Hi Everyone,
Please read “Closing the Gender Gap - Again!” for class next Monday. The article explains the gender gap in schools in the United States, and the history of how we have tried to combat it. My portion of the class will pertain to curriculum as raced, gendered, classed, and heterosexist. Specifically, I will focus on how which subjects we teach and to whom we teach them can make a lasting impact on a child's education.
As you read, I’d like you to consider the following questions:
• Has your sex/gender/race/sexual orientation ever had an impact on what kind of student your teachers believed you to be?
• Have you ever witnessed a teacher treating a student differently based on their sex/gender/race/sexual orientation?
• Do you think you learn differently from students with sexes and genders different from your own?
• When you were in school, did you learn about important women, people of color, and members of the LGBT community?
• What are some historical events that we don’t learn enough about in our schools?
• When you were in school, did you get to see representation of people of your gender/sex? Did that affect your performance in your classes? Did that affect your self-esteem?
• Do you think that men tend to be better at “hard” sciences (mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics)? Do you think that women tend to be better at “soft” sciences (anthropology, psychology, sociology)? Why?
EDIT:
In today’s class we discussed the hidden curriculum. The hidden curriculum is what is learned by what is not taught, de-emphasized, or re-framed in a different way. The hidden curriculum also pertains to what is taught and to whom. We read a few examples from our textbook from U.S. history as well as the 2010 Texas Board of Education guidelines. We looked at some of the effects of the hidden curriculum from Closing the Gender Gap - Again! Lastly, we analyzed the low percentage of women in tech-related jobs, and watched a Microsoft commercial focused on empowering young women through representation.
We discussed the hidden curriculum as somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Boys and girls are expected to fit into boxes with pre-determined sets of skills, and that expectation pushes them towards developing those skills. This reminds of me of Judith Butler’s Performative Acts and Gender Constitution. On p. 519 of Theatre Journal, Butler states that, “…gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceede; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time - an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.” Butler’s theory is relevant in that not only do educational institutions encourage children to perform their gender in very specific ways, children internalize the hidden curriculum as a guideline for how their gender is to be performed.
To continue our discussion from class, I have a few more questions for you all:
- Why do you think the Texas Board of Education voted to approve the guidelines mentioned in class (e.g. excluding the names of the Tejanos who died at the Alamo, eliminating the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, not including women and people of color)?
- How much do you think the hidden curriculum has had an effect on your self-image?
- What are some ways that we can push back against the hidden curriculum to make sure that our education is accurate and diverse?
The class discussion that we had based on gender within education was very interesting because of how much it brought to light activities and behaviors that I have been exposed to my entire life, but specifically within K-12 schooling, that I had never really associated with gender before; such as the accidental, but intrinsic, gendering of gym activities. Prior to college, my schooling generally lacked history about women, people of color, and LGBT community members.
ReplyDeleteLooking back on the education I received, it’s interesting to note the amount of internalized gendered behaviors I was exposed to as well as participated in without my knowledge. When looking at my own experiences and the specific examples that the article gives, it is easy to see where gender bias appears within education and how it is created to begin with. While I cannot remember a specific example of a teacher behaving this way, it is easy to realize that over the years I was pushed towards the “soft” sciences while my male classmates were directed towards the “hard” sciences. This really shows how children internalize these social constructs and how it affects the way they perform their gender within the setting of education.
I completely agree that the hidden curriculum is not something that is learned through one event, but rather, a series of events. It is reminiscent of the discussion from our textbook about body politics and gender performativity. On page 79, it says, “People do not get up each morning and consciously decide how they will perform their gender identity that day. Instead, people internalize predominant cultural norms that gender their bodies.” The same way that we learn to conform to a binary in our physical performance, the hidden curriculum teaches us over time that we must conform to a binary in education as well.
DeleteSlowly, through hearing other girls talk about hating their math classes and hearing other boys talk about hating their literature classes, we learn that math is not for girls and literature is not for boys. As our curriculum continues to talk only about the accomplishments of straight white men, we, as students, learn that straight white men are the only people who accomplish their goals. The more we internalize these stereotypes, the more we perform them. Eventually, we make them true, and the gender gap is created. This is what our book refers to as stereotype threat.
Unfortunately, I think that the Texas Board of Education puts out the information that it wants to put out. It borders on the line of racism and sexism, for sure. It seems that they want the typical white middle class man's history to be put in textbooks, but nothing further. Not including women in textbooks definitely effects a persons self image. When a young girl looks through her textbook, and sees only men who were "successful" and made changes/innovations in the world, it makes her think that she cannot do what a man can do. It nonverbally puts an image in girls heads that women aren't successful, smart, or capable of history-making findings. Personally, when I think about people who made great historical changes in our past, men are what come to my mind first, not women. This is a direct effect of what information our textbooks are giving the young children today.
