From: sed@dynamic.princeton.EDU (Susan Dorward)
Subject: Re: Segregation by sex, cont'd
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: Princeton University, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: 30 Jul 92 23:46:27 GMT

In article <156os3INNpae@agate.berkeley.edu> you write:
>Rick Russell <<wrr3118@tamsun.tamu.EDU>> writes in reply to me:
>> I didn't see or
>> hear any male high school teachers denigrating women in class (or at
>> all, really); I didn't ever see a teacher talk down to a "girl's
>> level", I didn't ever see a teacher intentionally reduce the
>> difficultly of the work (e.g. in science & mathematics) to supposedly
>> make it easier for the girls;
>
>Well, I never saw it either, even in the mixed classes.  Maybe I was
>very naive, or insensitive, or just lucky about the teachers I got.

Okay, so you never "saw" it, never identified any difference in how
teachers treated boys vs. girls.  It was probably there anyway.  A
while ago (too long ago to remember names) I saw a great example of
this.  There's this couple that makes a living going around to
elementary schools showing teachers how to teach more fairly, to
identify and try to eradicate unconscious bias.  For this program,
they told a highly-lauded kindergarten teacher (female) that they
would be filming her classroom and watching for gender bias.  So this
teacher *knew* what was going on and really, truly, tried to teach all
of the students equally.

As the couple went over the tape, they pointed out the standard
problems.  The teacher gave the boys more feedback and more followup
questions than she did the girls.  When the girls and boys raised
their hands, the teacher seemed to go out of her way to ignore the
girls and choose the boys.  She tended to ask the boys more difficult
questions, and gave them more followup questions on their answers.
She tended to ask the girls yes/no q's.  The teacher went around the
classroom checking on the students while they did their math homework,
and all the way around the classroom she would just nod her head and
say "good" to the girls, but she would stop and talk to the boys about
their answers, ask them questions about how to apply this to the next
problem, etc.  It was amazing to see.  And she didn't even know that
she was doing it!  The audience probably wouldn't have noticed,
either, if the couple hadn't been there pointing out the patterns.

The couple went on to say that what they showed us was typical of the
teacher's behavior, that there were many other examples that they
hadn't shown us, and that they were by no means stretching to find
examples of gender bias.  They were everywhere.  And this was a *good*
teacher who knew that her performance was being examined for gender
bias.

So, there probably was gender bias in your classrooms, if they were
mixed gender.  It was probably just so ingrained in you that you
didn't notice.

Did anyone else see this program?  I believe that it was 20/20 a
couple of months back.  If anyone recalls the details, please follow
up.

Susan

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