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that people in the corporate world tend not to use marital titles, while most schools still use them, which seems outdated.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.

They still use Ma'am in the police. Possibly other forces too.

It might be interesting to see the stats in the Police over the next few years. With the bad publicity about abuse of position you would expect a lot of women being promoted to be an outcome.

Retired secondary teacher here. I worked in 5 schools and all but one had a female head teacher.

A number of my colleagues signed themselves Ms but to be honest it didnt matter if you are Ms, Miss or Mrs the students called you ‘miss’.

I get what you mean about marital status but to be honest if you didn’t want people to be immediately aware you could sign yourself Ms no problems.

I also know some schools where the female teachers were referred to as ma’am, which I quite liked

Teacher here. I'm Ms but many of my colleagues are Miss or Mrs. Kids call us all Miss or Sir. I trained in a school where it was Mam (Madam) or Sir which I think was much better as it had no marriage connotations, but that is the only school I have come across where that is the case. Leadership team at my school is mainly female but the head and CEO are male. Teachers of both sexes (secondary).

The Mat I work for has one male and one female head. Mixed SMT and uses sir and madam.

So, perfectly possible.

Earn more bloody hell what is up with my typing this morning?

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.

Yes. Schools are sexist because people are sexist, society is sexist, the world is sexist.

'Ms' is used by a minority of female teachers, but again- does that not simply reflect what's also true in society at large? I know hardly anyone who goes by 'Ms' and have no friends or acquaintances who didn't take their husband's name. Maybe that's down to my age though (50).

I can think of much bigger examples of institutional sexism to get worked up about. Like the sexual harassment.

Miss is used in practice as a title equivalent to Sir. It’s usually used irrespective of marital status, and you often here people saying to the kids ‘I will tell your Miss’, or ‘Go and get your Miss’, especially when no one can remember who the heck is supposed to be the teacher or is just looking for an adult in charge, TA or teacher.

Sexism is rife in schools, as we see from limited choice of subjects. They are also class-ridden, run by the middle class for the benefit of the middle class. They’re social environments that are intensive small scale replicas of society at large where kids have to be moved around in bulk by a few adults. I have seen girls who are obediently performing feminity being treated aggressively by boys, and it is at the same time also well known that both sexes are exploring biological sex through secondary age. Titles of teachers really are not the major problem here.

@PickUpAPepper I agree with most of this and yep, I accept there are many more pressing issues, which are both more serious and more visible. But it feels sexist that people are telling me not to get ‘worked up’ over titles. This phrase keeps being used. It reminds me a little of ‘hysterical’ …

As a teacher, it bothered me (being Miss to my male counterparts’ Sir) Now I have children it bothers me a lot more as I try to raise them to see men and women as equal. No apologies.

Also the terms are not equal to my mind @PickUpAPepper. If a male 50 year old business man typed dropped something on the floor, you wouldn’t hesitate to say ‘excuse me Sir’ to get his attention. If a female 50 year old business exec dropped something, ‘excuse me miss’ would sound pretty patronising.

Yes they’re institutionally sexist. It’s the whole culture, the curriculum, the uniform, the not tackling the constant casual sexism between pupils, the lot. It feels like some energy (not enough) goes into other forms of discrimination but sexism and discrimination against disabled people, for example, is not really on the radar.

I think schools are inherently sexist. Majority of teachers are female and the methods of testing have gradually moved to those which are better suited to girls (e.g. coursework over exams). Hence, boys are falling behind academically.

Men who become teachers often seem to be viewed with suspicion ("must be a pedo") so this puts men off and strengthens the matriarchal modus operandi.

I think schools are inherently sexist. Majority of teachers are female and the methods of testing have gradually moved to those which are better suited to girls (e.g. coursework over exams). Hence, boys are falling behind academically.

There is FAR FAR less coursework now than there was when I started teaching 14 years ago.

Yep, coursework is definitely in decline as a method of assessment. As are modular exams. The emphasis these days is very much on a single, end of course, set of exams. I would have thought this would favour boys, if the previous understanding that coursework favours girls were true.