Chapter 5 Education

Chapter Introduction

Chapter 5 reports on the widespread educational inequalities based on gender, race, class, and age found in systems of education everywhere. Explanations for these inequalities include that 1) educators rely on stereotypes about gender differences, 2) schools provide teaching materials that promote stereotypical views of girls and boys, 3) families and states favor the education of boys over girls, and 4) standard beliefs are that students should train for appropriately gendered occupations (e.g., boys for science and girls for care work). Class-, sex-, and race-based inequalities such as poverty, heterosexism, racism, and nativism (hostility to immigrants) also contribute to a “chilly climate” in schools that impedes the progress of many students, boys as well as girls.

Gender in the K-12 Classroom

Teachers treat white boys most favorably, followed by minority boys, then white girls, and, last of all, minority girls. They answer the questions of girls and boys differently and give help differently. They comment on girls’ appearance, but not that of boys. Biases against girls are strongest in math and science classes. Girls are also sexually harassed by some male classmates.

What Difference Does Differential Treatment in Schools Make?

The longer they are in school, the lower the self-esteem of both boys and girls, but the drop for girls is much greater. This drop varies by race ethnicity. The decline in self-esteem for African American girls is not as great as for white girls. The drop in the self-esteem of Hispanic girls is the greatest. But schools can also be places where children learn to challenge gender (and race) and to be “gender troublemakers.”

Taming Warriors in the Kindergarten Classroom

Boys also have difficulties negotiating gender in school. They enter kindergarten well versed in masculine activities involving guns and fighting and are convinced that violence is legitimate and honorable in struggles between good and evil. Boys often transform neutral props in the classroom into play centered on fighting and warrior narratives, whereas girls play feminine games about mothers, nurses, brides, and princesses. Sometimes schools drive the boys’ warrior narratives underground or transfer it to the sports fields. Sometimes, their behavior is diagnosed as ADHD and they are medicated.

Medicalizing and Medicating Boys in Schools.

Diagnoses of ADHD increased by 700% in the 1990s. Ritalin is now the drug most often dispensed in school to students in the United States. Some psychologists argue that ADHD is a serious problem and that Ritalin has saved children from failure. Some even wonder if girls are underdiagnosed if their inattention is not accompanied by hyperactivity. Others worry that ADHD is an excuse for medicating normal boys’ behavior or behavior with social causes. They argue that the social structure of schools constrains children for long periods of time and that boys receive a double message to be active, assertive, and outspoken, but not in school.

Teaching Materials

Schoolbooks contain many gendered messages. Studies in the 1970s found that more men and boys were characters in stories and the subjects of autobiographies and pictures. In the 1990s, the ratio of women and girls had improved but male characters were still more visible and more likely to be active and involved in important areas of social life. Women and girls were invisible in introductory sociology texts for college students, relegated to chapters on family and sexuality, and underrepresented in chapters on politics. A result is that most students are ignorant of women’s contributions to ideas, social institutions, and history. A 2008 study of Chinese textbooks found that 75% of the characters in these books were boys or men. Women’s invisibility in reading materials promotes ignorance about women’s contributions to ideas, institutions, and history.

Bullying

C.J. Pascoe has shown that bullying can be shaped by homophobia, sexism, and inequality. Bullying is an important aspect of violence against children the world over. Studies show that bullying is persistent and pervasive. The chapter describes a technique created to help children confront gender bullying.

High School

The majority of research on high school is on boys, but Julie Bettie’s research looks at girls’ intersectional performance of gender in high school.

Counting Gender Differences in High School

Around 10% of all high school students drop out before graduation. Boys drop out more than girls, Latinos more than white or black students (see Table 5-1). Inequalities in money spent on schools accounts for much of this gap. Girls are more likely to complete high school and are more involved in extracurricular activities, except for sports, than boys.

Math and Science and Gender

Girls now outnumber boys in college preparatory courses, especially Geometry, Algebra II, Biology, and Chemistry. They are only slightly behind boys in Calculus and Physics (see Table 5-2). But ideas about gender still identify these fields as masculine. As a result, women may be less likely to recognize their abilities and pursue careers in these fields.

Vocational Education

Young women remain clustered in a few vocational education programs that prepare them for low-wage jobs. Young men are likely to train for skilled trades with median hourly wages of about $30 an hour.

