School houses

[flossyfloss]

Hi everyone,

First time I've posted in this area but I do read lots! I remember a post from a couple of months ago about a mum who's daughter was starting a brand new school and the school houses were all named after historic male figures.

My daughter starts high school tomorrow and has been set homework to research the person her house is named after, it is a man, all houses are historic engineers - I've checked all the other houses and low and behold all men.

It's got me angry and I think I want to raise it with the school. What do you all think?

I wonder if it's been pointed out to them before? I suspect not. I want my daughter to grow up knowing there are female figures in history that she can aspire to. I'm half tempted to get her to research a female engineer and add that as extra to her homework

If I were doing the homework I'd do it as asked but also add some female engineers too for good measure. There will be loads more male than female engineers anyway - and I find engineering fascinating anyway so the maleness wouldn't bother me.

Who else are the houses names after - artists, singers, dancers?

www.iveyengineering.com/famous-female-engineers/

Hedy Lamarr. Yup, an engineer.

If it makes you feel any better it's not all one way.
My 14yr old daughter in a mixed school is studying World War II in history and the three subjects they were asked to write about where -
1 Women pilots
2 Women spies
3 The home front.👍

It's about time that history stopped being about white men.

People grow up hearing a lifetime of stories about what the white men have done that's big and important. Schools should be working to redress that balance.

Thanks for the replies, all the houses are named after male engineers in history

I am going to suggest she adds in something about female engineers to her homework piece!

I guess they were the main engineers people thought I'd rather than pure gender bias. I doubt many could name half a dozen engineers male or female.

I really think it depends on where the school is based tbh. I am in Lincolnshire and the houses are based on local history or relevance to the area.

For example the houses in the local high school are Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane which are all ww2 planes.

Does your area have any history with engineering?

DSs are names after famous ex pupils and before that explorers. My primary school was mountains and I really can't remember secondary school

My childrens school was scientists

It had one female and three male

Now its earth wind water and fire

Apparently the children voted and picked it...i call bollocks on that one

I think Manwhohasitall needs to come to the rescue: hilarious

I'd have a chat with her form teacher - in passing - if you can do that at high school. Mine are both at primary! Or perhaps a settling in meeting (if they have them)? And just bring it in to the conversation about how it would be nice to include female engineers. Not make a massive deal about it but a little reminder that women do/have done things too!

Coming from a family of engineers, and now offer working with engineers - I've not really thought about the person, just the project.

Not everyone has those advantages of role models. And there are enough threads on MN to demonstrate that schools actively discourage girls towards engineering/science subjects.

Our school houses were all named after places, thus avoiding the issue, but I suspect that as it was an all girls school, they'd have probably managed to find a list of influential female role models.

If I were naming houses, I'd have Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, Steve (Stephanie) Shirley and Wendy Hall, all from computing.

And yes, I definitely think you should raise it. A lack of knowledge of female role models in IT and engineering and other STEM fields is one reason girls are less likely to consider it as a career. They need to know women have succeeded, so they could do it too - and men need to know women can do it, just as much.

DS1 starts school this term, and the five houses at his (mixed state primary) school are all named after composers. Which on one level as a classical music enthusiast I like, but all the houses are named after dead white men.

Indeed scallops. This kind of unthinking sexism has the potential to have a real impact on children.

flossyfloss you could show your daughter this: www.crossrail.co.uk/careers/engineer-your-future which highlights the number of women working as engineers on Crossrail (around a third). Of course it's far from adequate but it's excellent that such a major project has a relatively decent number of women working on it, with a number of the stations being project managed by female engineers. You could also tell her about Roma Agrawal: www.romatheengineer.com/showpage.php?pagename=home

The houses at my brothers' school are named A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H

At my all girls grammar school (so an environment in which high expectations are held for students) the houses were named after local 'large' houses/estates. owned by rich white men I always felt they were missing a trick. Surely they could have found 6 inspirational women from any field.

I'd never realised this before but now I think about it all my houses at school were men too (Whittle, Bannister, Flemming, Pettit and Hillary if I remember)

Never even realised when I was at school, but I guess that's the point.

Thanks noloveofmine I will show her those.

I am going to raise it at the next parents evening with her form teacher and just ask whether they do any research or learning around female engineers and see where the conversation take us

Personally I wouldn't bring it up at anprent's evening as unless you live in a super right on area the parents will do the unthinking, defend the status quo thing. "Nothing wrong with learning about male engineers, women just didn't do anything don't you know etc."

I'd try and find a few like minded parents to each write a small (couple lines) message about why it's important and then submit to the head. My guess is they genuinely didn't think about it and will realise the error pretty quickly as schools are meant to be getting girls in to STEM.

Historical being the key word. There are few female engineers even today. It unlikely using a random draw to pick out female engineers. Even if they were choosing the most important a woman would rip up relatively far down the list. Are you asking that they use positive discrimination? Wouldn't that set an even worse example to your daughter. I thought feminism was about encouraging and enabling women to do just as well as their male counterparts not pretending that this has always been the case.

What do you have against positive discrimination?

I might pick 5 historical people who matter and they'd be entirely different to yours. So what we do is go through and pick 5 who matter to everyone. It's what you do if you give a shit.

But thank you for proving my point Tbb.

Architects. Long line of famous female architects.

Also 9% of engineers are women. That's not a few, theyre woefully under represented clearly but they're there. The UK has the fewest at 9% and other EU countries go up to 30% almost like we could do better.