Gender and Education

Gender and Education
reflection

I think that gender has always been one of those “secret education” things. When you were little in movies you never saw a girl fire fighter or a girl mechanic, so those automatically became “boy jobs,” things like teachers and secretaries were always “girl jobs.” I think this changes a little as you grow up but there are always those big differences between the typical boy and girl things.

Regarding gender and education I found a lot of interesting articles. This article that I found really stuck out among the rest. I just want to pull out some interesting quotes that made me think about how gender bias schools are.

"Every time students are seated or lined up by gender, teachers are affirming that girls and boys should be treated differently.”

Think about it, how many times do we hear teachers say “boys in this line and girls in this line.” It happens all the time in my service learning project and although it’s a minor thing does it really affect gender roles and how we see them?

"The clear message to both boys and girls is that girls are not worthy of respect and that appropriate behavior for boys includes exerting power over girls -- or over other, weaker boys."

This quote was pertaining to a part of the article when its talks about boys being taunted for throwing like a girl, or crying like a girl, which implies that being a girl is worse than being a boy. I found this really hard to grasp but it is true that it does degrade girls. Some girls throw better than boys but society has kept maleness in such a state of power that we always see us as throwing worse or being weaker than the typical male. It is a good realization to come to and men should think about it before they say it.

I found this video on YouTube and although it is lengthy it mentions a lot of great points on why girls are excelling in school.

this chart popped up when i was searching for gender and education and it tells what schools get complaints for and the percent of each category



Last I found a website that lists what teachers can do to make sure they are not being gender bias in their classroom. I though this list was useful and hopefully we can all use it in our teaching careers. 

In class i would like to think of times when we have seen gender bias in effect.