Caitlin Howlett - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Caitlin Howlett

Philosophy of Education, 2018

Journal of Philosophy of Education

Legislating comprehensive sex education curricula has long been believed to be essential to align... more Legislating comprehensive sex education curricula has long been believed to be essential to aligning education about sex, sexuality and human relationships with the values of equality, inclusivity and autonomy. Defences of the need for ‘good’ sex education in public schools are contingent upon arguments about whose experiences ought to guide us in determining what sufficient alignment with such values might look like. The aim of this paper is to explore the assumptions underlying one prevailing norm in such defences: what I call parental deference or the practice of heeding to the rights of parents in debates about sex education. The question at the heart of this paper is, then, who in our communities does this deference exclude? I begin with a brief consideration of the appeal of parental deference within theories of education in general, and sex education in particular, before problematising its normalisation through a consideration of the exclusions such deference creates. In the...

Democracy education, 2017

R ethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality (2016) offers a readable and refreshing account of the ... more R ethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality (2016) offers a readable and refreshing account of the ambiguities and possibilities relating to gender and sexuality in education today. With a focus on public school experiences, this collection of vignettes, lessons, and critical essays culminates in a resource that is of great value to teachers, preservice teachers, teacher educators, and citizens as they navigate the ever-changing winds of gender and sexuality, particularly as they diverge and multiply along categories of race, religion, ethnicity, and class. This book offers hope and excitement for those of us looking for resources and arguments in support of advancing the project of social justice, particularly as it relates to gender and sexual equality, and working to inaugurate a future wherein education is able to thrive as a space for activism. Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality opens with a comprehensive introductory chapter discussing and analyzing the ways in which LGBTQ liberation rests upon and is implicated in other social justice issues. The text takes as its starting point a nuanced relationship with such social justice issues, beginning with a set of concerns, critiques, and questions often aimed at mainstream liberal assumptions about oppression and liberation. For instance, the opening chapter includes critiques of single-issue movements and arguments, single-identity category movements and arguments, antibullying platforms, militarization, criminalization, sex education, racism, and unity by rejecting the assumption that such issues are always inherently implicative of LGBTQ experiences and rights. In taking race, class, and ethnicity just as seriously in the attempt to articulate and understand such systems as it does sexuality and gender, the introduction also explores the ways such systems are influenced and related to each other and to the function

Philosophical Studies in Education, 2016

This paper interrogates education’s relationship to labor through a consideration of sex educatio... more This paper interrogates education’s relationship to labor through a consideration of sex education’s relationship to sexual labor. Beginning with a basic question—why does sex education exist as a federally funded project?—I examine sex education’s relationship to normativity and sexual labor throughout its history as a federally funded program. Doing so reveals at least three ways sex education has been and is connected to sexual labor: by its relationship to prostitution and the stigmatization of sex workers, particularly non-white, female sex workers; by promoting marriage, as itself a kind of sexual labor; and by reducing sexuality to a commodity, thus producing sexual workers and consumers. At stake, then, is the possibility of taking seriously the significance of sexual labor to the stories we tell about sex education, the stories sex education tells about human value, and the possibility of imagining a future of sex education that promotes more nuanced conversations about the...

Philosophy of Education Archive, 2018

Issues in Teacher Education, 2018

The category of the human has great import in adjudicating the aims of educational praxes, and is... more The category of the human has great import in adjudicating the aims of educational praxes, and is therefore central to all questions regarding the purpose of education. Such discussions have been exacerbated within the context of neoliberalism, wherein the subject of education is increasingly seen through capitalist lenses and market logics that become equated with ethical and epistemological systems. And in most cases, the question of humanization emerges as central to the task of disrupting this understanding of student subjectivity. This is exhibited in Educational Theory’s 2015 issue exploring the importance of humanity and the humanities in today’s context. Here, Chris Higgins writes that now is “one of those times” in which “it has become necessary to remind ourselves” of certain “basic facts,” namely the value of humanity to education (p. 116). Or, as Jason Wallin (2016) posits, “For what remains intimate to much contemporary education and educational research but the latent ...

Explores the relationship between sex education and sex work, with a focus on their shared relati... more Explores the relationship between sex education and sex work, with a focus on their shared relationship to violence.illustrato

Educational Theory, 2019

In this article, Caitlin Howlett offers a critical framework for understanding the limits of proh... more In this article, Caitlin Howlett offers a critical framework for understanding the limits of prohibitive and individually oriented sexual harassment policies in academia through a discussion of melodrama. Howlett draws on the work of Linda Williams, Emma Goldman, and Carole Vance in arguing that such sexual harassment policies participate in melodrama and thus fail to address the structural or institutional conditions that allow for sexual harassment. She then turns to the work of Sara Ahmed to examine what is at stake in this failure, before concluding that this understanding of sexual harassment policies points to their insufficiency and inadequacy within the academy.

Philosophical Studies in Education, 2017

Like so many people, my life is inundated with children. I have always had an affinity for childr... more Like so many people, my life is inundated with children. I have always had an affinity for children insofar as they appear to me to be much more inquisitive and open-minded than the average so-called adult, and thus I enjoy springing big ideas on them to see what emerges. For instance, I recently engaged in a twenty-minute-long conversation with a seven year old about capitalism. One certainly could question the way I began and framed the conversation, but, for the purpose of this paper, that matters less than the fact that I was able to sustain a seven year old in such a conversation for twenty minutes and, further, that I learned something myself in the process: that this particular first grader very deeply knows and feels the difference between finding an answer and being given the answer, between learning for the sake of learning and learning for the sake of being right, and, further, understands the sense of injustice that comes along with having educational possibilities limit...