“They are just five-year-old boys”: Examining the role of childhood innocence in the early normalization of sexual violence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/mje/rsem.v58i2.10094Keywords:
childhood innocence, kindergarten education, gender, sexuality, sexual violenceAbstract
The purpose of this article is to examine how the discourse of childhood innocence masks the ways in which sexual violence by boys against girls is perpetrated in kindergarten. Findings from a year-long ethnographic study conducted in two Canadian kindergarten classrooms show that narrow understandings of gender and sexuality in childhood obscure schools’ responses to problematic gendered behaviors enacted by certain boys. The author contends that in failing to attend to gender and sexuality with young children, kindergarten education may contribute profoundly to the early normalization of sexual violence. The article concludes with a discussion on the role that kindergarten education can play in countering sexual violence inside and outside of schools.
References
Alanen, L. (1998). Children and the family order: Constraints and competencies. In I.Hutchby & J.
Alloway, N. (1995). Eight’s too late: Early childhood education and gender reform. Unicorn,21(4), 19–27.
Ariès, P. (1962). Centuries of childhood. Jonathan Cape. Badaszewski, P. D. (2014). Beyond the binary: How college men construct positive masculinity. (Publication No. 9949332852202959). [Doctoral dissertation, University of Georgia].
Proquest.
Banse, R., Gawronski, B., Rebetez, C., Gutt, H., & Morton, J. B. (2010). The development of spontaneous gender stereotyping in childhood: Relations to stereotype knowledge and stereotype flexibility. Developmental Science, 13(2), 298– 306.
Bhana, D. (2003). Children are children: Gender doesn’t matter. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 56, 37–45.
Bhana, D. (2009). “They’ve got all the knowledge”: HIV education, gender and sexuality in South African primary schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(2), 165–177.
Bhana, D. (2007). The price of innocence: Teachers, gender, childhood sexuality, HIV and AIDS in early schooling. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(4), 431–444.
Bhana, D. (2013). Gender violence in and around schools: Time to get to zero. African Safety Promotional Journal, 11(2), 38-47.
Bialystok, L. (2019). Ontario teachers’ perceptions of the controversial update to sexual health and human development. Canadian Journal of Education, 42(1), 1–41.
Blaise, M. (2005). Playing it straight: Uncovering gender discourses in the early childhood classroom. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Blaise, M., Rooney, T., & Pollitt, J. (2019). Weather wanderings. Journal of Public Pedagogies, 4, 166-170.
Buch, E.D. & Staller, K.M. (2007). The feminist practice of ethnography. In S.N. Hesse-Biber & P.L Leavy (Eds.), Feminist research practice: A primer (pp. 187–222). Sage Publications.
Burman, E. (2017). Deconstructing developmental psychology (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Cannella, G.S. (1997). Deconstructing early childhood education: Social justice and revolution. Peter Lang Publishing.
Carlson, D. (2014). The bully curriculum: Gender, sexualities, and the new authoritarian populism in education. In E. J. Meyer & D. Carlson (Eds.), Gender and sexualities in education: A reader (pp. 175-187). Peter Lang.
Connell, R.W. (1995). Masculinities. Allen & Unwin.
Connell, R.W. (2005). Growing up masculine: Rethinking the significance of adolescence in the making of masculinities. Irish Journal of Sociology, 14(2), 11–28.
Connell, R. W. & Pearse, R. (2015). Gender: In world perspective (3rd ed.). Polity Press.
Christensen, P. H. (2004) Children's participation in ethnographic research: issues of power and representation. Children and Society, 18(2), 165–76.
Dartnall, E. & Jewkes, R. (2013). Sexual violence against women: The scope of the problem. Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 27(2013), 3–13. Unwin Pty Ltd.
Deveau, J.L. (2009). Examining the institutional ethnographer’s toolkit. Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies, 1–19.
Dyer, H. (2017). Queer futurity and childhood innocence: Beyond the injury of development. Global Studies of Childhood, 7(3), 290-302.
Epstein, R., Blake, J.J., & González, T. (2017). Girl interrupted: The erasure of black girls’ childhood. The Georgetown Law Centre on Poverty and Inequality. https://genderjusticeandopportunity.georgetown.edu/wpcontent/ uploads/2020/06/girlhood-interrupted.pdf
Epstein, D. & Johnson, R. (1998). Schooling sexualities. Open University Press.
