![handle is hein.journals/bulron103 and id is 1 raw text is:
TITLE IX AND THE CHALLENGES OF
EDUCATING FOR EQUALITY
LINDA C. MCCLAIN*
Educating for equality to foster practicing equality must be a vital task for the
next fifty years of Title IX. It is also a task that fits into the mission and expertise
of schools as educational institutions. I use educating for equality as shorthand
for the role of schools in preparing children, adolescents, and college students to
participate in and build a world in which-to echo Title IX's 37 words that
changed everything'-No person in the United States, shall, on the basis of
sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected
to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal
financial assistance.2 While Title IX's mandate of participation and inclusion3
has a specific reach, educating for equality should aspire to reach more broadly
to prepare children, adolescents, and college students to practice equality-and
equity-in their daily lives. In describing this task as educating for equality, I
borrow from the recent Educating for American Democracy initiative, aimed
at educating young people to participate in and sustain our constitutional
democracy in order-in the language of the Constitution's Preamble-to make
our union more perfect.4 While that initiative seeks to foster reflective
patriotism and excellence in U.S. civics and history, its emphasis on
cultivating critical thinking and awareness of hard histories of inclusion and
exclusion and issues of agency, power, and oppression are pertinent also to
educating for equality aimed at fostering Title IX's goals.5
* Robert Kent Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law. Thanks to my
colleague Naomi Mann and to symposium editors Julie Antonellis and Prasanna Rajasekaran
for insightful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Thanks also to the other participants
in the online symposium for their valuable perspectives on the future of Title IX.
1 Steve Wulf, Title IX: 37 Words that Changed Everything, ESPN (Mar. 22, 2012),
https://www.espn.comespnw/title-ix/story/_/id/7722632/37-words-changed-everything
[https://perma.cc/LZ3J-BPMA].
2 Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681-88.
3 For an argument that Title IX has not been sufficiently inclusive and intersectional, see
Kelsey Scarlett & Lexi Weyrick, Transforming the Focus: An Intersectional Lens in School
Response to Sex Discrimination, 57 CAL. W. L. REV. 391 (2021).
4 EDUCATING FOR AM. DEMOCRACY INITIATIVE, EDUCATING FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY:
EXCELLENCE IN HISTORY AND CIVICS FOR ALL LEARNERS 1, 9, 25 (2021),
https://www.educatingforamericandemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Educating-
for-American-Democracy-Report-Excellence-in-History-and-Civics-for-All-Learners.pdf
[https://perma.cc/RB4Y-Z599].
5 Id. at 6, 17, 20-21, 26, 28-29.
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/bulron103&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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