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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Post #7 - Gender and Education

It was really hard to find good information that didn't repeat itself or wasnt more than 20 years old, but here is some of the stuff that I found. I think that a lot of the 'stereotypes' and testing results from the nineties, still have some prevalence today.
This website has link that you can click on to view "who does better" at reading, writing, math and science. These results are based on testing done in a few different years. The results are separated by gender, race, ethnicity and grade. I only focused on the gender for this research, but the other stuff was kind of interesting too. Girls writing skills were better, while the boys excelled in science, and the math scores went half and half. This information dates as recently as 1990 soo obviously these don't relate to key issues of 2010, but its some good background information on the subject and it still sort of applies.

Most websites generalize that there are "boy subjects" (science and math) and "girl subjects" (English and history). While the results form the first website up above tend to support this theory, from personal experience I can say that this really isn't true.

In my high school girls were generally smarter than boys. Now this was just one school but I would like to assume that the results from my school are typical in a few others. Every year the top 10 students get to do an article in the local newspaper. My senior year out of the three Warwick high schools there were only 5 boys within the top ten of each school. So of the 30 smartest students in Warwick, 25 of them were girls. My school had no boys until number 13!! We used to joke around because our honors classes were full of girls with only 2 or 3 boys in them. One teacher used to always question why men run this country and this world, when we were living proof that women were more prevalent in high school honors classes. It seems to me that somewhere between high school and the real world, girls lose their ground.

Knowing this information, as well as not being able to find a lot about keyissues of 2010, I decided to look up the rates of women versus men that continue to college and then graduate.
One website shows that in 2008, about 71.5% of women were enrolled in college and only 65.9% of men were enrolled.
The graph on the left shows the degrees conferred by females versus males. The statistics start in 1971 and are projected up until 2017. As you can see is shows females are stepping up there game. I believe that these statistics are really catching up to our times and not the stereotypical information one usually comes up with. It just goes to show that a lot has changed over the years.




This site gives teachers tips and tricks to make sure that you, as a teacher, increase the equity between boys and girls in your classroom. This website says that in the 90's research made it clear that girls were 'shortchanged' in the classroom. A lot of times it seems that teachers unknowingly exhibit these 'gender biases' in their classroom, so here are a few tips to help prevent that from happening. Here are the most important tips.
1. Show fairness in the class room. Make sure that posters and signs around the room depict boys and girls engages in the same activities (NO STEREOTYPES). Make sure that you never pin boys and girls against each other, whether in a classroom competition, spelling bees, or even lining up. Make sure you call on boys and girls equally for answering questions. A good solution for this is some sort of lottery system. I remember when i was in sixth grade our teacher had a 'Magic Cup' and we each had our name on a piece of paper in the cup and she would pick out of the Magic Cup when putting us in groups, sending us on a errand, calling on us, or anything else. I never realized until now that this method was used as a gender equality exercise.

2. Select a variety of books. This reminds me of the King and King book we read in class. You might want to have books that show males and females doing equal tasks. Stories that have females doing stereotypical things may just "perpetuate the biases" in the classroom.
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3. Choose your words carefully. Avoid phrases like 'boys will be boys' as statements like these can allow the biases to continue. Make sure that you interchange he and she when giving examples in the class. When teaching subtraction you dont want to keep saying, "If Johnny has ___ apples and he takes _____ away, how many are left?" Make sure you use Sally or Susie or Jane; keep switching it up.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Talking Points #6 - Wise videos

In the first video Wise talks about how we as Americans have defeated what he calls racism 1.0 when we elected Obama as our president. However, he defines racism 2.0 as almost a double standard that we hold against people of color. His example is that in order to be "an acceptable person of color" you have to be just like Obama; you have to dress like him, act like him, have the same education as him etc. And in this sense, we as Americans really have not gotten much closer to racial equity.
In the second video, Wise points out that we have gotten rid of the overt racism towards people of color. However, what hasn't changed is the denial; the denial that there is a problem--just as Johnson points out. Wise said that if you asked white people today if people of color were treated equally in 1962 everyone would say that they were not treated equally--even the most conservative people. However, if you asked white people in 1962 if people of color were being treated equal, 2 out of 3 would say that they were being treated equal; 9 out of 10 said that black children had equal educational opportunities. He also says that we have to ask the "target people" if a problem is still a problem. Basically that we are oblivious to the problem: whites don't recognize that they are in the culture of power. He points that a lot of people think racism is gone but its not. He also points out that racism is not the only problem that people of color face, just as sexism isn't the only problem for women.
In the article about Brown v. Board of education, we learn that this case was a turning point for racism in American history. In 1954, "the Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race, and made equal opportunity in education the law of the land. " Basically, the law made segregation illegal in the schools. And this case paved the ways of civil rights for people of color.
What Wise would say is that just because segregation is illegal doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist. Steps like this, or electing our first black president is great, but it is still just a Band-aid on a broken leg. I kind of think of it as just because you have to be 21 to drink alcohol, that doesn't mean that kids under 21 aren't going to party. Wise points out that the situation has gotten better since the times of Brown v. Board of Education but we still have a long way to go. Sticking with the Band-aid analogy, if you put enough Band-aids on a broken leg, over time it will eventually heal but only a little bit, and there will still always be scars.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Talking Points #5 - In the Service of What? by Kahne and Westheimer

1. "By finding and engaging in community service activities, Mr. Johnson explained, students would interact with those less fortunate than themselves and would experience the excitement and joy of learning while using the community as a classroom."

