Women start facing obstacles in school early in life.
A recent study by the American Asso ciation of University Women found that sexism still exists in school textbooks, that teachers pay more attention to boys than girls. This leads to a drop in self-esteem among girls begin ning in fifth grade and continuing to plummet all through high school. Educators say self- esteem has a direct impact on what kind of careers and options girls feel they can choose in life. Cheryl Bartholomew, a professor of development at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, has designed a curriculum to combat the self-esteem problem. Horizons 2000 is a comprehensive, gender fair curriculum which can be implemented in the classroom or used as a model to design programs that correct gender bias in educa tion.