Girls & Boys

I found this opinion piece from the Nation quite interesting. Katha Pollitt is countering the arguments of conservatives who say that gender bias in schools has now reversed. She recounts anecdotes from her own child's schooling, and from facebook.com, to argue that the charge of "feminization" of education is a myth.

I agree. This is the War on Christmas transferred to schools. The core complaint cited by Pollitt is that elementary and high schools have

too many female teachers, too much sitting quietly, not enough sports and a feminist-friendly curriculum that forces boys to read--oh no!--books by women.

Pollitt's own arguments aside, do conservatives really know so little about the times to which they harken so longingly? They should leaf through a Little Colonel book once in a while (The Little Colonel in Arizona has some relevant scenes). These tomes--paragons of the way things used to be circa 1910, when girls stayed out of politics and Blacks stayed in the servants' quarters--include some fascinating schoolhouse anthropology. Female teachers? Plenty of them. Sitting quietly? Much more quietly, and much more motionlessly, than anyone would accept today. (And the girls were just as fidgety as the boys.) Sports and extracurriculars? Little suggestion that they existed. Books by women? Hard to say, but I suspect the conservatives are right on that one.

In short? Pplllllllllllllllfff. Another maelstrom that's just so much hot air.

In other news, dear readers, classes started this week. I'm teaching (2 sections with MBAs, one with PhDs) and so my blogging time and attention have taken a hit. Sorry for the longer times between updates!




Edited to add: I just realized that I'm part of the problem! Here I am talking about feminization of education, and then I, a mere slip of a girl, toddle off in my kitten heels to dare to teach business to graduate students! The horror!

But just to keep score. Among tenured faculty in my program: Male, 8; Female, 1. And she's been living in Ireland for the past five years.

Filed under:

• gender