Gender Bias in the Classroom
Leobardo Alfaro Mr. Lewis English 1301-005 16 July 2012 Gender Bias in the Classrooms In the essay “Hidden Lessons,” this appears in the textbook From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Mayra and David Sadker stands content that gender bias in classrooms damages female students. They lose their self-esteem, attitude towards teachers can change and their education is compromised. When teachers were being observed in their classroom settings it showed that they tend to gravitate more toward male students than the female students.
The male students seem to be getting the better hand in the classroom they would get more of the teacher’s attention, energy, and time. Female students are the majority of our nation’s school children, but are given less teacher interaction. Until this is changed more than half of the children’s education will be shorted and society will be lost on their gifts. “Dateline chose to show a segregated math group: boys sitting on the teacher’s right side and girls on her left. After giving the math book to a girl to hold open at page of examples, the teacher turned her back to the girls and focused on the boys, teaching them active and directly.
Occasionally she turned to girl’s side, but only to read examples in the book… had unwittingly transformed the girls into passive spectators, an audience for the boys. ” (Sadker 54) Girls in this classroom are of the examples of how their teacher favors the boys and the girls get the short end of the stick. When these girls get denied their time in the classroom what is their left to do? Maybe in this certain classroom there aren’t as many girls as boys so; the teacher focuses more on the boys. Maybe the teacher feels that the boys in the class need more attention because they are more behind in their education.
Either way girls shouldn’t have to have their teacher’s favoritism towards the boys. When the girl’s education is compromised that means their future is in jeopardy, when they don’t get the attention and support from their full potential. When they are not pushed and recognized they fall back and lose their self-esteem. When self-esteem is lost in young impressionable girls it is really hard to build it back up. Especially if the let down is coming from someone who is such a big influence in the girl’s life, and where she is suppose to be learning from not to be ignored or let down.
As this becomes more and more of a problem to girls they become more and more invisible to their teachers in the classroom. As their self-esteem is lowered they do less and less to become known and noticed in the classroom environment. “Two second graders are kneeling beside a large box… so absorbed are these two small children examining and sorting the materials, they are visibly startled by the teacher’s impatient voice as she hovers over them. ‘Ann! Julia! Get your cottonpickin’ hands out of the math box. Move over so the boys can get in there and do their work. ” (Sedker 53) The girls in this excerpt of the essay seem to have not been doing anything wrong or out of the ordinary yet, the teacher seemed to have overreacted for no apparent reason. To the most obvious it seemed that she pointed out the girls because they were girls and they boys needed things more than them. When girls are over looked like that they tend to have different attitudes toward their teachers. Girls have a very strong mind-set at any age so, when they have their mind set on a certain attitude it’s extremely hard to change it back. Award winning author Susan Faludi discovered that backlash ‘is most powerful when it goes private, when it lodges a woman’s mind and turns her vision inward… Psychological backlash internalized by adult women is a frightening concept, but what is even more terrifying is a curriculum of sexist school lessons becoming secret mind games played against female children, our daughters, and tomorrow’s women. ” (Sedker 53) In these circumstances it is easy to see why the girls have grown to have harsh attitudes toward their teachers. Sedker and Sedker make a claim of value when they suggest that a ‘majority of our nations schoolchildren’ have become ‘second-class educational citizens’ and point that the consequences of treating girls differently from boys in school has resulted in a ‘loss of self-esteem, decline in achievement, and elimination of career options’ for girls…” (Sedker 56) Their research and statements seem to have reached the conclusion that girls are for some reason treated differently than boys in the classroom.
They are lowered than the boys but by the instinct from the teacher. Maybe because of favoritism or because the teacher has less sympathy for girls. Work Citied Sadker, Myra and David. “Hidden Lessons. ” From Inquiry to Academic Writing. Ed. Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky. 2nd edition. Bedford: Boston, 2012. 52-55. Print.
