caught in the middle – are gender differences real?
A teacher in the USA recently got caught up in a mini-storm about how she managed play in the classroom. In an effort to ensure that girls became more accustomed to using building blocks, with their associated developmental advantages, she actively discouraged and even refused access to boys, for an initial trial period.
Ms Keller presumably believed that society encourages the direction of play for children based on perception of gender, and this create artificial gender constructs – along the lines of ‘boys play with building blocks’ and ‘girls play with dolls’.
What did Christian conservatives generally make of her action? Let’s have look at one opinion:
The obvious problem is that Ms. Keller doesn’t get to decide what children are interested in because gender difference is not, as she desperately wants to believe, a “social construct”. Gender is a reality and as a result males and females, of all ages, tend to favor different activities. (Askthebigot)
To be honest, I agree with some of what the Bigot has to say here. I think it’s true that gender differences are a reality. It’s a obvious fact when we have very different hormones influencing our behaviour and therefore our actions and interests. And this is where I clash with some feminists:
What characteristics Violet? Just what? Nurturing, caring, emotional, illogical? Are those real characteristics or the ones we are all brought up to believe in? Next you’ll be telling me women should be teachers and nurses but men should be doctors and headmasters. (I use headmasters specifically and deliberately here) Unlike you, I do think attribution of gender-specific characteristics are derived from a patriarchal system. (Roughseas)
Of course, this argument falls apart with any rudimentary glance at studies in gender specific activities chosen by non-human primates. It’s clear that while some behaviours are learned from society (even in chimpanzees, if you read the whole article below), others have an obvious biological basis:
The results closely paralleled those found in human children. As with human boys, male rhesus monkeys clearly preferred wheeled toys over plush toys, interacting significantly more frequently and for long durations with the wheeled toys. Also mirroring human behavior, female rhesus monkeys were less specialized, playing with both plush and wheeled toys and not exhibiting significant preferences for one type over the other. (Animalwise)
The idea that gender is pure social construct is further challenged by studies into people of intersex gender who:
demonstrate that in the absence of sociocultural factors that could interrupt the natural sequence of events, the effect of testosterone predominates, over-riding the effect of rearing as girls. (New England Journal of Medicine, 1979)
So, why am I ‘caught in the middle’?
Because although I recognise there is a general tendency within both males and females to be attracted to specific activities, I don’t think this is a black and white issue based on rigid creation rules that ‘should’ be followed. I recognise that some women will have higher levels of androgen, making them likely to be more interested in stereotypically male interests, and some men with lower levels than average might be more likely to be attracted to nurturing opportunities. And some people will simply defy our ability to explain their behaviour and preferences.
But, most importantly, I recognise that within our unhelpfully imbalanced society, we push children into specific activities, above and beyond what any study of general primate interests tells us is natural. I recognise that both females and males are being denied opportunities based on these prescribed gender roles, limiting the potential and freedom of development of all children.
So, when one teacher introduced a half hour section of play, in a trial that was to last a month and aiming to overcome these prejudices, ultimately encouraging all children to make use of all toys, and redress an imbalance created by misleading stereotyping dominant in our society, I am pleased.
When everyone and their dog jumps up and down in fury that boys were being denied lego for 30 minutes a day, to encourage girls to make use of such an educationally rich resource, I feel dismayed that useful conversations and interactions about harmful gender constructs are being highjacked by the Victims of PC with a twisted organ to grind. And I feel caught in the middle that I acknowledge that some gender differences are, in fact, real.
Gender differences are pretty much an excuse to limit who can do what; in Christianity, the gender differences card can be played to deny women any and every leadership role. So they start with children to teach them that they ought to accept their role in life. Because if a little girl plays with Legos or an Erector set, might become interested in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics one day; she might go to school, then college, and then find a job where she can support and provide for herself. Then she might wonder why she, because she’s female, has to watch nursery at church when some guy with half of her education gets to make all the decisions for her because he’s male. She might not decide to get married and have kids, she will be usurping the male role / and authority and the Bible says that she can’t do that. (They say the Bible says that, it’s important that she doesn’t actually read it herself.) Now if they only let girls play with dolls and squash the idea of having their own dreams, then the only education they’ll need is a mrs. degree so they can raise their daughters to be ideological clones who submit to the loving, humble headship of their husbands who get to make all the decisions, have the last word, and can rise to any position of leadership in Church.
