Victorian Education Minister Bronwyn Pike launched the Safe Schools Coalition (SSCV) in October with much support from psychologists and gay support groups. To be delivered in partnership with Rainbow Network Victoria and the Foundation for Young Australians, its primary focus is to make educational environments safer for and more supportive of same-sex attracted and gender-questioning young people.
At first glance, it is a laudable initiative especially in light of Australian research showing that 74 percent of gay young people experience verbal and physical abuse at school.
The experience of homophobic bullying is made acute by the fact that young people are legally required to be at school until the age of seventeen years. They spend five days each week on campus for forty weeks of each year of their secondary school life. This is the fraught stage when they begin exploring and defining their identity, including their sexual identity.
When the setting of their unfurling is also the place of their nightmares, then something has gone horribly wrong. And something needs to be done.
So why has the response been largely lukewarm? Schools were called to become ‘founder members’ of the SSCV back in September? How is it possible that from over 1500 Victorian state schools, only eleven were officially part of the coalition when it was launched? More important, shouldn’t all schools be ‘gay friendly’ by default, anyway?
The reality is that education against homophobic bullying cannot be isolated from prevailing attitudes in the wider community. As with any social value that we hope to instil, children take their cues from adults, of whom their teachers are merely a subset.
The idea of an education-oriented advocacy to support gay young people is not new. The Washington-based Safe Schools Coalition has existedfor 20 years, and is part of a national network in the United States. Around 120 organisations are also dedicated there to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual rights. Yet, in the past few months there have been disturbing reports of a rise in violence against gays, even in liberal New York. In separate incidents, two young men committed suicide due to the pressures of being gay in their communities. Commentators draw links between these and recent developments such as the gay marriage debate, the right-wing politics of the Tea Party movement, and homophobic language used by high-profile Republican politicians.
Principals and teachers can keep gay young people safe at school only to the extent that