Getting a tiny bit feminist on the teacher's ass!

[SolidGoldBrass]

I didn't raise my voice. I didn't unshave my legs or anything.
It just so happened that DS and I bumped into his class teacher at the playground this afternoon and we had a pleasant chat; the teacher turns out to have DC of her own, of a similar age to DS. She mentioned something about girls being very different to boys. I very very gently said that this was in fact rubbish and suggested she read Delusions of Gender, and added that I thought every teacher should read it as a lot of the stuff about gender difference you hear these days was not only wrong but dangerous...

I'm going to be 'one of THOSE mothers' forever, aren't I?

I'mm not going to get into the argument whether they're different, but it really pisses me off when the curriculum is changed 'to make it more boy friendly' (i.e. more hands on; more FUN). Grrrrr......
I hate the implication that girls don't need to have fun when they're learning.

Agree of course that education is hugely important. But having an equal place in the adult world of work is also important.

FWIW, I did really well at my all girls school. I only found a problem when I went to university and got completely overlooked by the male tutors in favour of definitely below average male students. I was amazed. I had never realised this would happen. I thought it was all about my ability. 25 years into my work life, I can see the bias started there and has not abated.

I do think that potentially schools could do with having more male teachers (DCs school has plenty but I think that's fairly unusual) but otherwise I don't see my son facing the bias now that I faced when I reached university. But then he really isn't one of these fabled "run around, can't listen, needs different sort of teaching" boys.

Not so, Sigmunde. Where I work, pay at the same grade is different for men and women (a historical legacy of long pay scales). In universities, it's not just that there are more male professors than female ones because women have opted out of the fast stream by having children. Men are paid more than women at each level - lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor. As far as I am aware from reading discussions in management magazines and looking at ONS statistics, this is mirrored across every employment sector. In fact, it tends to be worse in the private sector where employment contracts have gagging clauses preventing you comparing your pay with your colleagues. There may be a legal right to equal pay, but in actual fact women are paid less for doing the same job.

Larry according to my super quick googling, girls started to outperform boys in 1996 generally. So there have been hundreds of years where boys outperformed girls, and 17 years where we have seen the opposite. I did my gcses in 1996 and it was all exam based apart from drama and a maths project, no drafting and redrafting of coursework and I had male teachers in most of my subjects.

If I as part of this female cohort unintentionally outperformed the boys then at what point did I sexistly stop a boy from achieving what I did? How was my female cohort's success anyway an impingement on the success of the boys in our classes?

Looking at my own workplace it seems clear that the young academics who have been kept for years on temporary contracts (while that was still easy) or only given part-time jobs or jobs for which they are heavily overqualified are almost exclusively female. There are women in high places, too, but when it comes to the lower end of the market there is always a sense about male academics that "we can't expect him to stay under these terms" that seems to be lacking for female colleagues.

It would be easy to blame it on childbearing, except a fair few of those women have never had children and do not intend to. So it is difficult to see how childbearing can have wrecked their individual careers. Some have very impressive publishing records, but appointments these days are often about expectations of ability to bring in money, and when it comes to these rather vague expectations, men seem to do rather well.

Found it:

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/female-teachers-accused-of-giving-boys-lower-marks-6943928.html

Quite interesting findings.

should have said "junior academics" rather than "young academics". If you are female, it is easy to remain a junior academic for a very long time.

gender neutral nursery in france

same in sweden

someone on page 1 said that their boy-girl twins were showing differences when they were 3 - that was interesting - when they were 3 means that they'd had 3 years of interacting with other people outside of the family home that don't share the same views.
It's definitely ingrained into the children from outside sources.

What that survey did not show is whether work of the same quality was marked down by female teachers or whether boys got lower marks because they worked less well for female teachers.

If ds is getting more recognition for work genuinely done for a male teacher, then I would of course be happy with that. But if he works less hard for a female teacher "because she's not as good as a man", then I'd rather he paid the price for that. It's not an attitude I want him to take into the workplace.

Lurcio - what am I to make of this then?

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/young-women-earning-more-men

"If I as part of this female cohort unintentionally outperformed the boys then at what point did I sexistly stop a boy from achieving what I did? How was my female cohort's success anyway an impingement on the success of the boys in our classes?"

