Schools institutionally sexist?

[RobynNora]

Would be interested to know what people think of this, whether this aligns other's experience and if it bothers you on a day-to-day basis or not?

I was just reading an online chat about the asymmetries of 'Sir' and 'Miss' as titles in schools. Sir having much stronger connotations than Miss, which is a hangup from when women teachers were young and quit when they married. It's been discussed here before.

Someone else commented that people in the corporate world tend not to use marital titles, while most schools still use them, which seems outdated. And that in many schools, nobody uses the gender neutral Ms - especially at primary. Instead, the kids are effectively told which teachers are married or not, while all the men get to be gender neutral. Unfair!

I'm not fussed which titles people use in real life, but in a professional setting, isn't it weird to still use married titles? Won't very small kids think it's important to know if women are married or not and unimportant to know if a man is married or not?

What's more, the senior leadership team at our local primary is entirely male. Most classroom teachers are women. All the cleaners and catering staff without exception are women. It's never commented upon and I sometimes wonder if people don't see it.

Have a look at the posters on the walls, I told one HT his school was sexist (it was a long day and I'd been assaulted by a student) the posters about sports had the girls watching and the boys taking part and included a quote from Lance Armstrong!

The posters supposed to support students to get help had the pictures of a girl with her head in her hands and the one of boys was them in a group.

There was a production shown in the hall, it was about peer pressure, sex and contraception, it followed the trope of the boy persuading the girl to have sex, because of course no teenage girls ever feel horny.

The uniform, most schools have a boys uniform and the girls uniform is a boys uniform with the option of a skirt, I have only ever worked in one school that had a seperate girls uniform which was a blouse that sat over the waist and a cravat instead of a tie.

Back to the conversation with the head, some of the kids as a treat for good work went to a big football match, a men's match, no option for anyone not into football.

I'm a Ms and and doing supply I introduced my self quite a lot, often writing it on the board.

I do get asked about it and I always say, "Do you need to know whether I'm married for me to teach you?"

Lovegroove

But Ms, a title open to ALL women, is not in any way determined by marital status. No woman, teacher or otherwise, has to announce their marital status via her title. Some woman make a choice to. And there's the rub. Some feminists hate it when other women make choices they don't approve of.

@HTPri

As a primary Head Teacher i’m quite surprised that ‘Sir’ is still being used. I have 8 male members of staff in my school and none of them have ever used that. In addition my SLT is a complete mixture including 2 x male teachers and 2 x female staff and then myself.

I think"sir" is very much a secondary thing. In primary the male teachers are just called Mr surname, and the female ones miss or Mrs Surname. But in secondary there seems to be this shift to Sir and miss without surnames.

In the first school I taught at, the pupils were very much encouraged to call the teachers Mrs/Miss/Ms/Mr plus surname, but at all the others it's generally sir/miss. I have taught in primaries too and have never heard sir/miss there.

@Bessica1970

I completely agree that Sir vs Miss is completely wrong, but I’ve struggled to think of a suitable alternative (I’m not a fan of Ms, but it’s not the marital status part that grates on me, but the parity in status). I have considered getting a PhD so I can be doctor 🙂

Ma'am is the equivalent.

I remember from a previous thread about schools someone arguing that they are not designed for girls, because originally all schools were for boys and that as they opened up to both sexes girls had to fit into that model. So the having to sit still, listen, concentrate can’t be a result of female teachers and the feminisation of the school system, and is just historical from a time when only (privileged) boys went to school.

I can’t remember much else - other than that moves to free play in the early years and more group learning showed that this traditional structure was changing, and that arguing both traditional and the newer learning styles penalised boys wasn’t logical. If anyone knows more about this, I’d love a link to a well researched article or two.

I've worked in two primaries where pupils sometimes said Miss with no surname. The only male teachers tended to be referred to as Mr Surname. In one school, every male teacher was a member of SLT.

Sexism is rife in the workplace- there's no doubt about that. I'd just be surprised if it were generally worse in schools than in other sectors. Teaching is very woman-heavy. It's true that men are over-represented in headships and SLT, but compared with the ratio of men to women in senior roles in other sectors...?

@lazylinguist

Sexism is rife in the workplace- there's no doubt about that. I'd just be surprised if it were generally worse in schools than in other sectors. Teaching is very woman-heavy. It's true that men are over-represented in headships and SLT, but compared with the ratio of men to women in senior roles in other sectors...?

I kind of think you’ve answered your own question, there.

If women are over-represented in teaching (which they definitely are), I’d expect the senior roles in teaching to be more skewed towards women, than other sectors.

I think most senior nursing roles are held by women because, again, women are over-represented in nursing.

There are lots of sectors with majority women at the coal face but majority men at the top - banking and retail for example.

@Plotato

I do completely agree about SLT though. It really gets my back up that nearly all men in primaries are promoted out of classroom teaching, despite being very much in the minority.

Similar in nursing. We didn't have many male nurses at the hospital I worked in but most were in senior roles (unless they were from abroad and then they were treated even worse than the women) either running wards or higher up.

I think there is a massive issue with sexism in schools. People who talk about schools being better suited to “the way girls learn” are missing the broader picture. Schools aren’t geared towards girls. Girls are just socialised to behave in ways that are more conducive to classroom learning. Boys achieve less well compared to girls primarily because society has lower expectations of their behaviour and socialises them to behave in ways that fit less well with sitting in a classroom and learning. The problem is not schools, it’s that we are socialising boys in ways that don’t help them to achieve at school. Whilst they continue to out-earn the women of the same age who out-achieved them in school though, there’s not going to be any real impetus to address the fact that we need to put just as much emphasis on teaching boys to be quiet, listen and sit still as girls.

