No more girls and boys; can our children go gender free? BBC 2 tonight

[Ekphrasis]

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202lp

I heard PM in radio 4 discussing this research, it seems to hugely benefit girls in terms of their views on their own achievements and the achievements of women in general.

Will listen with interest.

What surprised me (as we have had this language banned in my place of work, with children) is that the teacher, pre experiment, called girls sweetie and petal, and boys buddy etc.

Helen Sharman was great. I mention her when I have the opportunity.

Yes - I agree re Helen Sharman. We are also getting better at celebrating female athletes, although in most other sports women's teams are much less viable.

Which comment?

Was I the only one who instinctively thought of male dancers when the children were asked to draw a ballet dancer? I immediately thought of Carlos Acosta and a recent interview I read with Xander Parish

I don't think of ballet dancers being anything other than both sexes.

That comments awful Datun
I watched the programme yeterday and was very upset by the girls low self esteem and the boys lack of emotional literacy although not surprised. Will be interested to see how it works out.

Datun i mean the one you pointed out obvs not your own!

Thelilywhite

Yes, it is. And that type of narcissistic fury does tend to gravitate towards that site.

It's partly their 'take no prisoners/I don't give a fuck what you think' attitude. But also, because they are incredibly comprehensive in unearthing the incriminating background of a lot of the objectors.

(I.e. A video from YouTube they posted, which got deleted very quickly, as they said it would. And a photo, further down, of that particular commentor).

I did clarify in my comment 'at least in every artistic experience I've had'
For me it was true that most of the men were openly gay or bi. I only know this because I went through a lot of effort trying to find a boyfriend amongst them and spent one valentines day with a gay guy instead as by then I'd given up finding a straight guy. My actual tutor was gay.
As I said, I speak from my own experience and found the type of guys there very much embraced the gay scene almost to the point I wished that they'd just go along to events without forcing it upon people. (Trust me when you've had a friend that previously spoke two pitches lower it does sometimes get a bit tedious to adjust when they choose to speak two pitches higher all of a sudden).
Anyway not stereotyping that was my actual experience.

Wow that gendertrender comment! Some of them really despise women don't they?

What was the YouTube video about Datun? I missed it.

I agree with the post by reallyanotherone on the previous page.

I also think that many people who are gay go into particular professions partly because they feel comfortable in them or because it is socially accepted. It's isn't unusual to be gay in, say, the art, fashion or theatre world and those worlds create safer, accepting spaces for people to participate in as they grow up and explore their sexuality. It's not logical to jump to an immediate conclusion that gay men innately like fashion and art more than straight men. There are too many societal factors at play.

Similarly, it seems almost too obvious to state that many women are put off professions where they will be outnumbered by men or feel they will have to adopt more "masculine" traits to succeed (and girls often mistakenly believe they do not have the necessary skills). The preponderance of female nurses or care workers isn't about women innately being more caring. Those are options that are made easier for girls (as opposed to being a firefighter or engineer) by societal attitudes and conditioning.

It's tough being outnumbered by men in every significant meeting I have at work. More often than not I am the only woman in the room. It's also a huge challenge having few successful female role models in my area of specialism. I still struggle with how to adapt to the expectations in my line of work, and how to balance my reluctance to lose my female characteristics with my concern that many of those characteristics have been socially conditioned.

Ereshkigal

I don't know, I didn't see it. But judging by the person who posted it, it would've been an incriminating video of the guy who posted that rant.

andintothefire

Excellent points.

Thanks Datun. It sounds like he is truly repulsed by women. Yet wants to be one. Paging Hannibal Lecter...

Snef, when were you at uni if you don't mind me asking? I was there just as the Brit school got going, so it was Just Very Cool To Be An Artist, Yah. Male or female as Damien Hirst was smashing up the scene.

Thanks for that link Datun. Fortunately there are some good comments under the article to balance the batshit. Someone commented about his "stinking cunts" remark, saying something along the lines of "so you hate vaginas but you still want a rubbish version of one, I don't know who you hate more, women or yourself". Good point but I reckon women come top of the list.

Looking forward to next weeks. I can only imagine the messages that the children are exposed to at home.

Hi first of all can I introduce myself I am Graham Andre from the show 'No More Boys and Girls' I have discovered your thread about the show this morning and have read with interest (it has taken quite some time as you can imagine).

Firstly can I apologise for the terms of endearment, I didn't realise at the time how gender specific they were and what an effect this can have on how children perceive themselves. You will be pleased to know that I rarely if ever let 'mate', 'love' etc slip out now.

The project was an amazing thing to be part of and has totally changed how I teach in the class and now make sure that whatever topic that we are doing we look at the roles of gender within it. I really do think that gender neutral teaching and language should be a part of the curriculum, if it enables girls to have greater confidence in themselves and allows boys to express their feelings it can only be a good thing?

Again thank you for watching the show and I have really enjoyed reading your thoughts, I do hope that you enjoy the second episode.

If you have any questions you would like to ask me about the project fire away, although I cannot give out spoilers for the second episode :-)

Graham Andre'

Without being rude - how come you weren't aware of the "hidden curriculum" before?

The messages teachers give out in the classroom are so important - BME pupils, LGBT pupils, girls etc etc. This should have been common knowledge.

Hi Orlantina I was aware and as a school we do a lot about promoting a growth mindset and an 'I can do' attitude but we just weren't gender specific enough with our messages. We were also unaware of how ingrained the views of the children with regards to their own abilities, confidence and future prospects were.

Well, I hope it's opened your eyes to other issues in your class - such as messages that other pupils receive - BME pupils, disabled pupils, LGBT pupils etc.

I have worked in diverse schools and teachers there definitely look at the curriculum and the messages given out through the curriculum - hidden and "open".

Indeed it has, despite my age (45) I have only been teaching for 5 years (I was a teaching assistant and nanny before this) and am constantly learning new things. Unfortunately these are not things taught to us when going through teacher training and I think should be.

Unfortunately these are not things taught to us when going through teacher training and I think should be

I'm surprised. It was on my PGCE 17 years ago.

But yes - I hope that this does raise awareness. Unfortunately, society is still very much like this and I have no doubt that parental and societal influences will be featured next week

I think it's easy not to notice your own ingrained behavior. I work in a context in which people write about gender all the time, so you would think they would be very aware, but I've noticed that in seminars, it's still the older males that dominate discussion and often younger females don't get to ask their questions.

When friends children call over, easy to say to the girls 'oh, what a pretty dress you have on' or 'your hair is cute like that' as something to say, rarely say that type of things to the boys.

What I'm trying to say is that it's easy to see gender-ingrained behaviour in others, very hard to totally extinguish it in yourself, even with awareness training/consciousness.

Hi graham, thanks for replying.

I must say I'd wasn't aware of the hidden curriculum as a defined 'thing' but on my pgce 17 years ago I know we talked about the messages we give out during lessons - at the same time I think my particular peer cohort had strong ethics anyway.

I did wonder if you were a more recent teacher, as I'm sure tangrams were very much a part of the much mourned numeracy strategy! (But that's another thread!)

I don't believe this stuff is on the pgce curriculum but happy to be corrected. I do remember a lot being done on things like Bills New Frock c/o the literacy strategy, so I suspect (and have witnessed in nqts) much less prescriptive planning from 'higher up'. To be honest, since social media came along, what ever goes on twinkl makes it to the classroom. (From my observations and experience.)

P.S. An awesome series and experiment, huge kudos to you for taking part!