Title IX, No Child Left Behind, and Single-Sex Schools

Title IX, passed in l972, made it illegal for schools that receive federal assistance to discriminate against girls and women. There is a potential conflict between Title IX and the No Child Left Behind Act, which encourages schools to try same-sex classrooms. Those who support girls-only classrooms say girls are silenced and their confidence is diminished in coeducational classrooms. However, studies of single-sex classrooms are mixed on their benefits. Some researchers suggest that girls’ apparent successes in single-sex classrooms may reflect smaller class size, more engaged parents, better-trained teachers, and stronger academic emphasis. Single-sex schools may be harmful because they imply that girls need special treatment to do well and that boys will not change. Also, single-sex schools suggest we should give up trying to transform schools to make them safe and equal places for boys and girls, or trying to teach boys to be gentle, unselfish, and helpful.

SAT Scores

SATs are an important gateway to higher education. Women are now the majority of those students who take SATs, but men score higher on average on the test (see Table 5-3). Explanations for men’s higher scores are that boys are better prepared in high school, that the test is gender-biased, that the format of the test coincides with the masculine style of test-taking, that the test rewards guessing (and boys are more likely to risk a guess), or that timed tests reward speed. The purpose of SATs is to try to predict which students will be successful in college, but they do not predict well. Women get better grades in college courses on average and are more likely to finish their degrees.

International Comparisons on Standardized Tests

Boys and girls in many nations score about the same on achievement exams when they have the same background. The biggest gaps in educational attainment are between countries, not genders. The highest math scores of U.S. students are about equal to the average score of students in the top-scoring nations of Singapore, Korea, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

Higher Education and Gender

In the past few decades, women have made remarkable gains in higher education, in some countries becoming two-thirds to three-fourths of all professionals.

Women and Higher Education in the United States

The United States now has the highest proportion of women attending college in the world. Women are now more likely than men to obtain degrees at all levels (see Table 5-4). The gender balance in many fields of university study has also become more equal as women enter fields once thought to be for men only, such as business, law, and dentistry. Similarly, men are today more likely than in the past to earn degrees in women-dominated fields such as nursing, elementary education, and home economics. However, within fields gender differences remain. Women concentrate in family law and men in tax law, for example. Race and class intersect to create other differences in the educational attainment of men and women. In historically black colleges, women make up 70% of the student body despite efforts to recruit men. African American and Native American women are a greater proportion of nontraditional age students. Women have made the greatest strides in surpassing men in college attendance in the poorest households (see Table 5-9).

What about the Boys?

Women’s successes have made some people wary of education for boys. They worry that elementary schools pathologize normal boyish behaviors and influence boys against school. The real issues may be related to race and class. Young African American and Hispanic men are rapidly dropping out of schools, but men from the wealthiest households are more likely than women to attend college. Focusing on gender in isolation makes it hard to see racism and class inequities in schools. Blaming feminists ignores cuts in spending that hurt everyone.

Global Issues in Education

At the global level girls suffer from discrimination by governments, families, and schools. Fifty-five percent of children not attending schools in the world are girls and 500 million of the 781 million illiterate adults in the world are girls. Low education levels among women are associated with higher fertility, lower-paid jobs, decreased income, and greater poverty, leaving women and their children in poorer health, suffering higher rates of malnourishment and early mortality.

Unexpected Connections Between Water and Education

A major barrier to education for girls in poor countries is the lack of access to water and sanitation. Carrying water is women’s work in many countries and can take up to four hours a day, cutting into school attendance. If schools do not have toilets, boys are sent into the fields to pee but girls must wait all day until they can return to their home or community to find a toilet. When girls get their periods, they may have to stay home from school if they cannot access bathrooms or sanitary products during the day.

Gender and Teachers

Gender bias in academic settings is called the “chilly climate.” In higher education women are clustered in the lowest ranks of faculties, are paid less, are more likely to be in part-time or temporary positions, and are tenured more slowly (see Table 5-10). They feel less supported on campus because of sexist jokes, sexual harassment, and exclusion from social networks. Their students are more demanding and give them lower evaluations, especially if they violate gender norms.

Evaluating Professors

Some studies find that students have higher expectations of women faculty, hold women teachers to different standards, and evaluate them more harshly.

Gatekeepers such as journal editors rate women’s scholarship more critically than scholarship of men. Women are still the minority in many faculties (see Table 5-11).

