Growing Up

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Growing Up

• Men and Women Reflected in School environments
  and in

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Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales

• Magic can solve problems
• Strong male leaders both good and bad
• Females are victims, gentle creatures, witches or
  assistants to the main character

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• Little Miss Muffet
• Sat on a tuffet
• Eating her curds and whey
• Along came a spider
• And sat down beside her
• And frightened Miss Muffet away

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• Mistress Mary
• Quite contrary
• How does your garden grow?
• With Silver bells and cockle shells
• and pretty maids all in a row

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• Goosey gander
• Whither will you wander?
• Upstairs and downstairs and in my ladys chamber

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• Wee Willie Winkie
• Runs through the town
• Upstairs downstairs
• In his nightgown
• Stopping at the window
• Crying at the lock
• All the children into bed
• Its now eight oclock

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• Bobby Shaftoe went to sea
• Silver buckles on his knee
• Hell come back and marry me
• Pretty Bobby Shaftoe

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• Peter, Peter
• Pumpkin eater
• Had a wife and could not keep her
• Put her in a pumpkin shell
• And there he kept her very well

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• What are little boys made of, made of?
• Snips and snails and puppy dog tails

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• What are little girls made of, made of ?
• Sugar and spice and everything nice

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Father Gander

• Nursery Rhymes with a twist

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Father Gander suggests changes

• Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
• Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
• All the horses, women and men
• Put Humpty Dumpty together again

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• Jack and Jill went up the hill
• To fetch a pail of water
• Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came
  tumbling after

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• Jack and Jill went up the track
• To fetch the pail again,
• They climbed with care, got safely there
• And finished the job they began

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• Jack, be nimble! Jack be quick!
• Jack jump over the candlestick!
• Jill be nimble! Jump it too!
• If Jack can do it, so can you.

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What About Fairy Tales? Are they any better?

• Cinderella
• Snow White
• Rapunzel
• Sleeping Beauty
• Snow Queen
• Little Red Riding Hood

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• Most Fairy tales feature
• A damsel in distress, helpless and needing to be
  rescued
• A young man (usually a prince) who goes through
  many travails to rescue her
• A witch, usually an ugly old woman
• The damsel who marries the prince

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A Different Fairy Tale

• East of the Sun and West of the Moon
• In this tale, the damsel rescues the prince
• She is not afraid and travels great distances on
  the backs of great birds and other creatures
• In the end, the prince is rescued because of her
  courage

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Why Is This Important?

• One of my neighbors young 4 year old son stood
  in the middle of the road holding his arms out.
  
• He refused his parents imperatives to come back
• He screamed loudly when he was carried to the
  house
• He said one of his favorite cartoon characters
  had done this

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But what happens in school to boys and girls?

• In the average elementary school classroom, more
  boys than girls are asked repeatedly to sit down
• In the average elementary school classroom, more
  girls than boys are asked repeatedly to stop
  talking

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Modeling

• Children have a propensity to emulate what they
  see and hear
• How many of you in the audience have ever put on
  a superman cape and tried to jump off a ledge or
  roof?

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Teachers Depend on Stereotypical Constructs

• Girls are talkative
• Girls are neat
• Girls will be cooperative
• Girls will play cooperatively
• Girls are pretty
• Girls need assistance
• Girls will use indirect aggression

• Boys are unruly
• Boys are messy
• Boys will make noise
• Boys will compete
• Boys do well with numbers
• Boys can figure it out
• Boys are athletic
• Boys will fight

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Pygmalion Effect

• Both sexes look for confirmation of their
  preexisting beliefs or stereotypes, and both will
  tend to see any confirming behavior as valid and
  predictive of future behavior.

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Changes

• Girls do better is school early on. They learn
  to read faster than do boys.
• By middle school, however, being popular is rated
  higher than academic achievement

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Changes

• At this age boys begin to excel in math
• If girls dont succeed in math they attribute it
  to themselves and their skills and knowledge
• If boys dont succeed they describe the
  information not useful to them

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Changes

• At this age boys scores on tests get better than
  those of girls
• Males seem to follow their gender ideal of
  competitiveness and strength
• Carole Gilligan says at this stage girls go
  underground

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Teacher Biases

• Professors learn boys names faster
• Professors maintain eye contact with boys more
• Professors respond more to males and give them
  deeper explanations
• Faculty call on male students more often
• Female students are often interrupted or ignored

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• The hidden curriculum that exists within the
  educational system reinforces view of women as
  subordinate, deferential, and powerless.

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• The hidden c urriculum also reinforces views of
  men that are dominant, independent and oriented
  toward achievement

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• Hidden curriculum creates a cycle of downward
  intellectual mobility among females

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Gender Stratification

• Positions of authority in schools are typically
  occupied by men, creating an expectation of men
  as authority figures
• Women more typically occupy lower status teaching
  and support positions

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• These appropriate positions limit career
  aspirations of female and minority students

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• Some researchers believe single-sex education may
  be preferable to eliminate these issues

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Curricular content

• Curriculum at all levels reflect the hidden
  curriculum

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• Instructional materials, such as elementary
  school readers misrepresent the White Male as
  standard white men are overrepresented and women
  and minorities underrepresented

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• Despite some efforts males are still represented
  in more active and visible ways than females
• Females are still depicted as being in need of
  assistance

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• This curriculum material often makes women
  invisible in public life
• Womens contributions to literature, history and
  science are minimized or overlooked altogether

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• Using the white male as standard misrepresents
  the breadth of human experience
• Thus, it diminishes education

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• Teachers often give unequal attention to male and
  female students
• Teachers consistently give more
  attention--positive and negative--to male students

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• Professors take female students less seriously
• Female students are praised for their appearance,
  personalities, or nurturing nature
• Male students receive praise for their academic
  accomplishments

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• More time is given to counseling and advising
  male students
• Teaching styles that value assertion and
  forcefulness are more conducive to masculine ways
  of learning and expressing ideas
• Sexual harassment where women are viewed as
  sexual objects rather than competent individuals
  reflects female devaluation

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• Differences in teaching style displayed through
  verbal and nonverbal communication consistently
  provide less recognition and encouragement for
  female students

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• Eliminate the boys will be boys and the girls
  will be girls mentality

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• It seems that the early images, roles, an
  distinctions we learn as children are carried on
  through school through the university level

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Male or Female

• Ask yourselves these questions
• What are your most and least favorite subjects?
• How do you spend time between classes?
• What do you get praised or criticized for?
• How do you get noticed, and by whom?
• What do you like most or least about being in
  class?
• How can you tell who is the best student and the
  worst student

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• What about your own experience?