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'Good Morning Boys and Girls!'
When a simple greeting engenders stereotypes
- Think, if a teacher would use race or ethnicity labels in the same way: "Good morning, whites and blacks!" Or "Latinos, get your backpacks now!'' This is one of many ways teachers focus gender in their speech, acts, and behavior. But word hurts and discriminates!
- Teachers' use of gender labels 'can cause children performing poorly on the tasks at which they would normally excel.' That is a stereotype threat often occurring in maths or other applied subjects.
- As studies expose, thinking about gender may cause girls performing considerably worse in a difficult math test or problem than they would normally because 'they worry about confirming others' beliefs that girls are bad at math'. This is similar to the findings that 'African Americans also underperform on intelligence tests when thinking about race' (Christakis, 2013).
- Another important reason is, teachers often inadvertently highlight gender in the classroom with their behavior, including language. That can be replaced with a new morning greeting: "Good morning, students!"
- A number of articles show that stereotyping can bias teachers’ assessment and grades, but the impact of such biases has yet to be addressed : teachers’ biases generate self-fulfilling prophecies (Jussim and Eccles (1992), produce stereotype threats (Steele and Aronson,1995), affect students’ interest in a subject (Marsh & Craven,1997), and affect students’ levels of effort (Mechtenberg, 2009) (In Terrier, 2016).
- Does 'equal' mean 'identical'?
There might always be confusion regarding equality and differences between boys and girls, such as, since they are not the same, they might not be equal! However, feminism is not a call for recognizing males and females as identical, or they are rather "indistinguishable on all behavior, preferences, and abilities." Neither we strive for eliminating all these differences, or equal representation everywhere. It is all about having the equal right to everything that the boys or the girls (or, males and females) need! It is all against depriving any of the two groups for only being either boys or girls.
- What we seek, equality or equity?
No doubt, the term ‘discrimination’ often implies the necessity of 'equality' in practices, which we often misunderstood in many contexts. Gender equality does not generally mean that we should always treat males and females as the same."Given the existence of biological sex differences, it is reasonable for males and females to have different legal rights in some instances". For example, only females can ever require maternity leave specifically for pregnancy and birth while males require parental leave for raring child. Hence, "what has required it is not the equal treatment that is required, instead 'equitable treatment."
Equity is "recognizing that differences in ability," that is, "fairness often requires treating people differently so that they can achieve the same outcome." Sometimes equity is needed more than equality to stop gender discriminations. Girls' or boys' different learning styles involve and require more equity than equality! It is to note, girls or boys are 'at no inherent disadvantage due to a lack of ability that warrants differential treatment.' In this case, we gender equality can be "achieved just by holding everyone to the same standard."
The problem arises when we exercise the ‘irrational gender bias’ that both the boys and girls usually suffer.
(Alba, 2018)
Alba, B. (2018) To achieve gender equality, we must first tackle our unconscious biases. Link: https://theconversation.com/to-achieve-gender-equality-we-must-first-tackle-our-unconscious-biases-92848
Christakis, E. (2013). Do Teachers Really Discriminate Against Boys? Link: http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discriminate-against-boys/
Terrier, C. (2016). Boys Lag Behind: How Teachers’ Gender Biases Affect Student Achievement. Link: https://seii.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.07-Terrier-1.pdf
Bigler. R. (2005), 'Good Morning Boys and Girls': https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2005/good-morning-boys-and-gi
Scott, C. (2014). Educating boys – and girls. https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/educating-boys-and-girls
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