Primary school are reinforcing gender stereotypes

[firsttimer20]

Looking for advice from anyone working in gender/political/education space.

The primary school my kids attend has just released the new inspirational names that each class will be named after. Only 3 of the 10 names are women.

I asked why this was the case and why there wasn't a 50/50 split for inspirational men and women. The school replied to say that it was left upto the kids to choose and as it was an exercise in democracy, they didn't want to interfere with what was chosen.

There are millions of reasons why men's names will appear more regularly (with nothing to do with men being more talented), but I feel so strongly that the school should have approached this exercise through a framework where gender was considered. Gender equality is becoming more important, not less and I shouldn't have to be having this fight on behalf of a 3 and a 4 year old.

So my question to you dear mumsnetters, is whether there are any organisations that work in this area which could provide a framework to my school to approach this. If a simple framework does exist that they should have followed?

Also, to anyone more articulate than me, I'd love to hear why you think this is important, not just for girls but for boys as well. I'll then add it to my response to the school.

@ThinEndoftheWedge

Sorry about the thumbs.

Should read:

Primary aged children love space. What about Helen Sharman - the first Brit in space. Inspirational for boys and girls.

Mae Jemison is an astronaut.

Mae Jemison was in the Lego NASA women set so it is entirely possible that year twos know who she is. It is a bizarre list though.

Would have been better to pick a type of person. Eg a local school has authors, another has artists. Then within that make sure you have a decent spread of men/women/name/disability etc. You could also spend some time learning about the people in question rather than asking kids to vote when they might not know who half of them are!

Just sayin' as she is on the list.

What? No JK Rowling? No Rosalind Franklin? And David Beckham is in there? This is quite bonkers.

We had something similar a couple of years ago. Some of the Y6 girls complained that the house names were all male, pale and deadstale. So the older year groups were asked to nominate replacement names. You tubers were amongst those suggested so management decided to go for colours instead. I only found out afterwards so couldn’t complain. What a wasted opportunity!

I think the school set it up all wrong. Not only should they have set a pre-selected list (100 names or so?)for all the children to choose from, they should also have added a three-way system or at least a two-way system to ensure at least the teachers could amend where the list from children falls behind. That is what teaching is: we guide them.

If you have a list to choose from, you will try and do more research and learn about those names, even if they don’t make it in the final list. That way, children will learn a lot.

Op- I just completed my dissertation on gender neutral pedagogy

This is why I fucking LOVE Mumsnet

You have a random but hugely important question and up pops..... an expert on gender neutral pedagogy.

Is David Beckham still such a big name that year 5 would vote for him, when they were 2/3 years old when he retired from professional football?

No way these were chosen by kids. Grace Darling was a Blue Peter favourite in the 70s so I know who she is and I’m not in the NE but I doubt most kids do these days. Delighted to see Stevie Wonder on there although he’s also an unusual choice and unlikely to the pop star most kids are familiar these days.

As for Michael Rosen - that’s a try hard teacher suggestion, clear as day

The school replied to say that it was left upto the kids to choose and as it was an exercise in democracy, they didn't want to interfere with what was chosen

That is a complete abdication of responsibility and an approach guarenteed to reinforce the status quo. Ask them if it is a concern that their approach to the curriculum results in children only aware of male achievers and if not why not.

I was That Parent on this subject with primary school. I was very careful to be fact based and identify the disadvantages to them but I was successful more often than not.

In this case, as the adults in the story, I'd ask them why they hadn't used the opportunity to discuss a range of role models and explain why the winning names would represent all the people in the UK in fair shares. But look out for 50% white upper middle/upper class males and all the minorities bundled into the women's category.

Grace Darling is on KS1 history curriculum which just shows the effect of outside influence.

It wasn’t really left up to the kids and they should acknowledge that - if every kid voted for ‘Hitler’ I expect someone would have ‘adjusted’ the results....

NeedToKnow101

ThinEndoftheWedge
Sorry about the thumbs.

Should read:

Primary aged children love space. What about Helen Sharman - the first Brit in space. Inspirational for boys and girls.

Mae Jemison is an astronaut.

Thanks - yes - I saw in the thread. I was thinking more about HS as a Brit though - and how, in my opinion, was very much lost in the public narrative when Tim Peake went into space and was widely reported as the first ‘British Astronaut’ - HS’s missions was with the Russian Cosmonauts.

No way these were chosen by kids.

It does seem unlikely - it's such a random set of names.

Grace Darling seems like an odd choice, though I suppose it could be worse. But there are loads of female scientists, writers, musicians, painters and athletes to choose from.

I couldn't usually get worked up over this sort of this but I had to laugh at how much David Beckham stand out on that list. And not in a good way!
(yes, he's brilliant but not 'influential' like the rest clearly are)

Oh that would really wind me up. My junior school had previously been all boys and all the houses were named after men...and it’s only just occurred to me!! Which in itself is a bit shocking. However, on the flip side, when DS was in Reception their topic was Incredible People. They did an assembly where they talked about the people they’d learned about so far, and every single one was female. Which I thought was fabulously, quietly subversive and a bloody necessary corrective.

Op but at least it looks like there’s going to be a space for one new name very soon 😳😁 so here’s hoping that it’s a female one!

I would also be mentioning about how misogynistic their default approach is if they don’t want to reconsider. And I’ll informed - both with regard to misogyny and to general factual correctness if they really managed to allow Walter Drake (have just google to check he’s not some famous new pop star or similar; doesn’t appear to be but there does appear to be a shop called Walter Drake that seems to be a cross beteeeb Lakeland and the aisle of doom at Aldi/Lidl etc!