Lot to Learn Girls, Women and Education in the 20th Century

Using sources from women's history, women's studies, and critical social theory, Dr. Lenskyj situates two stories - her own and that of her mother - within the broader Australian socio-cultural context from 1900 to 1960. She presents the background for her mother's narrative, beginning in 1832 when her grandfather arrived in Sydney, Australia, as a convict. She then examines her own experience as a working-class child attending a private school in the 1950s. Moving to Toronto, the story continues by documenting the interventions of mothers involved in school-community activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Reflecting on her experiences since 1986 as an openly lesbian professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Dr. Lenskyj includes a critical analysis of lesbian and gay activism aimed at educational change, and of developments in feminist pedagogy in the last two decades.