Part One
A few years ago Myra and David Sadker published a book called “Failing at Fairness: How America’s Schools Cheat Girls.” They spent 20 years collecting evidence about boys and girls attitudes towards school and each other. It is the most comprehensive look at the bias girls face from preschool through high school. It found that students who have survived this treatment in middle and high school experience a continuing erosion of self-confidence in many colleges and universities.
“There is no doubt that girls show up on their first day of grammar school just as ready, willing and able to succeed as do boys. At the elementary school level, girls and boys scored equally high in math and science, but by the middle school years girl’s achievement in these areas, particularly in science begins to take a downward slide.
The Sadkers’ showed in their survey of classroom settings across the country that teachers call on boys more frequently, spend more time with them and encourage their initiative and inquisitiveness more than they do girls. By grade six, girls have become more tentative, far less likely to call out answers and more reluctant to take part in class demonstrations.
The slip has been attributed to the efforts of the lingering perception that science and math are simply things “that men do.” But, even when girls do well in these subjects, they receive less encouragement to pursue such disciplines, the study stated.
Although differences in math achievement are narrowing, the study said, the gender gap in science may be increasing. In addition, girls seldom get a chance to learn about the accomplishments of women. I am in agreement that a majority of visual arts and narrative materials are overwhelming male dominated. Even the central them in movies is dominated with violence against women.
Once children enter middle school, the situation worsens, Girls who have previously held the edge in subjects, including mathematics, begin to lose points in every category of national tests. This decline most precipitous in math, continues throughout high school, so that by the time juniors take National Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Tests, boys outscore girls by an average of 50 points. While 18,000 boys typically reach the highest PSAT categories only 8,000 girls do.
Acting President of the AAUW Sharon Schuster commissioned a study that reported that of 13 popular U.S. history texts revealed that 1% of the 13 textbooks had any material on women, and women’s lives were often trivialized, distorted, or omitted.
A review of 35 major reports over two decades found only four that made any substantive references to girl’s problems in the educational system. Further, the report found that sexual harassment of girls by boys is on the rise, in part, the Sadker’s stated, because school authorities tend to dismiss the incidents a “harmless instances of “boys being boys.”
Sadly, this is true on many elementary campuses. Some teachers seem to feel that girls need to learn to handle themselves in these types of situations. However, when I speak to former female students they are acutely aware that the boys are being treated differently. Many give up on taking their complaints to the teachers because of the lack of support they receive. They feel that the teachers feel that somehow they must have contributed to the problem. I have found that many girls begin their academic decline because the boys who instigate many of the problem always manage to get the teacher attention and multiple second tries to get it right. Therefore, the girls begin to emulate the boy’s behavior in a effort to receive the same amount of attention. The new problem is now the attention is based on negative behavior and not academic achievement.
Although girls surpass boys academically in the early grades, outdistancing them in all the elementary subjects, by middle school the boys have not only caught up but have begun to sprint ahead, not only in math and science, but in the subjects where girls had the most conspicuous lead: spelling, reading, history and geography.
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