Education Week - February 7, 2018 - 17

#MeToo Movement Raises New Questions for Schools
Kate Rohdenburg, right,
is the program director
at WISE, a group that
combats gender-based
violence through
advocacy, prevention,
and education, and
Chelsea Williams heads
up the group's education
and prevention efforts.
WISE works with 10
school districts in New
Hampshire and Vermont.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

girls (and, in some cases, boys, too)
have experienced gender-based
harassment. Given the amount
of time children spend in them,
schools are also the most logical
places to teach young people how
to recognize harassment-and how
to avoid perpetuating it.
Now women are calling the question: Can the #MeToo movement,
which has brought widespread attention to harassment in the boardroom, behind restaurant kitchen
doors, and on the sports field, do the
same for schools?

After all, schools are where boys
and girls receive the bulk of their
socialization about gender roles-
and where many of the norms underpinning male-female relationships crystallize. That includes
some harmful ones-such as the
advice given to girls that being
pestered by a boy really just means
he's enamored, and to submit to it
good-humoredly.
Fewer than half the states require
schools to include the topic of "avoiding coercion" as part of a sex ed. program and similarly, a majority don't
require discussion of healthy relationships, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy group that tracks
reproductive rights globally.
And even high-quality programs
that do include those topics are frequently limited in duration.
"It seems much more the norm that
they are doing one session, or one
point of contact. Multi-session, multiple opportunities for interaction is
less common," said Kate Rohdenburg,
the program director for WISE, which
provides crisis-response support and
also works with 10 school districts in
Vermont and New Hampshire on programs across the grades to prevent
gender-based violence.
All of that means that many, if not
most, schools have gaps in what they
teach about harassment. And what
students don't learn about relationships and ways to interact can be filled
in with other substitutes: anecdote,
rumor, social media, or pornography.
"There are very few schools I come
across that are doing anything on
this subject whatsoever, whether
it's talking about consent as a general concept, or practically, what the
tools look like to practice consent,"
said Tahir Anderson Duckett, the executive director of ReThink, a group
working with teachers to prevent
sexual violence. "It's so valuable for
schools to start focusing on this kind
of stuff because it's really a vacuum.
And when you look at what information is going to fill that vacuum, you
should get uneasy really quickly."
At the very least, #MeToo has
unleashed a torrent of examples
of sexual harassment of school-age
children: Hundreds of students are
now sharing their stories under
that hashtag and a companion,
#MeTooK12, which was begun by
Stop Sexual Assault in Schools.
The nonprofit focuses on drawing
attention to schools' responsibil-

Caleb Kenna for Education Week

A 'Vacuum'

ity under Title IX, a federal law to
protect against gender discrimination, including sexual violence and
bullying.
More broadly than their legal responsibilities, though, advocates are
trying to highlight schools' potential
to help students recognize what harassment looks like, how to stop it
from happening, and how to avoid
becoming perpetrators. One key
place: a sex education curriculum
that includes units on healthy relationships-not solely on biology, prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted infections, or pregnancy.
"I think it's pretty basic: How we
treat each other matters. If and
when people are ready to explore
sexuality with someone else, it needs
to be legal, safe, and pleasurable for
both people," said Shafia Zaloom, a
San Francisco-based health educator
who works with public and private
schools. "Kids need to understand the
fundamentals of human decency are
essential to every sexual encounter.
"The big aspect of #MeToo as a
sex educator, in many ways, is that
it validates the importance of what
those of us who are teaching classes
like this are trying to do," she said.

Teaching About Consent
Generally, these advocates say,
training on the nuances of consent
can start in early grades and still
be appropriate: Very young children
understand such concepts as body
autonomy.
That's not to say it's a breeze-telling kids that they don't have to hug
grandma if they don't want to can
run counter to years of parental expectations-but the advocates say
that avoiding topics such as consent
can have catastrophic effects down
the road.
"If we tell kids they're too young
to talk about this, we're reinforcing
the idea that they need to keep their
mouths shut, that this is too big or
too dangerous to ask for help," said
Rohdenburg.

Several groups, too, are taking a
critical look at the norms that are
typically glossed over when schools
talk about relationships, but underpin much of what happens in them:
the stereotype, for example, that
men are supposed to be aggressors
and women sexual gatekeepers.
ReThink, Duckett's organization,
emphasizes adults' role in challenging the messages that boys learn as
adolescents about masculinity. One
of its core ideas is that, by the examples they set, teachers are among
the most important players in terms
of preventing future sexual violence.
"I don't think they've thought of
themselves as being the key force
here, but ... what's happening in
those school walls is a big part of
what kids are learning is normal,"
Duckett said. "Is it OK for me to
touch somebody without their consent? Is it OK for someone to use
violent language about women? Is
it OK for me to make a remark or
say something about how girls act,
or how boys act in relationships?
"If a student does something that
violates [such a tenet], a teacher, by
interrupting it, makes it no longer
normal. And I think that's so important," he said.
Educators, even those like Copeland who aren't health or sex-ed.
teachers, say they've done so partly
out of necessity. Too many girls have
come to her with troubling questions
about how TV figures, peers, and politicians have talked about women.
And so she has spent several of
her assemblies helping her female
students think about how aspects
of gender and behavior are socially
constructed, especially by the media.
Why, for example, do the most
popular Google searches that contain the word "girls" result in images of women in various stages of
undress? Why do TV shows often
show women in catty rivalries with
one another? Why are women "period shamed" and taught to use
coded words for menstruation?
"How gender norms developed

and why they developed the way
they have-I think that would get
us in a better place in 8th grade,
when the power dynamics are really
becoming very evident in relationships," Copeland said.

The Long View
On the policy front, some point to
encouraging signs.
Even before the Harvey Weinstein
story blew open, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the
United States, which advocates for
comprehensive sex education across
grade levels, noticed a trend of more
states introducing bills that would
require coverage of violence prevention or consent in sex ed. While probably partly linked to the fallout from
high-profile incidents within higher
education, it shows that there's increasingly a recognition that consent
needs to be addressed long before
students move into their first dorm
rooms, said Chitra Panjabi, the president and CEO of SIECUS.
"We're in a point in time where
this movement can be a catalyst for
folks to recognize that we need to

push our sexuality education policies further," said Panjabi. "We have
these tools; let's advocate for them
to go into schools."
SIECUS has begun its own campaign, called #teachthem, and developed a toolkit for educators to
lobby on behalf of policies that support comprehensive sex education.
Currently, California alone requires
schools to discuss the topic of "affirmative consent" in sex ed., while
Virginia allows but does not mandate it.
Legislation supporting the teaching of consent have been introduced
in states such as Maryland, Michigan, and Rhode Island, but have not
yet become law.
Bright spots aside, the advocates
believe there is still much work to
be done.
"I'm not certain that schools have
gotten around to responding to
#MeToo yet," Duckett said. "I think
that they will; I think that they have
to. But all these institutions move
slowly."
Correspondent Lisa Stark contributed to
this report.

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