The Battle of the Sexes
All students deserve an education that nurtures them, providing opportunities and experiences that inspire their creative and intellectual minds. Whether a student gets this education from a man or a woman should not make a difference. The fact of the matter is that in many cases the gender of a teacher does affect a student's ability to learn. In many instances, it also matters to some teachers if the student is a girl or a boy. Why would this be so? From research and personal observations and experiences, I will answer this question.
At the elementary school level, the majority of teachers are women. In an experiment form the University of California, Los Angeles, boys were found to have better reading scores than the girls when "taught" by a machine. When a female teacher was brought in to give the lesson, the girls outperformed the boys (Thomas 122). Why is this? Maybe it's the difference in the behavior styles of the boys and girls. David Thomas, in his essay "The Mind of Man", says, "Boys are, across all cultures, much more boisterous and overly competitive than girls. They seek out physical competition ... this makes them harder to control than girls." Little boys create more distractions by being loud whereas girls are more docile and less disruptive. Tony Mooney, a secondary- school headmaster, says, "Women teachers find boys too noisy... and reward more 'feminine' behavior" (qtd. in Thomas 121). I am one of those women teachers that like the quietness of girls. From experiences of the past, I would say that most other female teachers feel the same way I do.
I can remember several instances in the past involving situations that concerned my brothers in relation to their education. My brother John and I attended the same elementary school. Since I was four grades ahead of him, he eventually ended up with many of the same teachers I had during my elementary school years. I went to pick John up from his second grade class as I did every day. One day in particular though, his teacher, Mrs. Janet Nitahara, who by the way was one of my favorite teachers, called me in to discuss John's behavior. When I walked in to the class I saw my brother sitting in the corner of the room in a chair. Mrs. Nitahara said that he talked too much and needed to learn how to be quiet and behave in class like I used to.
Sadker, Myra, David Sadker, and Susan Klein. "The Issue of Gender in Elementary and Secondary Education." Review of Research in Education 17 (1991): 269. JSTOR. Web. 14 Mar. 2012.
Women have been oppressed solely due to their sex. This is noticeable in the education system where females are treated differently than males. Although we have improved drastically in the last few years in recognizing that women deserve the same privileges as men do, there are still many obstacles to overcome. Weber (2010) gives an example of this through a person experience of hers. She had noticed that even though more girls enroll in school, quality in education is still compromised.
Westwood, M. “What are examples of Verbal, Situational< and Dramatic Irony in ‘The Story of an Hour.’” E-Notes. E-Notes, Inc., 30 Sept 2013. Web. 17 March 2014
Cheerleading is one of America’s oldest activities. Cheerleading started in the late 1880’s by all-male “pep clubs.” During a football game in 1898, Johnny Campbell was the first “cheerleader” to grace the field by leading the crowd in a now popular University of Minnesota chant. Afterwards, squads began to start up in colleges throughout the country as “yell leaders.” Although cheerleading is a considered a female sport, women didn’t show up on cheer squads until 1923. Female cheerleading became more frequent due to World War Ⅱ (Purvey). Many famous people are known to have been a part of a cheer squad, including George W. Bush who was “head” cheerleader at Phillips Academy in 1968 (Tho...
Cheerleading has not always been a feminine sport. In the 1880’s, Princeton University created an all-male pep club to the football game against the University of Minnesota. Since then cheerleading has evolved profoundly. In the late 80’s Cheerleading competitions began with the help of the Universal Cheer Association. Cheerleading Competitions require a vast majority of time dedicated to practices and teammates. The process of creating a routine no longer than two-minutes and thirty-seconds, with at least one cheer, and a segment of music is very time consuming and stressful on the squad. With the help of choreographers and leaders the squad is able to produce a routine that represents their school and exhibits all their hard work in a matter
Cheerleading is more than pom-poms, short skirts, and bows. Bill Pennington, an award-winning journalist, sportswriter, and author, articulates the need for aggressive training and a strengthening of regulations to minimize the number student-athletes injured subsequently to cheer activities. Pennington’s article, “As Cheerleaders Soar Higher, So does the Danger”, first published on March 31, 2007, in The New York Times. Incorporated in the article he describes cheer in this way, “For decades, they stood by safe and smiling, a fixture on America’s sidelines” (Pennington). This article appeared in the sports section of The New York Times and the distribution to readers included print as well as the internet. Although this newspaper targets the
Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. 11th . New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 476-477. Print.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Heritage of American Literature. Ed. James E. Miller. Vol 2. Austin: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.487.Print.
