Enforced gender stereotyping at school

[PetraDelphiki]

Hi all

Can you help me compose a letter to the (extremely competitive girls private) school please?

Dd (year 7) just came out of school in tears because her French teacher made her rip out her page of nouns and rewrite them because she had done pink for masculine? Apparently she has to use blue for masculine and pink for feminine....

Dd is upset about having to redo the work and I’m seething that the blue/pink thing is being enforced....and I did check they hadn’t been told blue/pink first so it wasn’t just she was ignoring what she had been told...they were just told to pick a colour for make/female...

Seriously?

I think you are massively over reacting. If they were asked to write them in colour codes of blue and pink, it would have been to make it easier to remember which are masculine and which are feminine. Blue and pink are the colours that represent these things.

Getting it the wrong way around would lead to the wrong connection being made.

Unless your daughter equates pink with masculine and blue with feminine?

This is for memorising the gender of words, not about reinforcing stereotypes in people.

they weren’t asked to write them in those colours - they were told to choose a colour for male and write the words in their chosen colour. Only after she had chosen was she told that no, male is blue and female is pink. This is completely reinforcing the gender stereotypes we see every day...and if the teachers are so stuck in stereotypes then when will they start saying girls can’t do maths/science?

OH and she is perfectly capable of being a Victorian and identifying pink as male and blue as female...

They told the kids to choose colours for masculine feminine and write the words out in the colours

She did blue for feminine and pink for masculine and the treacher made her tear it up and do it again the other way around?

If that's the way it went and she didn't misunderstand then that is indeed completely shitty.

I think if you feel strongly then you need to ask about it.

FWIW I went to a selective high achieving girls school and the englosh teacher tore up my gcse coursework becasue I argued with him about something to do with the book we were reading, so sounds like not much has changed lol

You are not overreacting at all!

I mean, I might have shrugged it away if the teacher had told her the blue/pink thing first.

But expecting a child to have internalised modern stereotypes and making her do the work again isn't just sexist, it is bullying.

I can't help you with the wording, but I would emphasise the fact that not telling a child in detail what they want her to do and then complaining that she doesn't read their minds is plain and simple bullying and you expect better from a school.

You can also mention the fact that you don't bring her up with modern stereotypes, so she couldn't have known she broke their unwritten stereotype rules.

Thank you!!!

WTF? That is bonkers. Please complain!

I agree, but I would also caution picking battles if she is in Year 7. There will be other, more important stuff, come up later.

Use it as a teaching opportunity about sex stereotypes and get her to suck it up, rather than getting mum to fight all her little battles. Make her re-do it and give her a hot chocolate with squirty cream & marshmallows or something when she has.

Out of curiosity, did the teacher specify a colour for neutral?

Why would she? There is no neutral in French.

How’s this for a first draft:

To: head of year
Subject: gender stereotypes

Dear (head of year)

Today DD came out of school in tears because her French teacher insisted she remove a page of nouns and rewrite them. The girls had been told to write the masculine nouns in a color and the feminine in a different colour. I have been very careful to ensure DD is not forced into choices made by modern gender stereotypes, so she started the masculine nouns in the first color she picked which happened to be pink. DD was told to remove this work and redo it with masculine in blue and feminine in pink.

If Mme had said in advance that these were the colours to be used and DD had ignored her I would absolutely expect DD to follow the instructions, however she tells me that they were just told to pick a colour for each.

I am horrified that a school that expects girls to become anything they want is also expected them to have internalized gender stereotypes to the extent that if they don’t follow them they are forced to redo the work. There is a very small step from “knowing” blue is for boys and pink is for girls to STEM is for boys and not for girls.

King regards

Oh and given that I know the school gets gendered intelligence in to discuss things this is almost certainly just the start of the story....

If they get Gendered Intelligence in, thats the battle to pick OP. Though I would be taking my school fees elsewhere.

Grammatical genders in MFL are colour coded (and have nothing to do with male and female).
The usual code is
Blue = masculine
Red = feminine
Green = neuter (obviously not for French)
Purple = plural

A lot of times, especially at the beginning, students need the colour coded to embed grammatical gender. Allowing students to choose their own colours was not the teacher’s brightest moments, as there are set conventions. I doubt it is a case of gender stereotyping, though, as it is quite tedious to make students understand that no, the table is not a girl!

If they had been told that I wouldn’t have been cross - they were told they could pick their own colours! Plus this is the vocab book which the teacher never needs to see!

PurpleOva

Blimey OVa tell me that was a piss take please.

Acopy that's really interesting (been a long time since I was at chool!).

What happens about kids with red / green colour blindness? In my work this comes up a lot and it seems odd they have chosen those colours. Or is it just so longstanding predating people worrying about that sort of thing and too late to change it now?

I would be fuming about this as well. As you say, it's one thing to ignore the teacher if they had been told specific colours, but that wasn't the case.

I think your letter is good.

Nothing I think the coding predates colour blindness inclusion. The purple for plural is annoying, too, as it is almost indistinguishable from black.

I’m actually going to see the head of year about something else now so will mention it in passing rather than all guns blazing ...I need her help with other things.

Still annoyed about it tho!

As described by the OP teacher sounds dreadful. I do agree that if OP's daughter was given the choice of any colour she wanted but still chose pink and blue but turned them round , that it perhaps wasn't the best choice , given the purpose of the exercise was to aid memory.

On another issue why do posters assume everyone is familiar with the English school system rather than give their child's age?
How old is year 7?

Scotland has a Primary 7 where pupils will be 11 at the beginning of the school year. Regardless of how much the OP (and her daughter) disagrees with gender stereotypes I would be surprised that an 11 year old had not noticed the pink / blue coding. However as I'm not familiar with the English school system (and I can't be bothered googling it) possibly a "year 7" pupil is younger.

It seems a slightly odd choice of those 2 colours out of all available. Possibly the teacher thought it might confuse other pupils if they saw the OP's daughter's list. However the teacher does seem to have handled it very badly.

nope, year 7 is 11 at the beginning of the year, turning 12.

here colours are blue for girl, orange for boy, as those are their favourite colours at the moment.

Dd is age 12...she is vehemently anti gender stereotypes so might have done it on purpose - or might have (as she said) just picked up the pink first!

Thanks for all the support here - as I say other stuff has happened this evening that needs dealing with more so will leave it for now! Will save up for when GI come in..,

Thanks acopy :) really interesting