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I agree they are harmfully used to limit what both girls and boys do with their lives e.g. I think it’s rewarding and enriching (both for kids and parents) for men to be equally involved in the care of their children. But do you believe there are no inherent biological factors, specific to gender, that influence what we do?
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Not in the way that they teach it. They argue that because men and women are not the same, they are not equal. But no two men and no two women are the same either, and they would consider them equal by virtue of gender alone. They teach that real difference is this: men are given temporal priority and women are subordinate. If I affirmed biological factors, then the exceptions to the rules – like the women who just passed ranger school would have to consider themselves ‘less than’ the womanly women who affirm the biological reality of motherhood is the only real option for really real women. Likewise, if I affirmed biological factors, then men who lack the leadership gene would be incomplete and that’s really not the truth of who and what we are. There’s an episode of Star Trek Voyager where Kes realizes that her body is biologically preparing itself for having a child – but she decides that she’s too young and she has the ability to rise above what her biology would have her do and doesn’t go through with the rest of the process. We have the same capability, to either be slaves to biology and let it tell us that women are female and thus wives and mothers and that men are male and thus husbands and fathers or we can decide that we’re more than the limited constructs of our own biology and can exist as people with higher reasoning who realize that there are exceptional people out there who shouldn’t have second-class status for living however best suits them.
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Hi Jamie Carter, (1) Christians don’t tell woman they are not equal with men. They are equal with men, for both are made in the image of God. However, the equality in stature before God is different from (i) biological structure which (ii) play a big role in one’s desires and actions, and (iii) the difference lies in the inherent biological structure between the two sexes
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You argument about “If I affirm biological factors…then men/women lacking characteristic x or y would be less manly/womanly” is a non sequitur. For one thing, Christian who argues that men and women and different and thus have different roles are not arguing that if you lack a certain characteristic x or y, then you less manly or womanly.
Simply put, the argument is men and women are built differently. No man can give birth only a woman can. Nor can a woman impregnate another woman through the act of sex. Hormonal differences also tend to make men more muscular than women (again, the argument is not ‘therefore women cannot be muscular’). These differences are what Christians refer to when they argue that men and women are not “equal”.
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That would really depend on which Christians you talk to, for example: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/09/02/men-and-women-are-not-equal/
http://www.ignitumtoday.com/2013/10/19/men-and-women-are-not-equal/
I cannot tell you how many time’s I’ve heard men say: “Women can give birth (biology), so only men can be pastors (not biology).” By that argument, women who cannot have children should be allowed to be pastors.
John Piper famously teaches that the women cannot be police officers without offending male headship, women must interact with men in non-directive, impersonal ways. Were a woman to give a man directions to the highway, that would be offensive. I honestly believe that he’s reading too much into differences and using them to teach unbiblical ideas.
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I bought my daughters gender-neutral toys when they were young…lincoln logs, building blocks, and a set of large steel Tonka machines–dump truck, dozer, and excavator–that subsequently sat unused while they went after the sparkly girly things. Of course, I didn’t force the issue–we just wanted a lot of options to have around, so they could find their interests. I’m sure, if they’d had nothing but blocks and the bulldozer, they would have played with them, but it wasn’t their preference. Ironically, they grew into very outdoorsy, athletic women (one is a collegiate athlete) who don’t dress up fancy and act overly “feminine” in the sense of girly clothes and lots of make-up. They clean up nice enough, as the saying goes, but fashion, baubles, and facepaint aren’t their thing. Another thing: they’re tough, hardworking, and gravitate towards leadership, they thrive in math and science (despite having liberal artsy parents)–so go figure. I think that people are people, and given the opportunity they grow into people who don’t always fit neatly into any catagory, but are still being constantly affected by interactions with those around them. My kids are twins, and I’ve noticed that they’re just as likely to influence each other by attempts to differentiate (I don’t want to do what she wants to do) as they are by mutual interest. A lot to think about on this subject.
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My 9 year old has daughter likes sparkly girly things, loves to build and engineer, is gifted at science, and has great leadership skills. My 7 year old son loves cars and fast things, is a very graceful dancer, singer and artist who also is great at math.
My point is that we are all indivuals who are a mixture of nature and nurture. Some men are going to be more feminine than some women and some women more masculine than some men. As a general rule, there are definitely trends, but we need to be careful when making statements such as “men do this,” and “women do that.”