The Correspondence Principle

Some scholars argue that schools are organized to prepare students for future roles as docile, obedient, and motivated workers in a capitalist workforce. Some argue that we learn these lessons through the “hidden agenda” of schools: following the rules, accepting the hierarchy of authority, and working for external rewards (pay and praise). The hidden agenda is gendered in complex ways, helping schools to function as a “gender factories.” The schools’ hierarchy of authority is gendered. Most women learn to submit to authorities, while some men learn to be the authorities. Because of their relationship to unpaid work, many women value extrinsic rewards less and value more the opportunity to contribute to the community.

The change over time in the treatment of girls and women in primary, secondary, and higher education shows significant improvement in the United States and other nations around the world. The women’s movement has played an important role in exposing gender inequities and creating a more equal system through Title IX in the U.S. and the Beijing recommendations for nations all over the globe. However, education throughout the world remains an important arena of gender inequality that has critical importance for many other issues.

Short-Answer Essay Questions

1. How do teachers treat children differently in the classroom?
2. What are some explanations for the 700% rise in ADHD diagnoses in the 1990s?
3. What types of gendered messages do schoolbooks contain?
4. What technique might help children confront gender bullying?
5. What does Title IX mandate?
6. How are SAT scores gendered?
7. What is the connection between water and education in many poor countries?
8. How does gender bias play out in higher education teaching?
9. How are evaluations of professors gendered?
10. What is “the correspondence principle”?

Long-Answer Essay Questions

1. Over the past decades, there has been significant improvement in the treatment of girls and women in primary, secondary, and higher education around the world, but there remains a long way to go before there is gender equality in education. First, list and discuss the remaining gender inequalities in education. Draw on your own experience as well as the text if you like. Then, discuss what you believe are the consequences for women, for men, and for society of this remaining inequality at all levels of education. Can you suggest any ways to end inequality?
2. Write an essay describing the differences in educational opportunities created by the intersecting inequalities and privileges of race ethnicity, class, and gender in the U.S. and globally.
3. In an essay on single-sex classrooms, research Title IX and the No Child Left Behind Act. Offer a list of pros and cons to the single-sex classroom, and explore how the two pieces of legislation differ in this regard.

Critical Thinking Exercises

1. How do you think your education has been affected by gender and intersections of race ethnicity and class? Do the statistics and analyses this chapter explores support your experience?
2. This chapter reports that females are highly represented in education and perform well in almost every field. How, then, does gender inequality emerge in schools in the U.S.? How does it play out globally? Why do you think education in the U.S. seems to show more gender equality than other areas?
3. According to Bowles and Gintis, school prepares students in the U.S. to be docile, obedient, and motivated workers by teaching rule-following, respect for authority, and the importance of external rewards. How would school work if it weren’t structured along these lines? What kind of workers or humans would emerge, if not docile laborers?

