Gender Equity

Gender Equity

            The challenge was to go to the school and see diversity.  There were no students or teachers.  The hallway was dark and the doors had to be opened with a key.  Looking around the room there were shapes for recognition, letters for the alphabet, numbers for counting, directions for behavior and TEKS of what is being taught.  Missing?  Diversity for the social setting. 

            What was being taught in the classroom was very evident.  What was not being taught in the classroom took a keen awareness.  One might say a deliberate look with anticipation.  Looking around the empty room, the visual that was lacking was the social diversity.  Where are the people?  Where is the ethnicity?  Where are the genders?  John Dewey would have put characters of different ethnicities and races on the wall so students could have learned as they played.  Students would have unconsciously experienced social awareness by the visual stimulation of the diversity around them.  Dewey believed this type of play and learn for young students prepared them with skills they would need later in real experiences with diverse people.  Dewey’s philosophy in education used settings to prepare students for the life experiences in society. 

            Civic Education was a philosophy in the early 1900s.  In part, it brought awareness to one’s own community.  If a young student was not exposed to signs of diversity in the education process, then the experience would be met with unpreparedness in real life situations.  Education played a dominant role for social preparation for genders.  The ground work for the foundation of the training is found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings.   Man was to be strong and active and the woman should be weak and passive.  Gender training took on the characteristics of education philosophy.  To change the education, the philosophy needed to change.  Training for girls consisted of playing with dolls, drawing, writing, counting, and reading.  The schooling prepared women for their role taking care of man and the house. 

            Seneca Falls challenged those beliefs so women like minorities could be free and equal as white men were.  Gender bias and inequalities are still being challenged today.  Education is still carrying the banner of inequality.  But, has there been a different voice?  Judith Kleinfeld goes on record in 1998 in her paper “The Myth That Schools Shortchange Girls”  that girls are not inferior to boys.  As a matter of fact the research has concluded that in the area of testing girls scored a little higher than boys.  In preferential treatment in the classroom, girls get more attention.  The real inequality is that African American boys do not get the needed educational attention because the perceived need for girls is greater.  Don’t see that on the walls of an empty classroom much.

            The David School in Kentucky focused on two low performing white males in a rural town.  The camera spent three years documenting the strategies to keep these young men in school through graduation.  Why did they not feature girls?  There were plenty in the school with the same disposition as the boys.  The David School focused their attention on the boys when the cameras were on.  What little was shown of women, they were mostly housewives struggling in their relationships with their husbands.   The principal and teachers were professionals but still taught conservative roles for boys and girls through the biblical teachings that the school espouses.  Is the tide of equality going to get past traditions and customs?  I do not know.  The traditions and customs are very dominant in our social society.  Could be too dominant.