I agree with what both you and Violet have to say on this subject. It seems very balanced.
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“we need to be careful when making statements such as “men do this,” and “women do that.” ”
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. So many people have misused this recognition of general tendencies for one thing or another amongst each specific gender, that it feels difficult/dangerous to give them an inch by acknowledging some of the general biological differences. Certainly it’s most important in childhood when children need to have space to openly explore their preferences without a pile of expectations being forced on them. I’m all about redressing imbalances though, you don’t reach equality by wishing for change.
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“I think that people are people, and given the opportunity they grow into people who don’t always fit neatly into any catagory,”
I agree. And I see what you did when your girls were growing up as being similar to what the teacher was doing – making sure all kids had all options, and weren’t kept in the ‘play boxes’ that society thrusts on them. It’s a bitter topic for me because I had to fight to get access to my brother’s lego drawer. 🙂
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Why didn’t you have your own lego drawer?
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Let’s not tear my parents apart on a public forum. 😉
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When people in authority treat one group of people differently than others based on gender, religion, or race, that’s called discrimination.
Discrimination is a form of oppression and is therefore wrong or immoral.
It is ethically wrong (evil) to commit an immoral act in order to achieve some good end.
Consequently, the teacher should be rebuked for discriminating against the young men in her classroom.
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“Discrimination is a form of oppression and is therefore wrong or immoral.”
Well done, SOM. We are in agreement. Women, including me, have been discriminated against for generations by ignorant people only giving them access to ‘women’s things’ and by men elbowing women out the way when they try and play with lego. We’ve been oppressed. So it’s great that this teacher acknowledged the problem and tried to do something about it by allowing girls free access to this educational resource from which they were excluded, in a specific and very short time slot, so they could become accustomed to feeling entitled to use it, like the boys did.
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The teacher is a fault – not for for imposing gender based discrimination, which she did for what she presumes were then and still are good reasons to reduce it (and therein is the clue that something is badly wrong in her thinking when one acts contrary to the principle used as a justification)- but for forgetting her Best Practices.
The reason for organized ‘play’ is to promote creativity and social cohesion using various forms and platforms. Gender has zero to do with it. Zero. To organize such play means the good teacher has to intentionally avoid importing her own (or society’s) gender-based bias into the classroom and, if it is found, to then dismantle it effectively. Failure to do so should invite much needed criticism and correction.
Creativity is not gender-based. How we demonstrate it in the classroom can be… if the authority figure imports it. Social cohesion is not gender-based. How we demonstrate it in the classroom can be… if the authority figure imports it.
I was contracted to teach a ‘remedial’ class of adults in preparation for them applying for college certificate courses. (Generally speaking, a college here in Canada is for practical skills attainment – awarding a diploma upon graduation – whereas university is for theoretical attainment – a degree upon graduation). We were covering a mandatory section on basic calculus (a notoriously difficult one that had a very high failure rate) and I was connecting the mathematical expression of curves generally and parabolas specifically to their shape on a grid on the white board… with the open end to one side and curved end on the other using a black marker. I deliberately touched the marker to point outside the curve where the parabola bent back on itself and it looked pretty similar to a breast with a nipple. The class responded as one might expect. I erased it, apologizing for my lack of artistic skill, and did the same thing with thinner parabola that had the open end at the base and the curved end at the top. This time when I selected the point where it bent back on itself, my marker left an interior mark that made it look pretty similar to a penis. Again, I apologized to the class before assigning the in-class exercise of linking curves and parabolas to their mathematical expressions.
The students went to work with vigor applying what they had learned, teaching others who hadn’t quite grasped the important parts and, as expected, the women came up with equations that looked remarkably like an assortment of penises while the men produced an array of breasts. The volume level in the class was high, with students teaching other students how to get the curves they wanted on the graphs, and the laughter and raised voices were ongoing. To me, this a real math class: everyone learning math, everyone teaching math, everyone applying math, everyone doing math and everyone having fun doing so. The gender of the students doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn because the gender-based expression of what each student wanted to produce using math isn’t the point: learning the math is.
