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...

I did Latin, French and German but didn't do this sort of exercise for any of them.

Having read Acopyofacopy"s post I think you are picking the wrong fight. The teacher's enforcing of gender stereotypes seems considerably less important than her poor teaching ability and inappropriate and aggressive response.

It would make far more sense for the teacher to allocate the colours and have consistency in the class. Children will look at each other's work books. The point of the exercise was to imprint the correct gender to nouns. I think that could be done more effectively if the whole class knows cats and dogs are blue nouns and tables and houses are red nouns.

perhaps wasn't the best choice , given the purpose of the exercise was to aid memory.

Not necessarily... Sometimes the 'unexpected' can help memory. Knowingly subverting a stereotype might actually work better than mindlessly following it.

I'm not defending the teacher's ridiculous and unpleasant overreaction at all. But I'm a (feminist) MFL teacher and I colour code for masculine and feminine in blue and red (I deliberately avoid pink though). If it makes it any better, I always bang on about the fact that grammatical genders have very little to do with actual sex/gender, and that the gender is usually concerned with the way the word itself is formed. There is nothing actually 'female' about 'la table' for example.

You aren't over-reacting at all, especially since it made your daughter cry. Teachers are sometimes control freaks who can't deal with a non-conformist.

I have found using blue for women pink for men makes people realise they hold silly biases and expectations. Really useful when presenting sex differences

1. Your daughter is far far too soft if she is getting upset by something like this at her age. I had to reread it thinking she was 7 not year 7. This is the most pressing issue for you to deal with.
2. The teacher probably just thought your DD might get confused later on because of the gender connotation of pink and blue if she didn’t remeber which she had used.

Also does she normally have issues with this teacher? The teachers reaction seems a bit loopy unless it’s been exaggerated.

Not necessarily... Sometimes the 'unexpected' can help memory. Knowingly subverting a stereotype might actually work better than mindlessly following it

I'm a bit sceptical about that in the context here. I don't think the OP is over- reacting to what happened as a whole. If the teacher's reaction is accurately described she is a terrible teacher, particularly given the comments by Knittink and Acopyofacopy. The blue/pink is a part of it but not the major part.

Racecardriver most people of any age are going to be upset if a teacher or employer ripped up their correct work for no good reason. That is the action of a bully.

Oh, I don't suppose for a moment it was a deliberate learning strategy on the part of the OPs DD!

I don’t prescribe what colours to use for noun genders in my subject (though I actually don’t colour code by gender generally, as we have to worry about case endings). I colour code for them but would always allow a pupil to use their own preferred colours in their work, as long as they are consistent. If she wasn’t told she had to use particular colours, it seems OTT.

And I know it’s just language and grammar, not gender stereotyping in life, but I have to admit, I’ve started learning a new language recently and am purposely not using blue vs pink or similar for m vs f nouns and pronouns. I am hyper aware of gender nonsense now and I don’t even want to add to it in my own exercise book!

I hate teachers who make kids rip up there work. It's such a needlessly belittling thing to do. And making a fuss about the colours she wrote in was petty and unhelpful. All I'm defending is the colour coding for gender. I do it in Power Points etc but don't tend to make kids do it in their books. Blue and red aren't strictly necessary obviously, but they are standard. A girl once challenged me on it (good for her!). I said "Is red a 'girly' colour?" She said no and that was that really.

their work

That was a typo, honestly. Dear lord - I should rip up my post!