It has been more than a decade since homosexuality was decriminalized and de-classified as a disease in China, but there still exists widespread misunderstanding and social bias against Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender people. Their equal rights to quality education and social services are yet to be normalized and mainstreamed in policies.
In particular, with sexuality education being implemented in China in a rather haphazard way, talking about sexual orientation and gender identity remains at a very primitive stage in the education system and is nearly non-existing in primary and middle school education.
This year’s International Day against Homophobia (IDAHO) commemoration in China on 17 May was marked by a series of events, one of which is the training workshop jointly organized by UNESCO and its NGO partners, Beijing LGBT Centre and Gender Health Education Institute.
The one and half day workshop that took place on 9 and 10 May consists of a half-day strategy discussion on Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) education and a full-day Training of Trainers workshop for both formal and non-formal LGBT educators.
A total of 25 people attended the workshop, including NGO professionals and volunteers, university students and teachers, school counselors and representatives from other UN agencies. Peter Dankemeijer, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for LGBT Education (GALE), was invited to facilitate the workshop.
The strategy workshop discussed the current stage of the LGBT agenda in China and possible strategies that could be adopted to integrate LGBT education into the country’s education system.
The participants were quite inspired by a tentative description of three possible phases a State can be in: a denying, ambiguous or supportive phase. The group analyzed that China was somewhere in the early stage of the ambiguous phase, with LGBT NGOs being the key driver for LGBT education and advocacy while the government remainlargely reticent on the issue.
As in many parts of the world, the LGBT issue was first discussed in China through the entry point of HIV and AIDS. Obviously, the issue goes beyond public health and is very much about respects for human rights and sexual and gender diversity.
Nevertheless, as discussed at the workshop, opportunities exist at both the national and school level for LGBT organizations and educators to mainstream the topic into policies and practices.
These include documenting credible evidence to inform legislation and policy making, finding the common ground with the government to popularizediversity education and leveraging on LGBT advocacy efforts in the international arena.
For example, Common Language conducted a research on family violence against lesbians to feed into the legislation campaign on anti-domestic violence law spearheaded by the China Anti-Domestic Violence Network of the China Law Society. In the national health education programme for primary and middle school students, inter-personal skills are highlighted as an important element for students at different age levels. This certainly provides opportunities for educators to talk about anti-homophobic bullying and respect and tolerance for sexual and gender diversity and push for anti-bullying and anti-discrimination school policies. Many participants also recognized the importance of collecting and presenting evidence and using languages that are in harmony with the government priorities and policies when conducting LGBT education.
Over the past decade, LGBT NGOs have conducted considerable awareness raising activities at tertiary education level, through peer education and cooperation with student groups and enlightened university teachers. Moreover, they are increasingly realizing the importance of providing LGBT education to students at a younger age. According to Aibai Culture & Education Centre who conducted the first online survey on homophobic bullying in China, the majority of the survey respondents tend to experience homophobic bullying at middle schools. Based on UNESCO’s experience and observation, it is also obvious that sexual and gender diversity issues are considered some of the most difficult teaching topics for teachers especially middle school teachers.
“The topic of sexual and gender diversity is now part of our programme and was quite well received in my class, but my students do anticipate the challenges they would face when they later have to teach this topic as primary or middle school teachers after graduation”, said Prof. Zhang Meimei from Capital Normal University who opened the first sexuality education course in her university to prepare future teachers. She commented that the lesson plans addressing homophobic bullying developed by UNESCO were very useful materials for her students.
UNESCO has been supporting university teachers to integrate sexual and gender diversity into their sexuality education curriculum, and encouraging their link-up with LGBT NGOs as important resources when teaching sexual and gender diversity. As far as we know, some teachers are already inviting LGBT activists to their classrooms as resource persons. However, formal and non-formal educators still find various hurdles in conducting LGBT education activities at different levels, especially when reaching out to younger students. Apart from deep-rooted social bias and political sensitivity of the issue, they also recognize the need to sharpen their communication skills in delivering such a sensitive topic.
A full day Training of Trainers workshop was thus devoted to addressing the skills gap among both formal and non-formal LGBT educators. The workshop started with an engaging simulation exercise using some common questions around the dimensions of sexual orientation, gender identity, openness and lifestyles. This was followed by a discussion around social norms and how they affected people’s attitudes and behavior in relation to sexual and gender identity. The participants discussed two common reactions, fight or flight, among both students and teachers to this sensitive topic, and explored how to break this dichotomy response by using personal stories to arouse interest and curiosity among learners with feelings that they can identify with, before entering the topic of sexual and gender diversity and discussing personal reflections on how to respond to it.
The participants were most interested in learning about the various teaching techniques such as using personal stories for sensitization and various discussion techniques (such as in-depth questioning, mirroring, guided discussion, dialogue, debate, 'degaying’). More advanced techniques such as role plays, games and dramas were also introduced though there was limited time for practicing.
“I found the discussion techniques such as mirroring and ‘degaying’ very clever and useful when applied properly. I am going to introduce these techniques in our teacher training activities”, said Yue Hu, who is part of the sexuality education project team at Beijing Normal University and has been working on a comprehensive sexuality education programme targeting migrant school students.
Both the strategy discussion session and Training of Trainers workshop were well received by the participants. As agreed by all participants at the workshop, under the current situation, more social support can be gained if the goal of LGBT education was clearly defined as to ensure the LGBT population are accepted and respected as equal members of the society by broadening, instead of breaking, the social norms. To reach that goal, both formal and non-formal educators have an important role to play.
“The workshop broadened my view with a lot of experience and skills sharing by the facilitator and among the participants. It gave me new inspirations about what to do next and helped me fine-tune my action plan”, said Maky Yang from Aibai Culture & Education Centre.
The workshop contributed to the strengthening of the LGBT educators by providing the opportunity for participants to discussthe LGBT situation in China and possible education strategies, while at the same time, honing their training and communication skills.
The road lies ahead for UNESCO to work collaboratively and creatively with the community to realize the right to qualityeducation for every learner despite their sexual orientation and gender identity.
By Hongyan Li, UNESCO Beijing Office (l.hongyan@unesco.org)
Source: UNESCO Beijing Office