The administrator came into our classroom and admonished me in front of the students for what appeared to be my lack of proper decorum a lack of appropriate classroom management, and, when she found out what most students were designing, censured me for promoting lewdness. It didn’t matter that for the first time ever, every single student not only passed the section when tested later but most got perfect. Yeah, students hate getting perfect… especially in math.
The Ministry of Colleges and Universities who accredited my program in full and were so impressed with the level of engagement and learning by disparate students all achieving very high marks as a result made a video to put on their website to show to the public what modern adult education looked like today.The administrator was figured prominently in it while I was sent to the staff room. Suffice to say, the administrator did not renew my contract. I wasn’t sensitive enough to proper gender roles, you see.
As teachers and parents and authority figures, when we lose focus on important principles and give in to see appropriate practices as primary, then we all lose. When we focus on gender as being important enough to empower in our considerations, in our teaching, in our parenting, and in our socializing, we are focusing more on practice of appropriate group behaviour than as agents for the principle of equality between individuals.
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Okay Tildeb, put yourself in the position of the teacher. You teach a class of young kids, who during creative free play, swarm in groups (but as individuals) to different types of play on a daily basis. The boys go straight to the traditional boys toys, building blocks, and push the girls out the way if they try to gain access. These are individuals, yes, but the split is down gender lines and the girls are never accessing the building blocks, because of pre-existing gender roles reinforced by parents/friends/advertising etc and the fact that the boys (due to testosterone) are more confident and physical about asserting their ‘rightful’ place at the Lego table.
What should she have done?
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Been there, done that. The teacher should and did notice that there’s a gender-based problem with the toys. The question for a professional educator is how to structure this play so that gender is not an issue, not reinforced as a difference to be emphasized. What I did was very simple: set up play stations. I then assigned as meany teams of students as there were stations and then had the children play for a set time and then clean up before rotating to the next one. No one could move to the next station until everything was put back as they found it. The cooperation and team work was almost immediate. Every student played with LEGO and other building toys in my primary classes and the gender issue was never a concern.
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Tildeb. That’s fine, and fairly obvious. But the issue here is that this was a free play session. For whatever reason.
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Nothing is ‘free’ at school but always under direction and supervision. At each station, the children are ‘free’ to be creative but respectful of classmates and materials.
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“And not just familiarity with Best Practices but a deep understanding of why and how principle directs ethical practice… in education as much as anything else.”
Really? Are you sure? Or are you thinking about Best Practice in adult education for someone trained in 1970? You seem to be completely out of touch with Best Practice for early years education if you think rotating teams of kids to your carefully selected stations is what goes on in 2015. I’m shocked, honestly.
Do you actually know what free play is? Tip: the teachers don’t get to rotate groups of kids to pre-defined areas. You’re complaining about this teacher giving one group of kids priority for half an hour who had been excluded – and you would dictate where and for how long they go to every area? That’s kind of shocking.
Here’s something about free play for you to get a basic grasp on the educational context:
Click to access free-play-in-early-childhood.pdf
And here’s something for you to chew on from that document:
“Girls and boys from the age of three tend to seek out same-sex play partners, and this behaviour increases over time. The play of boys and girls is generally different. Boys engage in more forceful and aggressive play than girls. Boys are more likely to be in larger groups, girls in dyads when they play.”
So, I’ll ask you again, in the context of Best Practice early years education, in a free play session, and taking the research about how boys and girls play into consideration, how else could the teacher have dealt with the fact that the girls were excluded from the building blocks?
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VW, yours is a truly idiotic comment.
If I read my materials as loosely as you have done (“The primary role of the adult is to create both a psychologically and physically suitable context in which children feel secure, develop a sense of their worth, and that of others, and have the freedom and autonomy to explore.”) and based my understanding on your imagination as you so frequently do when responding to me, I would have neither the degrees I do nor the teaching successes and recognition I’ve enjoyed.
There is a world of difference between the role of play in very young and older children. There is a world of difference between inside and outside play. There is a world of difference between providing a safe, structured, and nurturing environment during free play and organized instruction time, and there’s a world of difference between segmenting curriculum goals and connecting them in every facet of the school experience.
