Education in disguise: sanctioning sexuality in elementary school Halloween celebrations

Abstract

Halloween as celebrated in US elementary schools provides a rare opportunity to explore the more tangible manifestations of sexuality. A time of celebration, Halloween is perceived as a festive event for children, being both ‘innocent’ and fun. Yet, because it is the one school day where sexuality is on display, sexuality becomes a spectacle. Drawing on ethnographic data collected over the 2010–2011 school year at Unity Elementary School, a San Francisco Bay Area school with majority immigrant students from Latin America, this paper focuses specifically on the ways in which elementary schools express forces of a consumer market that capitalises on the sexualisation of children on Halloween, most particularly that of girls. It illustrates the ways in which teachers make sense of these forces when they are written on the bodies of their Latino elementary school students. Findings reveal how these elementary school Halloween celebrations bring to light entanglements and articulations of sexuality, gender, race and class in a culture that creates and exploits children's desires.