Alexander Reading

According to Alexander, teachers and students of writing should consider sexuality in a networked classroom because it offers opportunities, information, and insight that may never be gathered otherwise. Throughout the article, Alexander keeps coming back to the same theme of opening student’s minds to see how culturally and socially conditioned their world is. Due to straight privilege (privilege defined here as something unasked for, not worked for, and often unknowingly receiving the benefits of) most students are unable to ever see the other side of their arguments and truly gain an understanding of how the marginalized group, in this case the LGBQT community, feel and go through everyday life. Teachers must take advantage of networked classrooms because they provide a voice for the marginalized, endless information for the curious, and community for the hopeless. Networked classrooms help to fight the ignorance surrounding sexuality, and tear down the walls hiding the way society has conditioned us to think.

Despite the fact that this piece was fantastic and terrifically powerful without an in-depth study, I can see the benefit of including one. Because homosexuality is unfortunately such a touchy topic, people feel the need to have concrete facts before they can rely on information. The excuses that people find to combat homosexuality are endless and astounding, and a case study or something of the sort would help to debunk some of these theories. An in-depth study could show the long term effects of having networked classrooms, possibly following some of the students and seeing if classrooms such as these actually do make an impact. And as I stated before, people are more likely to believe when presented with statistics. A study like Buck’s could also be valuable if one student, like Ronnie, was constantly followed and analyzed, revealing the inner-workings of the mind. People may identify with the subject followed and, as a result, come to terms with the idea of a culturally conditioned society more easily.