Your patina of understanding does not serve you well here and it certainly doesn’t justify your low opinion of either my professionalism or character. I suspect I would find great amusement and selfish satisfaction having you as a student teacher in the kinds of classrooms I have had to teach and watching you implode with your self-righteous assumptions and presumptions. Good teachers are rare for just these reasons: they know better than to assume the latest research is like a cook book recipe they can follow and thus achieve spectacular results. But there is also a world of difference between the real world and the world of theory; what works here may not work there, what works for these children may not for those. The good teacher relies on principle and adapts instantly because the same principle can guide a multitude of approaches that avoids the very pitfall this teacher has fallen into.whereas the theory driven approach leaves the poor teacher unequipped as this teacher demonstrates.
The principle being used to justify this teacher’s actions is imposing gender-based play to reduce gender-based play.
Ponder the idiocy of this approach.
Now, no doubt that approach makes perfect sense to you on some theoretical level but to those of us in the field who have successfully reduced gender as a meaningful and deterministic characteristic in our students, your sense – like this teacher’s – does not do what you think it does. In fact, it promotes gender identity and imports all the discriminatory baggage this group identifier brings with it. Ensuring fairness of opportunity in the classroom by structure may look like child’s play to the uninitiated and dull of mind adult, but I can assure you is difficult to achieve and maintain each and every minute of each and every school day when you add positive and interactive management, assured safety, and professional accountability into the equation. Now add children of different languages and cultures, children with both behavioural and learning challenges at either end of the learning spectrum , and imported concerns from playground interactions and/or home difficulties, let’s see what you think of a classroom I produce filled with cooperative, creative, and buoyant primary children attaining and applying curriculum goals through play. Every.Single. Day.
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I see this is a sensitive area. I have no idea what kind of teacher you are, and I think it’s pointless to get into a discussion about it on an anonymous forum talking about general subjects. Let’s stick to verifiable facts, and not wander off on unrelated personal tangents.
Free play is now considered a key part of early years education. Of course the teacher has a central role to play in setting up the activities on offer and encouraging children to make use of the opportunities – but your suggested solution directly contradicts all the principles of the application of free, creative play. They’re not free to play with anyone of their choice, they’re not free to spend as long developing play as they wish on a particular activity, and, oddest of all, they’re not free to choose where they go. I’m baffled you think it could ever come under that heading (I’m not suggesting it’s a bad way to learn, I’m looking at it in the context of the teacher’s dilemma).
So, once again, can you think of a way the teacher could have resolved what you have acknowledged was a problem, in the context of a free play session? A half hour trial period of exclusive use for the previously excluded group, to see how it affects access to the materials in question in the long run, seems like a sensible plan. It wouldn’t disrupt or contradict any other aspect of the free play session, and I expect it would counteract the notion that ‘bricks are for boys’ in the allocated short space of time (one month) leading to resumption of free access for all in the long term.
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Would you be in favour if this teacher based access to play time material on race? On language? On culture? On ethnicity?
You see, VW, there are very real differences between individuals but there are statistical rather than categorical differences based on gender. Gender is like a spectrum with no clear boundaries that can be used to successfully predict things like behaviour and preferences (and creativity and analysis and so on). The same is true for race and other group identities that simply are not predictive of individuals because they yield only statistical influences across large numbers. Yet this teacher treats gender as if categorical. This is a mistake, especially coming from a person of substantial authority over these particular individuals. This teacher’s solution to a problem in her classroom she has identified is incorrect on this basis.
The argumentative shift to ‘free’ play – as if mandating specific time allotment to play material based on gender is fundamental to free play when it clearly is not – is a retreat and a diversion. It may be play, but it is as ‘free’ as any other assigned and organized activity with rules and expectations is. You criticized the solution of play stations I offered because it was not ‘free’ in the sense of non directed play that is well known to be so important in brain development of preschool children. This is not what we’re talking about regarding this teacher and her solution to a problem she identified as rooted in gender. ‘Free’ in this sense of the word has to do with the freedom students have to be creative with the materials provided. Basing it on gender – or race or religion or ethnicity or what have you – is empowering discrimination on this basis. That is the issue and that empowerment of group identity that is not predictive of the individuals who constitute its population goes against Best Practices in education.
