Talking Point #3 (Dennis Carlson)

Dennis Carlson argues the same thing that Johnson and McIntosh argues kind of. Carlson says that schools and communities do not talk about "gayness" and try to keep it in silence and have hidden practices. He says that we should talk, recognize and have dialogue about cultural diversity and now a days in our schools and communities that is slowly starting to happen.

1." I want to suggest that public schools may play an important role in helping build a new democratic, multicultural community, one in which sexual identity...is recognized, in which inequities are challenged, and where dialogue across difference replaces silencing and invisibility practices." This reminds me of Johnson and talks about how we have to talk about the silent thing if we want to improve and fix them.

2."Within normalizing communities, some individuals and subject positions get privileged and represented as "normal" while other individuals and subject positions are disempowered and represented as deviant, sick, neurotic, criminal, lazy, lacking in intelligence and in other ways "abnormal." Carlson says that this what the views have been like for most of this century and i feel that this is an important thing to point out and we need to change this view because everybody is different from one another but that does not make it right to view them as being sick or criminal.

3."Three techniques of normalization and (hence) marginalization have been of promary importancein this regard: (1) the erasure of gayness in the cirriculum, (2) the "closeting" and "witch hunting" of gay teachers, and (3) verbal and physical intimidation of gay teachers and students." These are the ways that Carlson says that school communities have kept "normalization" and i feel that it is important to first know the ways that schools have been silenceing gayness and then work to fix and change it.