Making a Place for Pleasure in Early Childhood Education

265 Pages·1997·10.046 MB·English

by  Joseph J. Tobin

Making a Place for Pleasure in
Early Childhood Education
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Making a Place for Pleasure in
Early Childhood Education
EDITED BY JOSEPH TOBIN
Yale University Press New Haven and London
Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of
Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College.
Copyright © 1997 by Joseph J. Tobin.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections
107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public
press), without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Sonia Scanlon and set in Berkeley type
by Keystone Typesetting, Inc., Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania.
Printed in the United States of America
by Edwards Brothers, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Making a place for pleasure in early childhood education / edited by
Joseph Tobin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-06968-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Early childhood education—Social aspects—United States.
2. Teacher-student relationships—United States. 3. Child
development—United States. 4. Sex (Psychology). 5. Pleasure—Moral
and ethical apsects—United States. 6. Child psychology—United
States. 7. Early childhood education—Moral and ethical apsects—
United States. I. Tobin, Joseph Jay.
LB1139.25.M36 1997 96-41890
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Contents
Introduction
The Missing Discourse of Pleasure and Desire 1
JOSEPH TOBIN
1
Civilizing Bodies
Children in Day Care 39
ROBIN L. LEAVITT AND MARTHA BAUMAN POWER
2
Classroom Management
and the Erasure of Teacher Desire 76
ANNE M. PHELAN
3
The "No Touch" Policy 101
RICHARD JOHNSON
4
Playing Doctor in Two Cultures
The United States and Ireland 119
JOSEPH TOBIN
5
Carnival in the Classroom
Elementary Students Making Videos 159
DONNA J. GRACE AND JOSEPH TOBIN
6
Sexist and Heterosexist Responses
to Gender Bending 188
GAIL BOLDT
Contents vi
7
The Pervert in the Classroom 214
JONATHAN G. SILIN
8
Keeping It Quiet
Gay Teachers in the Primary Grades 235
JAMES R. KING
List of Contributors 251
Index 253
Making a Place for Pleasure in
Early Childhood Education
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INTRODUCTION
The Missing Discourse of Pleasure
and Desire
Joseph Tobin
On a preschool playground, a four-year-old girl chases
boys, kissing them when she catches them.
Enjoying a quiet moment with a student at the end of the
day, a teacher's aide in a day care center holds a three-year-
old girl on his lap as he reads her a story.
During a class discussion, several third-graders comment
that one of their classmates seems more like a girl than a
boy because he always likes to "do girl things."
The staff of a child center run by a university discuss how a
gay teacher should respond to children's questions about
why he's not married.
Told by their teacher to come up with a script for a video, a
group of second-graders settle on a story that features alien
creatures who, after falling down on their hot planet, get "hot
butts" which they soothe by sitting in buckets of ice water.
Those of us who work with young children lament that if we lived
in a different, better world, incidents like these would be routine
and hardly worth mentioning. But working as we do in the world
of early childhood education in the United States in the 1990s, we
know that any event suggestive of sexuality is problematic and
even potentially dangerous.