Yes, I’m very passionate about the teaching of children because it’s a vital concern to all of us whether we know it or not. Yes, I have personal classroom experience as well as years of directed and accredited academic study on child development as well as many years staying current on ever-deepening child development research and application. Might that not have some relevance to the issue of a teacher imposing gender-based rules on primary school students? I think so because my opinion is professionally and not personally based. That matters. For example, a timely article over at Science-based Medicine summarizing exactly this issue about whether gender-based practices are scientifically justified, demonstrates my ongoing interest to keep up with recent developments in neuroscience and how this pertains to education. Dr. Steve Novella, a science educator and neuroscientist, concludes,
“…it is important to recognize when those differences are only statistical with large overlap. What this means is that in such cases it is not scientifically justifiable to treat individuals as members of a group. Membership in a group does not predict what traits the individual will have. It is therefore best to treat people as individuals.”
This pertains to the issue because it helps to inform our professional considerations of what constitutes Best Practices and why.
What you presume are my personal opinions that supposedly then drives my conclusions is exactly backwards: it is my professional understanding that drives my opinions to the conclusions I have. Those are well founded. And that fact is very relevant to informing why I write what I do about such issues.
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Tildeb, did you read my post at all? I gave links to research in primates showing gender differences and a medical study looking at gender in people who are born intersex. What part of these academic studies do you want to overrule with your link to someone’s blog? And the opinion is so irrelevant because the teacher had witnessed the girls not getting access to building blocks, she wasn’t making group assumptions based on gender.
“You see, VW, there are very real differences between individuals but there are statistical rather than categorical differences based on gender. Gender is like a spectrum with no clear boundaries that can be used to successfully predict things like behaviour and preferences ” That’s what I said in my post, again – did you actually read it? It’s frustrating, because we obviously agree on fundamentals, but how we would apply our shared understanding is completely different. I think what this comes down to is you won’t accept any form of positive discrimination because you believe by acknowledging the problem and wishing the problem away we can make an impact. We can’t. The prejudices and behaviours are too ingrained. This teacher was using a quick fix in the short term that would be likely to have longer term results (I guess she’ll never know). Her proposed fix would by no means be the ideal state in an ongoing situation but it would most likely have had the desired effect without causing educational harm to the boys.
But you can’t see past that because you’re happy that in your head you don’t discriminate, and therefore if you agree to treat people your version of ‘fairly’, life will become fair. It won’t. People have to make an effort to shift power balances and to redress inequalities in cultures.
Let’s clear this issue of free play up. I’m not shifting the argument, because it’s core to understanding her actions. I’m not being dramatic when I say I haven’t seen fixed groups of children rotating round ‘workstations’ since the 1990s. Did you read the publication I linked to? Again, I do wonder if you’re just arguing with me without reference to any of the materials I’m linking to. My daughter has been to four very different nurseries for different periods of time in the last two years – and without fail, following the current guidelines for effective early years education, the focus of the day is on free play to develop their imagination and creativity. Perhaps it’s different where you come from.
“Would you be in favour if this teacher based access to play time material on race?”
In an identical situation? Say for example a group of children from refugee families arrived and they culturally didn’t play with a particularly popular educationally rich resource, they had no confidence with it and were in fact elbowed off the table by the kids who had been there longer. Sure, first thought would be to make sure they approached the table in mixed groups, but if they’re being sidelined and not getting the chance to engage in enjoyable creative play together, it starts to defeat the purpose – putting them off, rather than encouraging them. One month of a dedicated time slot? They have time to practise and build confidence together, come to see the resource as fun, and hopefully normal service can resume. Integrating the different groups of kids in the meantime, and encouraging them to play together generally can be done in the many other play contexts that provide an even playing field.
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What that teacher did was so wrong, Violet, because she was imposing her own issues upon those children. Creativity, play, should never be socially engineered so it serves the wounding within the adult. That experiment was all about that teacher, not about the children or their needs at all.
Ironically it was also about indoctrination, something many atheists claim to dislike. In projection her own issues upon those kids, that teacher just sent the message to everyone of those girls that they are victims, oppressed, deprived of their lego rights, and that the boys are perpetrators, oppressors. The next step is for the boys to feel guilty every time they play with legos and the girls to feel guilty every time they don’t. It’s no longer about discovering what you want and like, now it’s about discovering how to set yourself aside and do what that teacher feels good about.
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@Insanitybytes. Let us not take the next step quite yet.