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Barrie Thorne’s work on schoolchildren demonstrate about gender?
   1. That gender is an individual, psychological production that school affects only by perpetuating
   2. That gender is imposed by the adults in a child’s life, including teachers and administrators
   3. That gender and its absence are an active accomplishment of social relations among children and between children and teachers
   4. That the schoolwork children do contains hidden messages about gender expectations
2. How do self-esteem rates differ by race and gender in the United States?
   1. They increase in adolescence for girls and boys of both races.
   2. They decline for all adolescents, but they decline more for boys and most for African American boys.
   3. They decline for girls but not boys, and they decline most for African American girls.
   4. They decline for all adolescents, but they decline more for girls and most for Latina girls.
3. How do perceptions of African American boys’ behavior in school differ from perceptions of white schoolboys’ behavior?
   1. White boys are ignored, while black boys are scrutinized; this extra negative attention reinforces the perception of black boys as time-consuming for teachers.
   2. White boys’ disobedience is seen as naughty but endearing, while black boys’ misbehavior is seen as violent and problematic.
   3. Black boys’ behavior is seen as negative and troublemaking, while white boys are considered to be obedient, even when they are not following the rules.
   4. Perceptions of white boys’ behavior and black boys’ behavior actually differ very little, according to studies.
4. How are reading materials in schools gendered?
   1. Girls are asked to perform reading tasks far more frequently than boys.
   2. Boys are asked to perform reading tasks for more frequently than girls.
   3. Female characters are more visible and active and play more important parts.
   4. Male characters are more visible and active and play more important parts.
5. What is a significant determinant of the racial gap in high school dropout rates?
   1. Unequal amounts of money spent across school systems from one neighborhood to the next
   2. Discrimination in after-school activities
   3. Single-parent households in African American communities
   4. All of the above
6. What did Title IX do?
   1. It required every high school to have a co-ed sports team.
   2. It declared same-sex schools unconstitutional except in circumstances in which the school could prove regional necessity.
   3. It made it illegal for schools that received federal assistance to discriminate against girls and women.
   4. It offered financial incentives for schools to create special after-school and sports programs for girls.
7. How has the gender composition of college students changed in the last century?
   1. Men are increasingly gaining admission to higher education and completing degrees while women’s participation seems to be stagnant.
   2. Women are increasingly gaining admission to higher education and completing degrees while men’s participation seems to be stagnant.
   3. Women are increasingly gaining admission to higher education but very often do not complete their degrees.
   4. Men are increasingly gaining admission to higher education but very often do not complete their degrees.
8. How do class and race ethnicity intersect with the recent trend of males falling behind in school?
   1. They do not intersect: men are dropping out of education at all socioeconomic levels and in all race ethnicities.
   2. Upper-middle-class white males make up the majority of college dropouts, while African American males are more likely to drop out at the high school level.
   3. Race ethnicity plays far less of a role than class: working-class males make up the majority of high school and college dropouts.
   4. It is lower-income men, especially African American and Hispanic men, who are rapidly dropping out of education.
9. How is water connected to global literacy rates?
   1. In the global South, girls are often responsible for carrying water to their homes, a job that can prevent them from having the time to attend school.
   2. In the global South, water distribution in families is unequal, and girls often do not have enough water to have adequate energy or hygiene for school attendance.
   3. Many children in the global South are prevented from attending school by annual flooding of rivers.
   4. Research has shown a strong correlation between secondary education and consumption of sanitary water.
10. How is American school training connected to capitalism, according to Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’s “correspondence principle”?
    1. Schools create a microcosm of the free market in their control of supply and demand.
    2. The intellectual demands schools make of students, particularly training in mathematics and the sciences, correspond to the requirements of white-collar work.
    3. Schools prepare the docile, obedient, and motivated workforce that capitalism needs.
    4. All of the above
11. Men outnumber women in all of the following administrative positions, except for one. Which one is it?
    1. High school principals
    2. Junior high/middle school principals
    3. Elementary school principals
    4. College deans
12. The _________ is an explanation for lower levels of achievement among lower-income students which has been rejected by scholars due to lack of empirical support and racist assumptions concerning the organization of poor, mainly non-white families.
    1. culture of poverty thesis
    2. hidden curriculum
    3. structural perspective on educational inequality
    4. unwritten rules thesis
13. Which of the following terms does Barrie Thorne use to refer to elementary school students’ attempts to create separate gender realms for girls and boys through contests, chasing, and “cooties”?
    1. Neutralization
    2. Pollution ritual
    3. Borderwork
    4. Chilly climate
14. Observers have noted that boys will often transform toys and other objects into weapons to play out warrior narratives. This process of transforming available items into something else is known as _______.
    1. materialism
    2. bricolage
    3. symbolic annihilation
    4. neutralization
15. Research finds that women and girls are underrepresented as characters, authors, and subjects of children’s literature and textbooks, contributing to a textual world where women and girls are erased or not important. This process is known as __________.
    1. borderwork
    2. bricolage
    3. neutralization
    4. symbolic annihilation
16. Which of the following is true regarding the representation of women and girls in children’s literature since the 1970s:
    1. Children’s literature featured a higher proportion of women and girls as characters in the 1970s than it does today.
    2. Women and girls are characters in children’s books today in roughly the same proportions as they were in the 1970s.
    3. Children’s literature features a greater proportion of women and girls as characters today than it did in the 1970s, but they are still underrepresented.
    4. Unlike in the 1970s, children’s literature today features an almost equal proportion of male and female characters.
17. Which country has the highest proportion of women attending college?
    1. Algeria
    2. China
    3. Cuba
    4. United States
18. What was the first U.S. institution to integrate women and men in higher education by admitting women beginning in 1833?
    1. Wellesley College
    2. Oberlin College
    3. Brown University
    4. Antioch College
19. Which of the following is true regarding women in STEM fields throughout the world?
    1. Mothers in STEM fields in developed countries on average, valued mathematical competence more in their sons than their daughters.
    2. More mothers work in STEM fields in more developed countries.
    3. Economically developed and more gender equal countries have a larger gap in in mathematics anxiety between boys and girls compared to the gap in less developed countries.
    4. All of the above.