ARE WE FREE? POLITICAL ARCHITECTURE OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN EDUCATION

Abstract

The chapter explores the pivotal issue of freedom in relation to educational systems framed by gender and sexuality studies, contending that modern teaching and curriculum design serve more as elaborate forms of political conditioning than of liberation. Utilising critical theoretical perspectives from Foucault, Althusser, Freire, and Butler, this study exposes how educational institutions act as disciplinary systems that enforce the production of compliant, gendered individuals through surveillance, normalisation, and ideological interpellation. The chapter shows how masquerading as educational freedom is a covertly structured system of political domination that sustains heteronormative gender orders. By investigating the banking model of education, defined disciplinary techniques, and the clandestine syllabus, the study argues that schools serve as centres for political conditioning that manufacture consent to reproduce entrenched power dynamics. The argument posits challenges to the liberal assumption of freedom within education, revealing a layered framework of power designed to shape individuals within pre-defined political and gendered narratives while systematically excluding and normalising gender and sexual diversity.