My daughter's assembly - am I overreacting?

[flybynight]

My y5 daughter is studying "significant people" this term. On the first day, she came home effusing about all the significant people they had looked at. She reeled off a list of about 25 men and, with prompting, remembered 2 women. Tanni Grey Thompson and Marie Curie. Very good.

I wrote a friendly note to her teacher pointing out that the male female ratio there could be misconstrued and that, regardless of history's bias in favour of men, children could easily think that men were more "significant" than women. There was no response to the note which is fine. I do know he read it though as my daughter saw him.

Anyway, today was assembly. All about significant people. 18 men mentioned. Two women. I'm really dismayed. And angry. Women's history is intrinsic and equal to my mind. Not a ghetto or a side street.

What should I do? I'm thinking speak to the head. I don't want to make a big fuss (typical woman!) but my gut instinct is that this is not right. What would you do? What would Germaine do?

Don't wait for your adrenal glands to calm down. Your adrenal glands are correct. Please don't let it go without comment... The whole project stinks. Significant, or just celebrated?

Can we have Hedy Lamarr please? I've only just discovered her - invented spread spectrum communications so we can have mobile phones and stuff. Wiki entry:

"Mathematically talented, Lamarr also co-invented?with composer George Antheil?an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary for wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day."

Jocelyn Bell Burnett
George Eliot
Agatha Christie
Aretha Franklin

Coming back to the thread to say I'm still incensed even hours later.

What kind of education is this? Just reinforcing the knowledge base that junior school children have that has already been shaped by a media that remains heavily biased in favour of reporting on male sports personalities, text books, that put emphasis on male figures and a history of male rule.

I don't even ask for half and half just some equivalent figures for eg if you've got Mo farrah how can you not have Jess Ennis, or Paula Radcliffe? (Radcliffe's held the womens marathon record for years now but no all the media want to do is refer to the fact that she may have once had a dump on the floor)

Or better still a discussion of how women have been underrepresented over the years and how it may make their achievements even greater. How much harder they've had to work to reach the same place as men.

And breathe...

Jensen Button and Michael frithing Jackson??

Complain. I am really surprised the teacher didn't even reply.

Mmethenardier...... Thank you for Articulating

What kind of education is this? Just reinforcing the knowledge base that junior school children have that has already been shaped by a media that remains heavily biased in favour of reporting on male sports personalities, text books, that put emphasis on male figures and a history of male rule.

I was unable to do so. Thank you thank you.

Irena Sendler
Just heard about her recently.

Seems like history lessons haven't changed since I was at school. Still focusing around white, mainly English or English speaking men. Oh goody.

MmeThenardier, I am going to use much of that in my letter to the head. She's never there, so I'll have to write. I express myself better in writing anyway.

Travelincolour would you have chosen just Hedy, or the full Hedwig?

Ah, but civil rights was primarily a man thing.

True, but it helped give birth to second wave feminism.

One of my pupils did a project on Sally Ride. I had never heard of her. My pupil taught me a great deal.

Baroness Hale of Richmond - the first female law lord (unfortunately still the only one).

Here's a rough like-for-like by field of achievement list:

Martina Navratilova
Jessica Ennis
Madonna
Cathy Freeman
Aretha Franklin
Dorothy Hodgkin
Aung San Suu Kyi
George Eliot
Agatha Christie
Clara Schumann
Caroline Herschel
Ada Lovelace
Hypatia
Frida Kahlo
Mary Cassatt
Margaret Thatcher

I completely agree with you, but why don't you try talking to the teacher first? I'm a teacher, and it is so easy to fogey to respond to letters, or not feel comfortable replying to issues with parents via letter (incase they were lost/read.) I think you'd probably get a really positive response if you approached her in person with your views. If she doesn't respond then and you are still unhappy approach the head, but I think that won't be necessary if you went in for a chat.

Great list, FairPhyllis :)

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the woman who discovered pulsars, for which her (male) supervisor received a Nobel prize.

Eileen Collins
Laura Bridgeman
Anna Freud
Wangari Maathai
Clara Barton
Calamity Jane
Tonya Harding
Jane Torvill
Tessa Sanderson
Zola Budd
Joan of Arc
Helen Keller
Ann Macy
Eva Peron
Mother Teressa
Lily Maxwell
the Pankhursts
Elizabeth Anderson
Elizabeth Blackwell
Susan Anthony
Grace hopper
Ella Fitzgerald
Dolores Huerta
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Frida Kahloe
Sacagawea
Sappho
Harriet Tubman
Ellie Simmonds (dont know how any school cannot mention this young lady)
Pocahontas
Harriet Stowe
Anne Frank
Jean Driscoll
Ann Bancroft
Marla Runyan

I'm going to have to google many of these. It's going to take me hours

Sadly I don't have to google most of the men. What a woeful education system we have that we really only cover the 'history' [inverted commas because the manipulation of the truth is blindingly obvious] of white, privileged, western men

Just thought of a few more.
Nancy Astor.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike
Simone de Beauvoir
Aphra Behn
Louise Boyd
Pearl Buck aka Sai Zhenzhu
Marie Anne de Cupis de Camargo
Another great sports person, Billie Jean King.
Patsy Cline
Grace Kelly.
Billie Holiday
Virginia Apgar
Agnes de Mille

On the male list the school should have also mentioned Captain Chesley Sullenberger. He's the bloke that landed the plane on the Hudson River.

There is no reason to not talk about the important females. Teachers just need to be creative in how they bring these people into conversation. Not everything is text book, at least not for us. We talk about Aphra for example when we talk about literary writers, afterall she was the first female professional writer.

I second cornydash with Malala Yousafzai.

perhaps there should be an assembly on her,or the Suffragettes,or the nurses in the Second World War.