EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION
Apparently, we do.
Although one could argue – and I am – that it isn’t really an encyclopedia at all, at least not in the traditional definition of the word and words should have definitive meanings.
The new “Sage Encyclopedia on Education and Gender” was issued by a well-known academic publisher of the same name. According to the description, it’s “a timely and expansive two-volume reference work that addresses the urgent need for a comprehensive, inclusive resource on gender in educational contexts worldwide.”
An encyclopedia is supposed to be an objective, comprehensive reference work — a compilation of facts summarized and listed in easy-to-access alphabetical order.
But this one, perhaps unsurprising to anyone who reads The College Fix regularly, reads like an activist tool instead.
Consider, for example, the entry on “Queer Trans Pedagogies.”
An online summary of the section concludes with “a reflection on what the current assault of the far right’s weaponization of anti-LGBT hate and white supremacist rhetoric (emphasis mine) means for enacting trans and queer pedagogies specifically in light of what has been termed neofascist lawfare, which amounts to denying the existence and livability of trans and queer people.”
The introduction also makes the politicization of the resource clear by highlighting an entry about “Indigeneity and Gender.”
The entry “describ[es] how formal schooling has intertwined with colonialist and assimilationist policies in North America, including the histories of Indian boarding schools.”
To “repair” this “violence,” the entry tells readers to look to “Indigenous feminist approaches” as “new ways of seeing current school policies and practices and suggest pathways for taking up Indigenous knowledge in schools.”
Other entries include “Asian Girlhoods,” “Restorative Practices,” “Evolving Gendered Lenses in Education Discourse,” “Microaggressions,” and something called “Motherscholar” – a term that “refers to the dual nature of being both mother and scholar in higher education.”
Motherscholar was “initially conceptualized, acknowledging the systems of heteropatriarchy and white supremacy within academic institutions, because normativities of cis-gendered white male identity were centered while pushing out other identities like being a woman, mother, and Faculty of Color,” the entry states.
The City University of New York’s Graduate Center recently touted the new reference work on its website, alongside a long paragraph full of the names of its professors who contributed to the project. (Remember, this is a taxpayer-funded, public university.)
CUNY Professor Sherry Deckman, one of the lead editors, had this to say about it:
“This encyclopedia comes at a time when matters related to gender and education are increasingly fraught and urgent in the United States and globally and is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to understand how gender shapes educational experiences and outcomes — from the classroom to national policy.”
CUNY Professor Wendy Luttrell, who wrote the essay “Feminist Methodologies” for the “encyclopedia,” believes her piece “reflects a central aim of the encyclopedia: to show that gender is not a single issue, but a lens for understanding power, experience, and inequality in education.”
I know it’s trite to quote a dictionary, but from Merriam-Webster:
encyclopedia, noun: a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject
Etymology: Medieval Latin encyclopaedia course of general education, from Greek enkyklios + paideia education, child rearing, from paid-, pais child
Maybe it shouldn’t be trite anymore. We’ve lost hold of the meaning of so many words.
This new publication on gender could accurately be called a reference work for activists and scholars who teach with an ideological agenda. But an “encyclopedia”? a comprehensive work on “a particular branch of knowledge”? I didn’t see a section on detransitioners, or anything attempting to accurately describe alternative views on gender issues, especially those in politically conservative and moderate circles.
So, let’s call it what it is, a reference tool for progressive gender activists, and leave it at that.
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