- I really related to Mr. Johnson's class's project, because this is exactly what we (or at least I) am doing when it comes to this class. We learn about how different groups of minorities (those not in SCWAAMP) learn and live and suffer, and then in some cases, we see it right in the classroom. So we are learning in two different classrooms.

2. "There are numerous ways in which a curriculum focused on giving provides opportunities for students to develop caring relationships, especially when compared to a tradition academic curriculum."

- I definitely agree with this point. It is basically saying that one of the benefits of service learning is that you kill two birds with one stone. The older students benefit because they are learning about the group they are helping. And the other students learn from the older kids, and get to develop relationships that may help them even once the service learning is over.

3. "Indeed, there is reason for concern that service experiences frequently fail to achieve either additive or transformative goals."

- This is probably the number one reason that all classes in all schools don't do service learning projects. There is the possbililty that the younger students don't benefit at all from having this extra help, in fact they may even have more trouble if they have many different people try to help in different ways. And there is also the possibility that the older students are learning anything, and just wasting their time trying to help.

I felt like this reading was somewhat repetitive. I don't know what it was about it, but nothing really grabbed me as a reader to pay attention. Normally I'll have some sort of an opinion when I'm done reading, but with this I was just glad I was done. Overall, the article talks about different kinds of service learning and why it is beneficial and why it may not be. I feel that it is a good thing in certain cases. For instance, something like what we are doing is beneficial to all parties involved. We are learning from it, the kids love it, and the teachers get a little break. However, for me when I'm older, as a high school math teacher, service learning probably wouldn't be too beneficial for all of the kids in my classroom. I think you just need to have the right atmosphere an the right ideas for the service learning to be effective.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Talking Points #4 Unlearning The Myths That Bind Us by Christensen

1. "'Look Ursula the sea witch is ugly and smart. Hey, she's kind of dark looking. The young pretty ones only want to hook their man; the old, pretty ones are mean because they are losing their looks.'"

- This quote was from one of the students after viewing some cartoons and trying to notice some of the obvious stereotypes. So many Disney movies have subliminal messaging such as this. And as this whole article pretty much says, these messages are all around us and we dont even know it--in the media, on TV, in school and as shown here, even in the cartoons that our kids watch on a day to day basis.

2. One of the girls wrote, "Have you ever seen a black person, an Asian, a Hispanic in a cartoon? Did they have a leading role or were they a servant?"

- This is extremely relevant because even if you think of Disney princesses the only Asian one is Mulan and that came out in 1998. And Disney just made the new movie this past year with the black princess because they realized that there wasn't one. As the girl later on says, "Women who aren't white begin to feel left out and ugly because they never get to play the princess." Some of our family friends have a black husband and a white wife and all three of the kids are each a different skin tone. The darkest little girl always complains that she always has to be Jasmine because she's dark and she doesn't even like Aladdin--and even that didn't come out until 1992. It's sad that Disney has to add movies to become for racially diverse.

3. "I realized these problems werent just in cartoons. They were in everything---every magazine I picked up, every television show I watched, every billboard I passed by on the street."

- This is so very true. Ideas such as sexism and racism aren't just in the cartoons and movies that kids watch, they are EVERYWHERE!! Magazines, commercials, books--things that are a part of you're everyday life. So naturally these negative ideas are just etched into these kids heads.

This article was really easy for me to read because I did a project in high school on subliminal messaging which is kind of along the same lines as this article. Kids, and even adults, are subjected to all sorts of subliminal messaging throughout all types of media. And quite frankly, it's not something a parent can just not let their kids see because it's absolutely everywhere. The entire article went along with Johnson's idea of obliviousness. Because unless you sit there and try to analyze everything that is going on in a simple cartoon or commercial you probably wont notice anything out of the ordinary. Especially if you're from the privileged group.

I went a little Youtube crazy looking for clips of subliminal messaging. This first video is a collection of Subliminal messaging, in the media and in Disney.



This next video shows how women are depicted in Disney films.



This last video is all clips from Spongebob that are all very suggesting. (There's also a part 1 and 3 and I'm sure you could find other things).