I don't understand this at all. It is the teaching and examining that has started to favour girls, not what any individual student achieves or doesn't. And the argument of 100s of years vs 17 years probably means little to a poorly taught boy in today's education system.

But do we know it is always a poorly taught boy and not a boy who is working less hard because he is more complacent, larrygrylls?

what I notice with undergraduates, particularly first years, is that there is very little difference in actual ability, but that young men have a tendendy to think they are doing better than they are and don't really believe they are going to fail until it is too late, whereas young women often believe they have failed until the actual mark is shoved under their noses.

It is very rare for a male student to contact me to say that he is struggling and needs extra reading suggestions, but I get a few female students doing it every semester. And naturally, this pro-active and realistic attitude helps their studies.

I think this might well be about social conditioning.

Cory,

No, we know very little about the whys because you are dealing with huge populations and the marginal differences are really quite small. However, I could well imagine old crusty male profs making a similar argument about why boys did better, when they did.

And I don't think boys are all poorly taught either. I do think, however, that on the margins, we have moved from a pro boy education system to a pro girl education system. I don't think we need a seismic shift but I do think that we should question why boys do less well and try and adjust the way they are taught in order to address it.

I was never a "couldn't sit still and concentrate" type of guy, either. On the other hand, I fear my sons are, especially one of them (they are 3.9 and 2.3, so plenty of time to change yet). There is no way they have been conditioned that way, though. They know we value them sitting, concentrating and listening and so does the older ones' pre school. As for peer pressure, it is a moot point whether you consider that conditioning or inate sexual difference.

I am keen to see that they are taught according to how they learn best as individuals and I am not sure the current attitudes in the state sector will suit him that well.

That's interesting, Sigmunde. I don't know the reasons behind it, but could speculate that it's to do with the changes in exam performance we've been discussing. And as you'll have noticed upthread, my personal take on exam performance is that it's an instance of gender stereotyping harming boys. (Incidentally, I am the mother of a DS, and one of my worries for him growing up is how to get round the peer pressure that will undoubtedly be aimed his way to be one of the lads and play up - peer pressure which I tend to blame more on the "men behaving badly/loaded" strands in popular culture than on the evils of feminism in demanding that women get a fair deal).

Facts:
? Boys are under-performing in education at the moment.

? This is agreed by researchers to be because our education system is set up to work best with children who are able to sustain concentration and apply themselves consistently.

? Most working environments also require staff to be able to sustain concentration and apply themselves consistently.

? Employers are currently reporting that today's school-leavers lack the skills and application that they desire.

Logical surmises from this
Discipline in schools is less enforced than it used to be, allowing boys to behave in a more rambunctious fashion that would never have been allowed say even 30 years ago. I don't think it's a coincidence that the change in educational fortunes has happened at a time where boys are no longer penalised in a school environment for behaving raucously. If they are allowed to do so instead of being made to learn self-control and concentration, of course they're not going to do as well.

We could take the approach that this isn't fair on boys because mainly they don't learn as well that way, but boys were learning that way up until very recently. It's only since girls have overtaken them that the idea that boys might learn differently has been touted.

Employers want employees who can concentrate and apply themselves, so maybe it's boys behaviour (or rather our social expectations of male behaviour) that needs to change. I am frequently amazed at the level of bad behaviour displayed by many boys at my DC's school that has nothing innately to do with them being male but everything to do with bad parenting and lame excuses such as "boys will be boys". There are enough well-behaved boys and adult men out there to prove that this is claptrap.

Larry - it's important to remember we're talking about differences averaged across a whole population as a statistical phenomenon. You and I may go to a lot of trouble to ensure our boys learn to sit still and concentrate, but there are parents out there who see running around, back-chat to the teacher, etc. as signs of their son's masculinity. And, as Cory points out, our behaviour as parents is a small part of the equation (and sadly becomes smaller with time) - peer pressure is a huge influence on children.

This is one of the reasons I hoping I'll manage to teach him to think for himself (while getting across the most important underlying values of treating human beings equally and trying to see the world from their perspective as well as your own) rather than trying to instil into him carbon copies of my beliefs. That way he'll be placed to resist peer pressure in its more stupid forms (I hope).