Farmer, D. & Cepin, J. (2015). Creative visual methods in research with children and young people. In R. Evans & L. Holt (Eds.), Methodological approaches: Geographies of children and young people 2 (pp. 1–31). Springer Singapore.
Flood, M. (2007). Why violence against women and girls happens, and how to prevent it. Redress, 16(2), 13–19.
Forber-Pratt, A. J., & Espelage, D. L. (2018). Sexual violence in K-12 settings. In H. Shapiro (Ed.), The Wiley handbook on violence in education: Forms, factors, and preventions (pp. 375–392). John Wiley & Sons.
Gabriel, N. (2014). Growing up beside you: A relational sociology of early childhood. History of the Human Sciences, 27(3), 116-135.
Garlen, J.C. (2019). Interrogating innocence: “Childhood” as exclusionary social practice. Childhood, 26(1), 56-67.
Giroux, H. A. (1998). Stealing innocence: The politics of child beauty pageants. In H. Jenkins (Ed.), The children’s culture reader (pp. 265-282). New York University Press.
Harding, D. (2004). Introduction: Standpoint theory as a site of political, philosophic, and scientific debate. In S. Harding (Ed.), The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies (pp. 1–16). Routledge.
Heslop, J., Parkes, J., Januario, F., Sabba, S., Oando, S. & Hess, T. (2015). Sexuality, sexual norms and schooling: Choice-coercion dilemmas. In J. Parkes (Ed.), Gender violence in poverty contexts: The educational challenge (pp. 135–150). Routledge.
Hird, M. & Jackson, S. (2001). Where ‘angels’ and ‘wusses’ fear to tread: Sexual coercion inadolescent dating relationships. Journal of Sociology, 37(1), 27–43.
Huuki, T. & Renold, E. (2016). Crush: Mapping historical, material and affective force relations in young children’s hetero-sexual playground play. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(5), 754–769.
Jere, C.M. (2015). School-related gender-based violence is preventing the achievement of quality education for all. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232107
Kimmel, M.S. (1997). Masculinity as homophobia: Fear, shame, and silence in the construction of gender identity. In M.M Gergen & S.N. Davis (Eds.), Toward a new psychology of gender (pp. 223–242). Routledge.
Kupers, T.A. (2005). Toxic masculinity as a barrier to mental health treatment in prison. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(6), 713–724.
Leach, F., Dunne, M. & Salvi, F. (2014). School-related gender-based violence: A global review of current issues and approaches in policy, programming and implementation responses to school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) for the education sector. Retrieved from https://healtheducationresources.unesco.org/sites/default/files/resources/schoolrelatedge
nderbasedviolenceunescoglobalreviewjan2014.pdf
Leach, F. (2015). Research gender violence in schools in poverty contexts: Conceptual and methodological challenges. In J. Parkes (Ed.), Gender violence in poverty contexts: The educational challenge (pp. 30–48). Routledge.
Leach, F. & Mitchell, C. (2006). Situating the study of gender violence in and around schools. (pp. 3-12). Trentham Books.
Leavy, P. & Harris, A. (2019). Contemporary feminist research from theory to practice. The Guilford Press.
Lee, N. (2001). Childhood and society. Open University Press. Ontario Ministry of Education. (2016). The kindergarten program. Retrieved from https://files.ontario.ca/books/kindergarten-program-en.pdf
MacNaughton, G. (2000). Rethinking gender in early childhood education. Paul Champlain Publishing Ltd.
MacNaughton, G. (2006). Constructing gender in early-years education. In C. Skelton, B. Francis & L. Smulyan (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of gender and education (pp. 127-138). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Mayall, B. (2002). Towards a sociology for childhood: Thinking from children’s lives. Open University Press.
Meyer, E.J. (2008). Gendered harassment in secondary schools: Understanding teachers’ (non) interventions. Gender and Education 20(6), 555–570.
Meyer, E.J. (2009). Gender, bullying, and harassment: Strategies to end sexism and homophobia in schools. Teachers College Press.
Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS). (2021). Sexual violence. Available at: https://www.ontario.ca/page/sexual-violence (accessed 14 June 2021).
Moma, A.K. (2015). Informing school-led intervention and prevention of sexual violence against girls at school: Voices from the school playground. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 29(3), 42–52.
Mukherji, P., & Albon, D. (2010). Research methods in early childhood: An introductory guide. Sage.
Osgood, J. & Robinson, K. (2017). Celebrating pioneering and contemporary feminist approaches to studying gender in early childhood. In K. Smith, K. Alexander & S. Campbell (Eds.), Feminism(s) in early childhood: Using feminist theories in research and practice (pp. 35–47). Springer Singapore.
