Talking Point #7

After reading what a few others had posted, I was surprised that I had found an article so quickly compared to others. What I found was this website, and in the second bullet titled Gender Equality in Schools: A Primer, I found there to be a lot of useful information about issues on gender and education.

To start off I was introduced to a very interesting fact, though when you think about it, it is very true. That being that there is major discrimination in sports funding based on gender. If you think about it, all of the major games as well as the most talked about games are based on male sports teams. For the most part it seems that female sports don't exist, and some don't like football, because hardly anyone watches them or finds them interesting (in my experience).

Then Sadker brings up another good point. That is that girls and boys receive very different educations, even though they are in the same room doing the same exact work and readings. The way I see it, girls in schools are treated like the middle child in a family who doesn't get much attention or encouragement but yet seems to do just fine on their own. Whereas boys are like the first child in a family, they receive almost all of the attention, everything they do is acknowledged and considered a big deal. The only problem is that they can be screw ups and become hated or a "problem child", or they can be brilliant and the pride of the family. The way Sadker puts it, girls are seen as invisible; they don't get as much help or interaction with the teacher than boys do. Boys on the other hand are idolized and receive much of both the attention of their teachers, and society. The giant spot light placed upon boys can be overwhelming or uncomfortable at times. Then he says quote "Labeled as problems in need of special control or assistance, boys are more likely to fail a course, miss promotion, or drop out of school. Prone to take risks, they jeopardize not only their academic futures but also their lives as they dominate accident, suicide, and homicide statistics."

That quote of Sadker seems true to me. Usually for the most part boys are seen as troubled and in need of assistance more than girls are. There aren't many times where you see a girl pulled out of a class room, or sent to the principles office. Boys do tend to fail courses more, but that's just usually because boys don't care as much as girls do. Then to my experience it does seem that guys drop out of schools way more frequently than girls do (at least in my high school). Boys do seem to take more risks than girls, probably again for the most part being that they just don't care as much as girls do. I was curious how many more males get in accidents than girls do, so I found on this page from 2006, that male car accidents are more than double that of females (which explains the car insurance difference). And then on this site, it clearly shows that all over the world male suicide rates are higher than females. Who really knows the reasons for these dramatic differences, it could be the difference in how both genders are treated in society, or just some kind of internal genetic differences that makes males more prone to be careless.

In the end, I have to agree with most of what Sadker says. He brings up very good points and covers most of the issues both genders face. I tried to check out the link to the official website, but it came up with some sort of problem. The other sources were useful as well