Gender in Education

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/genderbias.html

This article gives some good points that I havent noticed. I found it to be informative toward gender roles in education. One qoute i found interesting was:

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

This makes you think, because practically every teacher does this. I thought of my class for service learning and theres only 5 girls in the class so theres a long line of like 15 boys and a short line of 5 girls. It really makes no sense to me why the teacher seprates them but i think its one of those things you never seem to think about. This teaches children at a young age how much female and male differ.

"Boys are taunted for throwing like a girl, or crying like a girl, which implies that being a girl is worse than being a boy."

This is something said practically all the time. It just like how guys dont like losing to girls. Theres some girls who are extremely athletic and could be a good competition to a guy, but if the guy lost it would be the end of the world because the fact that "they lost to a girl." This is a prime example of how men see women as unathletic and that sports are more for men then women.

"Sitting in the same classroom, reading the same textbook, listening to the same teacher, boys and girls receive very different educations."

This was the introduction sentence to the article. I found myself contiueously rereading this sentence. It truely makes you realise that gender can intervine in a childs education. The first thing that came to my mind was colors. Boys typically are symbolized with the color blue and girls usually are symblolized with pink. Little things like this made me realise that I segrigate gender all the time.

This article made me realize how boy and girls are steriotyped on a daily basis and in the classroom. Even with the seperate lines for boys and girls. As much as it symbolizes seperation I wonder how and if it actually does effect them.

Also when I was researching I came across this video on youtube it reminded me of the video we saw in class Thursday with the interveiwing of kids with the black and white doll. This is similar but with a female and male doll. It shows how kids learn gender rolls so young.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWc1e3Nbc2g&feature=related