Rather you could give an example of atheists imposing atheistic indoctrination. Could you? I am now following your red herring and I hope I have the permission of our gracious host to do so. Since you once again refer to atheistic indoctrination and you have previously claimed to have been subjected to such by your very own parents, I would like to know what you are actually referring to. If you do have personal experiences about it, this should not be too difficult question. I however am truly sorry if this is too personal to you, but you could just tell me so, for me to better understand you. If you do not answer, I expect it is because you are otherwise busy and not just awoiding my question, as if you had no example of the thing that you so often claim to be true…
I expect it could be possible, that atheists somehow indoctrinate their children as much as religious people, but since I have no such experience, nor have I ever seen any, but it could be just that I am somehow incapacitated from recognizing it. If that is the case, I certainly would like to remedy myself. Please, help me out.
How do you feel about indoctrination in general? Do you accept it, or do you think it is wrong? If it is wrong, is it wrong when religious people do it? When Muslims do it? What about when people of your particular branch of religion do it? Do you agree with the atheists, that indoctrination is wrong? Or at least questionable? Or do you think your particular religion does not engage in it?
I hope you understand my skepticism on the subject, since you have previously also made some very strong statements based on your own personal experience of feminism, and from my understanding (and the dictionary definition) you had no clue as to what feminism even is.
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trigger warning – some agreement with ib22 will occur
Creativity, as I said, is not a gender issue and imposing through directed play as such empowers the very idea this teacher is trying to dismantle. On this IB22 and I are in agreement. Shocking, I know. Not everything she says is wrong.
To help handle the shock you must be feeling VW, think of it as an analogy to an analogue clock that is broken… it’s still correct twice a day.
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So, you think there’s nothing fishy about a belief you have that SOM, Insanitybytes and Donald Trump all hold? It’s interesting when trying to make society fairer and life for individuals more equal, is branded ‘politically correct’ and stigmatised by people with power. It’s great when Christians join forces with the alleged rational thinkers to fight for society to be made more equal by praying, or in your case, wishing for it. No practical action required.
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Belief? No. And not just familiarity with Best Practices but a deep understanding of why and how principle directs ethical practice… in education as much as anything else.
It’s not my job as a teacher to shape students to think as I do, to be interested in subjects I’m interested in, to believe as I do, to support what I do, to view the world as I do, and so on. My job as both teacher and parent is to educate children how to think independently to produce a happy, healthy, well adjusted, capable and responsible adult.
How radical.
Those goals I mention are attained in unique ways by the child learning how to apply critical and creative thinking skills in everything they do and often to marvelous effect. These skills can be successfully taught. That’s my job., How they are applied by the child in the school setting and at home are not. Individuals own themselves and each will decide who and what constitutes their identity. The pursuit of these goals is directly harmed by indoctrination and this intervention often done with the best of intentions adversely affects the scope of potential that can be achieved. Brain development, and all that, donchaknow.
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All activities should be open to everyone, period. When we look at groups, there are certainly tendencies based on superficial markers, but we need to let children grow into adults as individuals without suppressing whatever comes naturally to them. That’s hard enough to do in society.
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Of course I agree. But you seem to be implying that there are no underlying mechanisms, assumptions or attitudes that inherently discriminate against any individuals. If we just leave people to freely developed in an entirely unbalanced society will we ever see change? Or will the same inequalities be passed from generation to generation?
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Most certainly inequalities and assumptions will be passed down if we ignore them. Allowing each person to be themselves does not dictate that we ignore the ills of our society. In fact, I’d argue that allowing each their own inherently requires tearing down society’s harmful suppositions.
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The problem was not that the teacher encouraged girls to use LEGO, the problem was that she banned the boys from using the LEGO.
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I see. So half an hour of exclusive play for girls when the boys have been free playing with it all day, actively excluding girls, is a ‘ban’ for the poor boys? 🙂
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Pfff… Are boys or girls more inclined to play with horses? Horse shaped toys? Horse shaped dolls? Is it a perversion of something, that these days it is the girls who are interrested in horses and not boys, though from an honest and informed conservative point of view horses are clearly something, that has been for thousands of years the province of men? Is the change of interrest in horses cultural, or biological?
Parents see themselves as justified in teaching their values to their kids. They also see themselves as justified in imposing their rules, beliefs, faith and rolemodels on their offspring. If those values and rolemodels are healthy may can they stand a challenge from a single teacher? Or are kids too impressionable to meet the challenge? What if the values of the parents are clearly unhealthy, or based on falsifiably nonsensical, or even potentially dangerous ideas? Should nazies have the right to teach their kids, that it is all right to kill millions of Jews just because they are Jews? Should Christians have the right to teach their kids that it is demanded by Jesus to burn alive heretics and pagans? Certainly if a teacher started to teach kids such nonsense, or for example creationism, the parents and the society have the right to intervene. Right?
