Sexism in Education

Sexism in Education

Children all begin their education in preschool and kindergarten. Then they move onto grammar school, where they build all the confidence needed for their future education. The self- assurance they receive helps the children to succeed in their studies and then move on believing that they will be able to conquer the next level of education, high school. In grammar school children learn basic yet essential information and therefore becoming easily influenced. Stereotyping can start even in the first years of schooling and can continue through high school and college. Girls often take a secondary position to boys and therefore after going through grammar school, high school, and college women remain inadequately prepared for life.

A second grade teacher asks a class of second graders what they want to become when they get older. Many of the boys might say they want to become firefighters or policemen, while the girls might say they want become like their mothers and have a family. Special dreams give the children something to strive for. If becoming a firefighter means doing well in school, the boys will want to get good grades. This shows that at a young age boys become career orientated while the girls on the other hand grow up more family orientated.

After thirty years, Maya Angelou looks back at her 1940 grammar school graduation in “Graduation”. In the essay she remembers all the excitement the town had on that day, what she had for breakfast, and the speaker at her graduation. What Angelou remembers the most is the two white men who came to her black school and one spoke at her graduation. The speaker implied that the young African Americans will have limited future. Angelou recalls him saying, “We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous” (125). This quote shows the belief that African American where expected to have a secondary role in society and African American girls where not expected to have any significant or challenging careers. His speech made an impact on her future and even thirty years later she still remembers it clearly. By becoming a successful African American writer Angelou proved the speaker wrong.

As girls move onto high school, the social popularity factor becomes more essential than achieving good grades. The girls all want to impress the guys with their looks and who they hang out with. They separate into social classes, like jocks, nerds, and cheerleaders. The girls then give into the social pressure of allowing the boys to dominate the class. Many girls believe in letting the boys feel superior in the classroom, especially in grammar school. Jacoby writes about students that “…during the vulnerable period of midadolescence, when they are most likely to be influenced- on both conscious and subconscious levels- by the traditional belief that math and science are “masculine” subjects” ( Jacoby, 141). Girls then decide to take more ‘feminine’ courses like English, art, or drama.

From a recent speech, Sam Dillon quotes Dr. Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University who has found that “ more high school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on standardized math tests”. This study helps confirm the thesis that girls give into social pressure. By not taking science or math courses in their junior or senior year girls cut off any chances to excel in science or engineering fields when in college. College and Universities can change this by change of college requirements. For example, they can all state colleges require four years of high school math or science. This might help boost the percent of high school students thinking about careers in science and engineering fields.

Sam Dillon refers to Dr. Richard Freeman an economics professor at Harvard University who says, “Men are taller than women, that comes from the biology, and … perhaps the dispersion in test scores could also come from the biology”. Summers later stated that he simply mentioned his hypothesis to get the people in the crowd thinking. Summers did get the crowd thinking, but he also upset many women in the crown. Dillon also says, “Several women who participated in the conference said yesterday that they had been surprised or outraged by Dr. Summers’s comments”. Many women succeed in the sciences and mathematics; it is just the social barrier that they need to get over.

In college most women do not want to become scientist or engineers; the most popular major for women is psychology. In today’s society the percentages of women who work at universities and colleges as science professors are dwindling. Sue V. Rosser says;

Women count for approximately 34.7 percent of employees in the science fields. While women earned 55.5 percent of the Master of Science