I am very pleased that I work in a girls school where SLT is overwhelmingly female. Some of the things on here make me want to weep.

It goes both ways though.

The imposition of masculine 'norms' and judgement in school between boys is very strong.

It's shit for boys who don't meet what's expected as well, when it comes to their experiences. Way too often.

I can't get too worked up about miss vs sir, it's the kind of thing I would have railed against 10 years ago but now I think there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to feminism like the erosion of women in language etc

I also don't think the education system can be inherently sexist when girls now outperform boys in every academic metric.

I am on a secondary slt of 10 and there are only 3 men. The 4 most senior people are women.

And that in many schools, nobody uses the gender neutral Ms - especially at primary.

This isn't my experience at all.
We have a number of Ms at my infant school.
Dd
had teachers use Ms throughout her school years I can primary a few years back now.

However, regardless of what title people chose the children often get it wrong anyway and everyone becomes miss xxx in my experience, often the male teachers!

Re sir/miss

Back in the 90s I did my training at a school where the men were Sir and the women were Madam/Ma'am.

Have to say that I hated it. Much prefer to have my surname used with my chosen title.

Re SLT at my infant school

Our headteacher is female. Infact I'm not sure we've had a male headteacher for decades.
Until last year our previous deputies were female. Current one is a man.
Rest of SLT are women.

Most of our staff are female. We currently don't have a male teacher but have in the past. We have a number of LSA/TAs including two younger males.

Our caretaker and assistant are male. One particularly is very involved with the children, and is an excellent role model. The children also often see both these two men cleaning the school, assisting with lunches etc.

Our lunch staff team have included makes in the past.

The education system favours girls, in general. I think that's fairly well known.
And in my experience as a teacher, the pendulum had entirely swung from men dominating the SLT, to it being almost entirely women.

Sadly fewer and fewer men are entering primary teaching, and that's a real loss, in my opinion.

My local high school has a male headteacher, but the deputies and assistant heads are all female. The heads of the three high schools nearest to where I used to work, were all women. But she abbot the rest of the SLT

I'll ask my daughters tomorrow whether they called their teachers Sir and Miss. At my school pupils didn't, but it was a specialist school (entire SLT female). Oddly enough some parents called me Miss though!

Ugh. "But she abbot the rest of the SLT" should be "don't know about the rest...."

@NiceGerbil a sexist school environment is harmful and limiting to boys too. I’d like to learn more about this as it’s not so often discussed.

Really encouraging to hear about all the schools with female SLT and women using non marital titles! Hurrah.

@bentleydrummle reflecting on your comment that “I also don't think the education system can be inherently sexist when girls now outperform boys in every academic metric”

Maybe it is institutionally sexist in a way that disadvantages boys as well as girls? Pressure on girls to behave compliantly, work quietly and complete tasks while boys feel this is less important? Or pressure on boys to be tough rather nurturing, caring or creative?

Plenty of examples of seemingly small instances of everyday sexism upthread beyond titles. Like mildly sexist posters, unequal playground space, lesson content (dinosaurs versus unicorns!) and uniform disparities.

It's the same as in society, the messages that so much media, society push about what 'real men' are like. And that there are men and boys in society (and plenty women don't know about girls probably though) that enforce it.

My view is that a lot of it is not supported by how plenty of 'real men' actually are. Ditto women and girls. The stereotypes are so strong that they overwrite real life

But yes you know the stuff

Boys don't cry
Team sports to play or watch are fundamental
Pulling lots of girls is laudable (and sadly treating them like dirt is seen as ever more amazing)
Reading is not the thing to do
All that stuff.

I mean for both sexes it's everywhere.

Feminism though- schools- girls.

Sexualised bullying, sex assault, creepy men on way to/ from, bizarre view of girls from puberty up by so so many, when things bad are done to them, that they are knowing etc.

I mean so much.

I can't get excited about titles tbh.

@bentleydrummle

I can't get too worked up about miss vs sir, it's the kind of thing I would have railed against 10 years ago but now I think there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to feminism like the erosion of women in language etc

I also don't think the education system can be inherently sexist when girls now outperform boys in every academic metric.

I am on a secondary slt of 10 and there are only 3 men. The 4 most senior people are women.

Girls have always out performed boys when they have been allowed to study the same subjects.

Then we keep tweaking the system to level up the boys.

And then the boys go and ear more with their lesser qualifications.

Girls out-perform boys at school - yes, we all know that happens - across the board and across jurisdictions.

It doesn’t really mean shit though, when boys/men go on to rule the world - sit on boards, take CEO roles, become prime minister / president and out-earn women.

All it does it point out exactly how unequal it is. If girls out-perform boys, but boys go on to success at much greater rates, what the hell is going on?

Yes I know boys go on to achieve better in the workforce, but to me that suggests the problem does not mainly lie in school but in what happens after that. The recent tes report linked below re aspirations of female teachers to become head is a case in point, and I don't think this is down to inherent sexism in schools, but in wider society where in very many jobs women go PT or give up work after dc which hinders their career progress. I was interested in that report as someone newly promoted to slt myself and considering whether headship is something I aspire to.

All it does it point out exactly how unequal it is. If girls out-perform boys, but boys go on to success at much greater rates, what the hell is going on?

100 x this.

So many men believe that girls’ success at schools is a sign of the system being skewed in their favour but aren’t willing to entertain that men’s success in the working world is down to anything other than men’s own brilliance.