in 1969, marked the advent of the gay rights movement and led to a dramatic increase in gay and lesbian visibility. Efforts to acknowledge this movement were made by a number of groups including the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Round Table (American Library Association, 2006). This group, since 1971, has given an annual Stonewall Book Award honoring both fiction and nonfiction literature for exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered experience. Academia has formed departments or programs dedicated to lesbian and gay studies, and the general public has achieved a better understanding of sexual differences. Public schools, however, have continued to resist such acknowledgement, leaving homosexual students in middle and secondary schools unrecognized and often the targets of discrimination. Galley (1999) reported the results of a national survey that found 91% of homosexual students had encountered anti
Interrogating the Lack of Diversity in Award-Winning LGBTQ-Inclusive Picturebooks
ABSTRACT This article presents the results of a thorough content analysis of 28 LGBTQ award-winning picturebooks. As a queer teacher educator working with pre-service elementary teachers, I wanted to find out how the queer picturebooks available for use in my students’ classrooms were any good at helping them and their future students understand that ’diversity’ and multicultural literature include LGBTQ people. What I found was enlightening and disheartening – offering both affordances and constraints for the elementary classroom. Through my analyses, I uncovered several aspects regarding race, gender identity, specific sexual orientations, and LGBTQ-inclusive language either present or lacking in the study text set. This study identifies aspects of quality LGBTQ-inclusive collections without ignoring the limitations of the materials and messages currently available to teachers.
On the Role of Professional Sports in the National Economy Under the Market Economy Conditions
Through the research of the present situations of the professional sports at home and abroad and its influence on economy, this paper points out the opportunities, challenges and the exist- ing main problems that the professional sports faces in the transitional peried-from plan economy to market economy, then elucidates that the professional sports can becompletely developed and improved and play an important role in the national economy under the market economy conditions.