Teaching Kids Gender Bias

[AeryFairy]

Steve Bowler tweeted a photo of an assignment that his 8-year-old daughter’s teacher said she did incorrectly. The homework assignment had a list of toys or activities, and the kids were supposed to categorize them based on whether they were for boys, girls, or both, with equal numbers in each box. The assignment takes for granted the gendering of toys, and that there is a “correct” answer to the question of which gender they are appropriate for.

http://girljanitor.tumblr.com/post/36011588555/steve-bowler-tweeted-a-photo-of-an-assignment-that

In today's world, where the majority of people agree that women should be able to do anything a man can do and vice versa, it baffles me that this kind of nonsense is being taught to young children! There is no good reason for separating things into 'girl' toys and 'boy' toys, and this kind of thinking most definitely should not be enforced in schools in this way! I wonder how this establishment reacts to boys playing with barbies and girls playing video games...

On the bright side, I love the little girl's reaction to the assignment. And, for what it's worth, I actually can't figure out the "correct" answers either...

 

[kazyeeqen]

I really don't see how she could have classified them much differently. Except the cooking and erector sets should be for everybody and the barbie and war games should be for nobody.

That's a crazy assignment. Who developed that and then who approved it? Is it widespread in the school or just one teacher? It's totally off-base and inappropriate in every way.

 

[AeryFairy]

I had a thought; that it might be appropriate if it was an assignment where the class then went on to discuss why they had put each answer in that column, in order to challenge any preconceived notions of gender roles the kids have, and to teach them that regardless of gender you can play with or do what you want. e.g. "why did you put cooking in the girls column?" "because mummy cooks" "does daddy ever cook? have you ever seen a boy cook? Do you think boys should be allowed to cook?" and so on. We have a course as part of my degree on teaching philosophy to young children, and this would certainly be an interesting excersise. But I can almost guarantee that was not the purpose of the assignment

I have no idea how this assignment came about, or how widespread this style of assignment is - especially as (I believe) it was a US-based incident, and I have no experience with the education system for young children in other countries. I just hope this isn't a common thing...

 

[kazyeeqen]

I had a thought; that it might be appropriate if it was an assignment where the class then went on to discuss why they had put each answer in that column, in order to challenge any preconceived notions of gender roles the kids have, and to teach them that regardless of gender you can play with or do what you want. e.g. "why did you put cooking in the girls column?" "because mummy cooks" "does daddy ever cook? have you ever seen a boy cook? Do you think boys should be allowed to cook?" and so on. We have a course as part of my degree on teaching philosophy to young children, and this would certainly be an interesting excersise. But I can almost guarantee that was not the purpose of the assignment

I have no idea how this assignment came about, or how widespread this style of assignment is - especially as (I believe) it was a US-based incident, and I have no experience with the education system for young children in other countries. I just hope this isn't a common thing...

Oh yeah, I wasn't asking you directly, just a general wonder.

I agree with what you said, interesting way to challenge gender roles, but if it's just reinforcing them that's sad. If it were challenging them I would think the teacher would have mentioned how the girl did a good thing by thinking outside of the box...

 

[AeryFairy]

That was my initial impression too. But apparently, that was what the teacher was trying to do in the first instance.

UPDATE: Reader Kama notes that the assignment accompanied a reading about a girl who wasn’t allowed to play basketball. The overall message of that story challenged the idea that girls can’t play basketball, requiring kids to categorize the toys and activities by gender as part of the lesson:

…this was assigned following reading a book about a girl who wanted to play basketball but was told it’s a boy’s sport. She kept at it, got better, and earned the respect of the boys who were telling her off earlier. According to the guy who posted the picture, the teacher was trying to discuss gender bias. Did the teacher go about it the right way? No, not really – especially when your end goal is showing that these biases are wrong. That being said, this particular assignment doesn’t really fit with the idea of a hidden gender curriculum. The teacher wasn’t trying to say that these are boy and girl toys, the teacher was trying (and failing) to point out that we are biased in our thinking about what’s for boys and what’s for girls.

From http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/11/16/gender-in-the-hidden-curriculum/

This makes me happy. I do think, though, that the teacher should not have told the girl she was doing the assignment wrong!

 

[SummerRain]

At a much older age we did a very interesting PSRE lesson (personal social and religious education) where we had "FEMININE" and "MASCULINE" columns on the floor and we all had to pick up an emotion/adjective and put it in a collum, and then we all discussed why they put it there and who would have put it somewhere else. So it was a discussion on gender norms rather than prescribing them. It was quite interesting because nobody agreed with me that "caring " should go in masculine. It was the first time I realised that actually I grew up in an unusually unsexist household, as a teenager I noticed my friends dads would make sexist jokes or comments, and most of them would refuse to cook or do the cleaning... boggled my mind!

Anyway I think it's ridiculous to teach children that there are toys boys and girls should play with. I don't have a problem with the fact that our society has gender norms, but I do have a problem with the idea that it's not okay if you don't subscribe to them.

ETA: I cut out the stuff saying it was silly, because it seems at least the intention was in the right place!