Power in the Classroom: Questioning the Heterosexual Norm in Italian Gender Education

Abstract

This thesis analyses how in Italy in the first months of 2014 the introduction of a series of pedagogical programs aimed at sensitizing children on gender and sexuality has resulted in a rapidly growing body of discourses that, both explicitly and implicitly, aim at maintaining the heterosexual norm. By deconstructing the Italian debate on education, this thesis demonstrates how the students’ identity within the institution of the school is constantly monitored and regulated through normative discourses on gender and sexuality. It then reflects on the potential and duty of the school in fighting gender and sexual inequalities. In doing so, this thesis proposes a pedagogy that argues for a teaching of critical and reflexive understandings of social discrimination as crucial in aiming to overcome them, both within and outside the school system.