Pain, R. (1991). Space, sexual violence and social control: Integrating geographical and feminist analyses of women’s fear of crime. Progress in Human Geography, 15(4), 415–431.
Pinheiro, P.S. (2006). World report on violence against children. United Nations Secretary General's Study on Violence against Children.
Prioletta, J. (2020a). Patriarchy in the preschool classroom: Examining the effects of developmental ideologies on teachers’ perspectives and practices around play and gender. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 21(3), 242–252.
Prioletta, J. (2020b). Unmasking the institutionalization of gender-based violence in Ontario’s kindergarten education program: The hidden effects of play-based learning (Doctoral dissertation). University of Toronto, OISE, Toronto, ON.
Prout, A., & James, A. (1997) A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems. In A. James & A. Prout (Eds.), Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood (2nd ed.) (pp. 7-32). Falmer.
Renold, E. (2002). Presumed innocence: (Hetero)sexual, heterosexist and homophobic harassment among primary school girls and boys. Childhood, 9, 415–434.
Ringrose, J. & Renold, E. (2010). Normative cruelties and gender deviants: The performative effects of bully discourses for girls and boys in school. British Educational Research Journal, 36(4), 573–596.
Riordan, S. (1999). Indecent exposure: The impact upon the victim’s fear of sexual crime. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 10(2), 309–316.
Robinson, K.H. (2013). Innocence, knowledge and the construction of childhood: The contradictory nature of sexuality and censorship in children’s contemporary lives. Routledge.
Robinson, K.H., & Davies, C. (2017). Sexuality education in early childhood. In L. Allen & M.L. Santos, M.J., Mascarenhas, M.D.M., Malta, D.C. & da Silva, M.M.A. (2019). Prevalence of sexual violence and associated factors among primary school students – Brazil, 2015. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 24(2), 535–544.
Shakeshaft, C. (2002). Sexual violence in schools. In J. Koch & B. Irby (Eds.), Defining and redefining gender equity in education (pp. 117-132). Information Age Publishing.
Smith, D.E. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Northeastern University Press.
Smith, D.E. (2006). Institutional ethnography as practice. Rowman & Littlefield.
Taylor, C., Singh, A., & Common, D. (2019, November 8). More than 1 in 7 girls say they were sexually assaulted by another student—but schools lack policies to help. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-school-violence-sexual-violence-1.5329520
Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. Rutgers University Press.
Tolman, D., Spencer, R., Rosen-Reynoso, M. & Porche, M. (2003). Sowing the seeds of violencein heterosexual relationships: Early adolescents narrate compulsory heterosexuality. Journal of Social Issues, 59(1), 159–178. Trent University. (nd). Sexual violence. Available at: https://www.trentu.ca/sexualviolence/ (accessed 16 June 2021). UNAIDS. (2004). Executive summary: 2004 report on the global AIDS epidemic. UNAIDS United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO). (2016a). Global guidance on addressing school-related gender-based violence. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO). (2016b). Out in the open: Education sector responses to violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. University of Ottawa. (nd). Sexual violence: Support and prevention. Available at:
https://www.uottawa.ca/sexual-violence-support-and-prevention/definitions (accessed 16 June 2021).
Van Ausdale, D., & Feagin, J.R. (2001). The first R: How children learn race and racism. Rowman and Littlefield.
Walkerdine, V. (1990). Schoolgirl fictions. Verso. Warin, J., & Adriany, V. (2017). Gender flexible pedagogy in early childhood education.
Journal of Gender Studies, 26(4), 375-386.
Warin, J., & Price, D. (2020). Transgender awareness in early years education (EYE): ‘we haven’t got any of those here’. Early Years, 40(1), 140-154. West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1(2), 125-151.
World Health Organization (WHO). (2002). Sexual violence. World report on violence and health (pp. 147–18).
Wyness, M.G. (2019). Childhood and society – An introduction to the sociology of childhood (3rd ed). Palgrave Macmillan.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 McGill Journal of Education / Revue des sciences de l'éducation de McGill
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Those wishing to reproduce all or part of any material published on this website are asked to email mje.education@mcgill.ca for permission and to acknowledge the McGill Journal of Education as the original source.
Authors must transfer copyright of their article to MJE. Authors may use all or parts of their work in any future publication with the article's origin in MJE acknowledged in the customary manner.
A copy of our standard form may be requested from mje.education@mcgill.ca