Sending a child to a gender based school, is a very big decision to make. The decision is so big, that looking at what research has to say about the topic could alter one’s decision to send their child to a gender based school. “Educators must apply different approaches in teaching make, and female students” (Gurian). This is said by Gurian, because he also believes that boys and girls learn differently. “Social pressures can be gentler and your child can learn at his own pace” (Kennedy).
Northouse (2012) states “All of us have a need to feel competent. We want to present ourselves in a way that suggest to others and ourselves that we know what we are doing” (p.214). Letting employees feel empowered makes them feel competent and this is a great step towards a highly motivated person. When I worked at Home Depot our managers would always say “remember you are empowered to make a healthy decision to better help the customer”. This empowerment did not help anyone, but the customer. We were empowered to give the customer a price break. The type of empowerment I am talking about has to be genuine. The employee needs to know that you really feel they have what it takes to have a voice in what happens in day to day operations. This leads to job satisfaction. Job satisfaction relates to the degree in which an individual feels positive or negative about a job. Job satisfaction is an attitude, not necessarily a predictable one. Links between attitudes and intended behavior is important to understand as a leader. People comment about expressed attitudes by peers often in the workplace. They are either positive or negative about their current situation. Attitudes come
Same sex classes make it possible for teachers to cater to student needs in a more efficient way. In general boys benefit from hands on learning, but girls benefit from calm discussions (Mullins 3). Girls tend to doubt themselves while boys think they can do anything. Boys need to be brought down from the clouds while girls need to be dug out of a hole (Mullins 3). David Chadwell says, "Structure and connection are two key concepts when examining gender in the classroom. All students certainly need both, but it seems that teachers need to consider the issue of structure more with boys and the issue of connection more with girls" (7), and Kristen Stanberry’s research has shown, "Some research indicates that girls learn better when classroom temperature is warm, while boys perform better in cooler classrooms. If that's true, then the temperature in a single-sex classroom could be set to optimize the learning of either male or female students" (1). These observations further support the idea that same sex classrooms can cater to student’s...
Bonomo, V. (2010). Gender matters in elementary education: Research-based strategies to meet the distinctive learning needs of boys and girls. Educational Horizons, 88(4), 257-264
...appy. With the difference in gender, both a male and female teachers' exposure to society's youth is critical, and male teachers are just as important as females in the educational field.
In the present United States, a mixture of males and females make up a university classroom. In life, males and females have different conversational styles. The ways that they communicate to each other in a conversation, as well as how they communicate with their instructors and peers in the classroom. Although there is a combination of both genders in the classrooms, schools gravitate more towards using learning techniques that are more applicable towards men than women (Tannen 369). When teaching with a mixture of people that learn differently, it is difficult to have a certain technique to use that would help everybody in the same way. Yet it is important that equal opportunities are given to both genders that allows them to do their best and succeed in their academic careers. Educational professionals need to understand the conversational differences in gender and have better teaching strategies that fit both male and female conversational styles.
Society has stamped an image into the minds of people of how the role of each gender should be played out. There are two recognized types of gender, a man and a woman, however there are many types of gender roles a man or a woman may assume or be placed into by society. The ideas of how one should act and behave are often times ascribed by their gender by society, but these ascribed statuses and roles are sometimes un-welcomed, and people will assume who they want to be as individuals by going against the stereotypes set forth by society. This paper will examine these roles in terms of how society sees men and women stereotypically, and how men and women view themselves and each other in terms of stereotypes that are typically ascribed, as well as their own opinions with a survey administered to ten individuals. What I hope to prove is that despite stereotypes playing a predominant role within our society, and thus influencing what people believe about each other in terms of their same and opposite genders, people within our society are able to go against these ascribed stereotypes and be who they want and it be okay. Through use of the survey and my own personal history dealing with gender stereotyping I think I can give a clear idea as to how stereotypes envelope our society, and how people and breaking free from those stereotypes to be more individualistic.