Abstract
Of all the issues that students, parents, teachers, and
schools encounter, few are so difficult to manage as sexuality.
We persist in believing that the body does not belong in the
classroom except as an object of study or improvement.
Inappropriate body behaviour with a sexual edge intimidates us,
so much so that accounts tend to be oblique or non-existent.
Their scarcity makes particularly valuable a set of records that
survive from British Columbia in the late nineteenth century.
Even though public education was becoming centralized, a general
unwillingness to face up to issues of sexuality caused almost
all of the thirty allegations that were located in the
Superintendent of Education’s correspondence to be resolved at
the local level. The most frequent tactic was parental boycott
of the school. The allegations divide between those against
teachers and those against students. Regardless of who was
implicated, the teacher was almost always caught in the middle
and ended up resigning.
