While I was reading the articles, I began to wonder about age-appropriateness in terms of talking about gender and gender roles. It is hard to articulate what I mean by this, but I'll try to present it in terms of a question: How does the age of children factor into our discussions of gender and our use of literature?
In the Smith article, the girls in the group are 6th graders. Smith writes "the girls teetered on the line between childhood and adolescence." Davies observes (mostly male) pre-schoolers, and Wason-Ellam works with girls in the primary grades. Obviously, each of these age groups read different things and responded in different ways. But how are teachers supposed to react or address the rifts amongst gender, depending of the age of the students? With only a limited knowledge of child psychology, I am wondering if addressing (not "correcting" necessarily) boys' and girls' stereotyped ideas about gender too early leaves them confused rather than enlightened. Is there a base of knowledge about gender that teachers need to work from, or should we intervene as soon as possible in getting students to look at themselves as dynamic within their gender? What affect does it have on their view of themselves, and/or their view of gender?
2 comments:
Tina -
It's certainly a question worth asking in my opinion. I am certain that we should seek to limit students' generalization of gender and its stereotypes, but at the same time I see that there may be a developmental block that precludes our attempt to help students to construct gender as dynamic while increasing tolerance. Because of our intolerance to those who don't meet gender or sexual (hetero/non-ambiguous) norms, I feel that this is actually imperative despite the possibility of developmental concerns that we made need to work around as educators (ie - students may not be 'ready' to talk about gender).
There is a fair amount of literacy in developmental psychology regarding a construct called gender constancy, which supposedly is acquired in a stagelike fashion similar to something Piagetian like object permanence. For instance, gender consistency follows similar patterns as object permanence in starting as an inability (gender is not permanent - eg - boys in girls' clothes are percieved to have changed genders in some studies with kids in early years) - going to a concrete overgeneralization (eg - limited tolerance of gender and sex norm violations - confusion over the 'implausibility' of such violations. Gender, however, becomes 'permanent' in early elementary years where simply wearing different clothes or being dressed in a gender-oppossite color is not percieved by children to change one's gender.) - to a more fluid and abstract conceptualization of gender as a somewhat dynamic construct in later elementary years. And only some people go onto the final analytical/tolerant stage wherein gender is a dynamic and inherently individually defined construct much later on in life....
So I do think that there may be a time given this research where it may actually be impossible to discuss gender as a construct with students who have not reached that age of gender permanence/self-identification with a gender(s). However, that DOES NOT mean I think we should not attempt at some point to teach awareness and sensitivity to our school-age children about gender - it's biological and emotional inspecificity - how gender as a concept fails people - and how we hurt eachother.
A heterosexist/chauvinistic world-view can't be ignored simply because we are afraid our children could be confused by the complexity of an important message. I just don't know WHEN to start teaching it...
Does anybody have any thoughts?
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