Who gets to define what values the kids are subjected to? Is equality of the sexes a value the western societies do hold, or not? Should women be allowed to vote? Is it a separate issue from children being taught that they should be able to follow what ever path they choose to pursue in life regardless of their reproductive organs, or some hormones they have as a result? Why would any parent feel challenged, if a teacher tried to tell the kids that they are not limited by their gender?
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” Why would any parent feel challenged, if a teacher tried to tell the kids that they are not limited by their gender?”
Because there was a half hour slot in the day when she stopped boys playing with Lego. And that’s not fair on the boys, apparently. Apparently it’s more fair to run with the status quo and let boys use their muscle to assert their right to the lego table. There were dolls for the girls, so it’s not as if they couldn’t fill their time. And if she left it like that, she wasn’t limiting them by their gender, they were choosing to be limited. Free play.
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I find this curious, but I have very little of my own experience I could possibly reflect upon. I myself was a boy who played with dolls just as much as I did with building blocks (yes they were LEGO) by my own volition and do not remember having been ever scorned for it, but my absolute favourite was the clay – play-doh I believe it is called. Playing with dolls did not inhibit me in any way from becoming a soldier, a metal worker and later on a bit of an academic heterosexual male. As a kid I wore a lot of my older sisters clothes, but I do not think they were very gender specific, nor was I ever bullied for doing so.
To me it seems the Finnish society at least, in wich I live, has moved from rather gender neutral material culture towards a much more gender specified by the efforts of the salesmen to create producer groups from younger and younger “customers”. When I was a kid there was no real separation to girls and boys toys, but today if you go to a toyshop you can recognize the separate girls section all the way from the door by the fact that everything has been packaged into pink boxes. I think this allready creates rather twisted, but a powerfull distinction to the minds of the kids.
The effects of enforced perception of gender from younger and younger age groups also seems to create some hyper sexual behaviour models, like for example young mothers who need support in brest feeding, because they find it ikky, as they see their own breasts only as sexual objects. This is a serious matter.
Perhaps I am a sort of conservative in this issue, as I find it not a particularly good form of progress, that the kids perception of their own gender is so much reinforced by the advertizing, market producer grouping and such. I find it however, that it is the people who percieve their own values as conservative who are in favour of this development. As typically such people have a very narrow view on historicity and assume, that because some gender roles have survived (or are loosely based on something that survived) from agricultural society to the post modern technological culture, they are some sort of basic values, that require protection, when the reality is actually quite the opposite. I suppose, this could be much because to truly become a conservative in values, one has to either be priviledged in a status quo system, or to percieve the “good old times” through a very intuitive notion of the times when they themselves were kids and all was well, not realizing that most of that happy feeling is only due to them being protected from the “evil” world outside by their own parents – and thus seeing the past only as far back they themselves have had any experiences.
Within the limited conservative experience world, one easily misses out the development that is slower and happens only from generation to generation. That change is unpercieved by the conservative, but anything rapid, that they were not prepared for, scares the hell out of them, because their model of behaviour is so strongly tied to their intuition, rather than their rationality and rationality is only ever used as a tool to “rationalize” the initial intuitive reaction to anything. As to why conservatives also often have a limited scope on how to deal with ethical dilemmas, I think relates much to them not being able to evaluate rationally new situations as much as to fall back upon intuition and thus percieving right and wrong only as authorative commands, rather than something that could be discerned from the actual situation. There might be a link to religisiosity in relying strongly upon intuition, there too.
As I said, I can not, from my own experience, say much about the particular case. Only what I hear from family and friends with little kids. When I went to school there was definately no playing there. We went to school to study – et punctum. Not to play. Playing was only for the quater of every hour of study outside, mostly unsupervised and often I am sad to say, filled with all sorts of bullying around the school yard. I am not conservative of those bad old days, even though I myself was not much bullied…
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How to tell if a toy is for boys or for girls?
Do you operate the toy with your genitalia? If yes, this toy is not for children. If not, then the toy is for both girls and boys.
Simple really…
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