Blog #6

Gender Diversity in the Classroom

I started by reading Beyond Title IX: Gender Equity Issues In Schools, this was a study done by the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center, and it was funded by the Department of Education. To summarize, boys are provided with more opportunities in the classroom than girls are. However, this is mostly de facto, “Title IX of The Education Amendments of 1972 mandates that schools not deny any student participation in any educational program or activity on the basis of sex.” This article brings up that girls, generally speaking, are still not enrolling in certain programs that have been deemed a “man’s field” by society; such as auto mechanics. So there is still the spilt, and what could this be blamed on, maybe on subliminal messages in the classroom on men’s and women’s roles. This reminds me of, Carlson, by way of normalizing girls into “male roles”, just take way the whole idea of roles. This could be anything from pictures in a book of a woman in the kitchen and a man in the garage; children will eventually grow accustomed to seeing that and assume that that’s the way it is supposed to be. Also I see a bit of Johnston in this, telling girls explicitly that they are able to handle an auto mechanics class, it could be that girls want to take these classes but they are just too nervous about being the only girl. This isn’t in America, but I want to bring it up because it is an interesting topic.

This next article I read is an issue in Turkey, where women have to choose between their female identity and their education. In Gender Equality and Islamic headscarves; written by Joan Wallach Scott, discusses the issue in Turkey about secularism versus an Islamic state. “When, in 2004, France outlawed the wearing of headscarves in public schools, for example, it was in the name of secularism and gender equality.” So, now, the issue is allow the headscarves and risk incorporating religion into the school system, or ban it and have women feel as though their right to choose is being stripped. So there is a choice here, I am thinking Collier fits here, change the topic from first language to first model and it’s the same story. Turkey needs to find the middle ground, the compromise where women can still honor their first ideas of who they are as women, and what they want to become within society.

“‘Across the world, assumptions about what is appropriate for boys and girls to learn can undermine equality in learning.’ Power is related to certain types of knowledge, Oxfam stresses, and assumptions that girls are not good at mathematics, for instance, can result in girls being channeled into "lower-status" subjects.” This quote is from Gender Equality in Schools written by Oxfam in December of 2005. I, honestly, can not I have see any gender discrimination in my own experience, however I am fully capable of believing that it is a prevalent problem. Assumptions have been made that girls are not as smart, or as able as boys for a variety of reasons, most probably stem from outdated stereotypes of women. Maybe from that girls do not need as much attention in schools because they are only going to grow to be housewives, which can only be described now as being ludicrous. 　

I don’t know if we were supposed to choose three different sources of information but I did. Lol. I feel as though I have already incorporated all I need to say above, so I am going to skip my conclusion this time.