ReplyDeleteA way that we can fight back against the hidden curriculum is for a teacher to make sure that the information given to the students is balanced regarding gender and race. If it is not up to the teacher, then this should be a change that is brought to the entire education system. There is obviously something horribly wrong with who is represented in textbooks. J. Baker has said "to ignore women in history is to misunderstand the entire organization of society". This is true regarding all genders and races. There are more genders and races than the ones that are represented and this unfair representation paints an incomplete picture of our society.
http://www.socstrpr.org/files/Vol%201/Issue%203%20-%20Winter,%202006/Research/1.3.1.pdf
DeleteOne thing that makes it difficult to include women and people of color is the lack of record of their achievements. As we see in the Texas Board of Education guidelines, women, people of color, members of the LGBT community, and other non-straight cisgendered white men are often prioritized in the telling of history, and the erasing of other folks can be quite purposeful. However, until recently, people did not take the time to write about the achievements of folks belonging to marginalized communities - making historical representation difficult when it is wanted. This is addressed in an interview Emma Watson conducted with Lin-Manuel Miranda (who has recently made news for completely different reasons) as a part of HeForShe Arts Week about the creation of his musical, Hamilton, and the difficulty he faced to include complex female characters (Seen here around 12:07 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NbEbkVrVWY). Although he wanted to include the Schuyler sisters as accurately as possible, he found that very little had been written about them in comparison to Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and other white male/men founders. The two of them discuss pressure on women to tell men’s stories, and, how even when women did write, they were credited as “anonymous” or wrote with men’s pen names.
DeleteWow, that is astonishing to hear. As far as we have came, society still has a far way to go. I am interested in what you stated about Hamilton-- I heard it was a great play and I wonder how the writers ended up finding the information they needed on the female characters.
DeleteNoreen, your presentation was great. I like that you brought in a few things that i had absolutely no knowledge on before going to class that day. I have gained knowledge on the Texas Board of Education and also on the Hidden Curriculum, so i just wanted to start off by thanking you for that!
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think the Texas Board of Education voted to approve the guidelines mentioned in class (e.g. excluding the names of the Tejanos who died at the Alamo, eliminating the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, not including women and people of color)?
-Clearly, the Texas Board of Education wants people to be blinded by these things which in turn makes it evident that the people who make up this board have their own racial and sexist ideas. Its also pretty clear that they only want to publish the upper middle class people, as Jaclyn stated above which digs into the wrong doings of society in the first place. To try and keep people blind to the truth and have them thinking that there is only one "type" of person that matters is wrong on many different levels.
How much do you think the hidden curriculum has had an effect on your self-image?
-The hidden curriculum has had an effect on my self image to a certain extent because the things that i was informally taught in school, like how to act, are things that i still take with me today. On the contrary, the hidden curriculum is negative towards my self image because in school we were always taught to view things in one specific way, and now that i am in college i am learning that there are plenty of perspectives on things and no one perspective is "right".
What are some ways that we can push back against the hidden curriculum to make sure that our education is accurate and diverse?
-Just being open to the idea that it exists will help to ensure that our education is accurate and diverse. Being educated on what it is, is really important because it allows us to work towards making the changes that are necessary.
The Texas Board of Eduction voted to approve the guidelines mentioned in class because it is a very important issue that needs to be given attention. There never should be a time when certain parts of history are eliminated (e.g. excluding the names of the Tejnos who died at the Alamo, and not including women and people of color). These were all important parts of history that need to be taught to children. The Microsoft commercial did an excellent job, along with your presentation, showing that the hidden curriculum is an actual and very prevalent issue in today’s school systems. The hidden curriculum has had an effect on my self-image because as a female, I haven’t been taught about other females who have done extraordinary things. Luckily for me I went to a very small high school and I never felt that my teachers were treating me any type of way because of how I dressed or my gender or skin color.
ReplyDeleteThe hidden curriculum is made up of the lessons that children are taught not through the formal content of the lessons, but instead through the unspoken and unspoken rules and expectations that underlie daily life in the school and its classrooms. For instance, as described in the reading by Good and Brophy, teachers may have different behavioral and academic expectations for students based on certain prejudices associated with students’ clothing, sex and gender, race, etc. (https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/phil-157-fall2008/2007/09/15/the-hidden-curriculum/)
This quote explains that there is much more to the hidden curriculum than just leaving out important details. Hopefully in the future the school systems across the nation will put an end to the hidden curriculum.
Noreen,
ReplyDeleteYour presentation was very insightful and it was very interesting how you correlated the hidden curriculum with closing the gender gap. You defined the hidden curriculum as “Norms, values, and beliefs learned as a byproduct.” Since the hidden curriculum is portrayed by what is not taught but merely framed in a very different way, it could potentially have a negative or positive impact on a person’s self-image. Oftentimes, these norms, values, and beliefs can be conveyed within a classroom, in a social environment, and within close nit groups that could influence and pressure a person in various ways. This being said, these influences can most definitely help or hinder a person’s self-image. When it comes to the hidden curriculum in the class room, there are times when we are taught something that is completely unintentional. Therefore, we fail to realize that it, in any way, is constructing us to be the person that we are. Regardless of whether or not these impacts are direct results of what is being implied, we can refer to the gender gap when talking about what makes a boy or girl "smarter” what occupational fields a boy and girl “should” or “shouldn’t” work in, or in what areas a boy or girl will potentially “succeed in.” The hidden curriculum is something that transpires over time, as does our self-image. It is not transformed or developed over time, which means that it is continuously being shaped and altered by society. Great presentation!