Failing At Fairness Summary

The dateline video was called Failing at fairness, how American classrooms cheat girls. It focused on gender biases in the classroom, specifically in math and science classrooms where female students have claimed to be uncomfortable. The video suggests that boys out number girls 5 to 1 in these educational settings and they try to get to the bottom of the issue and find out why this is the case (2010). A student at the University, Liz Pine who won the Westinghouse prize for science in 1993, described doctor workman’s physics class as a shark tank “it felt like I was taking a risk every time I raised my hand”. They then show a short clip of students in Mrs. Lows classroom. She asks a closed ended question to three students sitting at the same

Workman decided to offer his physics course in two sections, one coed class and an experimental all girls class. Female student enrollment doubled in the class, however Students argued that this was not fair and made the female students feel inferior by singling them out. I totally agree with their arguments, I do not feel that it is legal or right to single a student or group of students out/ segregate them based on any factor including gender, race, religion, or disability. Even though he was performing an experiment his actions were discriminative towards both classes but especially the all-girls class. I’m shocked that the University allowed this to happen. When interviewed about it Workman said, “equity is what it is all about not equality” (2010). He based that on the rational that all students are different. In a sense, I agree with his statement, however I do not agree with his methods. What bothered me more was that after watching him teach in his classes it was obvious that he was out of touch with his students and that his teaching style was either outdated or just not effective and the students were not connecting with him. With the coed class, he taught the lesson as he always did using his ineffective teaching style and technique. With the all-girls class, he completely revised his teaching strategy to accommodate the girls and incorporated hands on activities and group activities which were very successful. He came to realize that boys have “a build in gender advantage” when it comes to mechanics and sports (2010). But then when interviewed he attributes the success of the girl’s classroom to the separation of the genders and completely ignores the fact that it was totally due to his change in teaching styles. If he would have performed the experiment correctly he would have made the same changes to the coed class and monitored the results of that class as well. I believe that the larger overlooked issue in the classroom pertains to girls not