Makes perfect sense to me larry My cohort were the ones that started the girls outperforming boys at GCSE era and I was pointing out that this was in the time of end of GCSE exams for most subjects (English, Maths, Science, MFL, Humanties etc) and most of my teachers were male. How did this set up favour girls over boys? I'm confused as I didn't do much coursework or have special lessons in 'soft' subjects which apparently favour girls or have exclusively female teachers who couldn't teach boys.

drjohnsonscat

"'ONe of the reasons girls now outperform boys in education (in terms of exam results) is that they have stopped marking girls' work down.' is just a fact."

Unless they have changed the definition of the term "fact" it is no a fact.

'I am keen to see that they are taught according to how they learn best as individuals and I am not sure the current attitudes in the state sector will suit him that well.'

These are my thoughts too. My DS's are coming up to 6 and 4, and my eldest much prefers experiments outside and hands on exercises to sitting inside. I'd imagine that both boys and girls do really. The problem is that DS wants to be 'hands on' ALL the time, and finds the sitting still/concentrating part more difficult. He's a bright boy and doing OK, but he could be doing better if work was more practical.

I've helped out now and again, and have noticed that the girls (aside from one or two) don't really have this issue, whereas about half of the boys do. I don't really have the same issue with my youngest, as he's a focusaholic, he never stops bloody focussing..takes him hours to draw something because it has to be just right.

"What I was trying to articulate is that we as women cannot set up a refuge for male victims of dv without input from men, male survivors of dv etc. as they would be the best judge of what would meet their needs"

Then this blows the basic premises out if the water that there are no differences between the genders.

If there really was no difference at all, we wouldn't need a male input (what should the sex matter?) as surely the only thing that should qualify us to input is the fact we are human?

SigmundFraude Wed 20-Feb-13 15:40:25
"'I am keen to see that they are taught according to how they learn best as individuals and I am not sure the current attitudes in the state sector will suit him that well.'

These are my thoughts too. My DS's are coming up to 6 and 4, and my eldest much prefers experiments outside and hands on exercises to sitting inside. I'd imagine that both boys and girls do really. The problem is that DS wants to be 'hands on' ALL the time, and finds the sitting still/concentrating part more difficult. He's a bright boy and doing OK, but he could be doing better if work was more practical."

But in the old Latin by rote and discipline by rod system, boys did outperform girls. So I am wondering whether boys are actually incapable of doing this- or have simply learnt that they can get away with not doing it...

fwiw my ds hates having to do practical things even more than he hates academic things. He only does well when he is forced to work. Which unfortunately is not a trait that is going to be cherished by modern employers.

"If there really was no difference at all, we wouldn't need a male input (what should the sex matter?) as surely the only thing that should qualify us to input is the fact we are human?"

That is a non consequitur. Noone is denying that there are societal differences- which might mean that the experience of a man suffering dv is actually quite different to that of a woman suffering dv.

Cory,

I think boys really "like" being tested and put in competition with one another, which is really out of fashion at the moment. So, they will lsit and listen if they are allowed to make it into a game. If they don't feel that they can compete, then they won't sit and listen (and can get away with not doing it).

I am not sure I favour going back to giving test scores out in order but there has to be a happy medium. Also, boys like working under pressure but are less good at consistently concentrating, so exams suit them a lot better than project work.

I think that, going back a while, school started older, by which time most boys could sit and listen. When you start school early, I suspect some 4-5 year old boys lose critical ground which they struggle to recover later. I am really speculating here.....need some educationalists to either confirm it or properly refute it.

So at what age should these societal differences begin to matter? When should we take them on board and when should we keep denying any difference?

We don't live in a gender neutral world angel do we? If we did, perhaps our male sufferers of dv and female ones would be able to share a refuge (perhaps if things were different we wouldn't need dv shelters in the first place). Dv carries societal prejudice and different stigmas for men and women because we live in a gendered society IMHO.

I'm not worried that my ds is going to be massively discriminated against or not catered for in the classroom tbh. He is white, middle class, not disabled, no sen (that we know of) and English is his first language - which is how I imagine many of these sons are on here that people are weeping into their skirts about when imagining their bleak futures in the vaginaverse.