It’s About Making Babies!

Laura at LJR Enterprises comments on ‘6th Grade Orientation‘. She points out the apparent gender bias in the school pamphlet.

It’s a sort of a magazine called “Middle School EduGuide: Your roadmap to student success.” It’s put out by the Partnership for Learning with the Michigan Department of Education as a cosponsor. On the back cover is a piece called Help Your Child Avoid Trouble, by Jaime Millard.

Odds: 1-in-10 kids have had sex by age 13. Kids constantly hear about sex through television, music, and video games, but they rarely hear about the bad parts: pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and emotional problems.
Antidote: The biggest factors in stopping teen sex are you and the clock. When you can’t be with your child, make sure he is with another adult. Get your son involved with a program during the after school hours, which is when kids are most likely to have sex. Have your daughter volunteer to teach elementary students.

One way to look at the pamphlet is to think that they offered a range of possibilities, happened to put boys with it, another idea and happened to put girls with that. The fact that it looks like gender bias might be accidental. If you think this might be the case, then the ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ associations were mere happenstance and interchangeable. If you look at it this way, at least no one has to get (too) angry, and no gender-specific roles get implied.

On the other hand, the Suzy Homemaker / football star roles could be so deeply ingrained in whoever wrote the thing that opportunity and rationale thinking never crossed their minds.

I wonder if she has considered other biases built in to schools and US culture? Way back 45 years ago, when kids got to 5th grade they split PE into boys time and girls time, and forced everyone to shower in open shower rooms and locker rooms. The intent was socialization. The nekkid kids learned about other bodies like their own, how much variety there is in body parts. The experience was intended to improve body image. (Social family-oriented nude recreation groups claim similar goals and achievement).

Home bathrooms get shared. Kids and adults in many homes see naked bodies without running amok (although some couples seem to .. no that is another story). So why is it that men and women need separate locker rooms? Separate showers? Why does this vestige, invented in the Victorian age when it was decided that seeing body parts was obscene? The Victorians that invented the terms ‘light meat’ and ‘dark meat’ so that the vulgar ‘breast’, ‘leg’, ‘thigh’, and ‘wing’ need not be mentioned at the table.

Back to Michigan, and LJR Enterprises, I think another important point was missed. The pamphlet encourages girls to tutor elementary kids. Why not attempt to motivate boys into education? I think passively allowing the current stereotype of teaching especially early grades to be ‘women’s work to be quite horrible. We have enough examples around us to acknowledge men quite capable of being effective teachers at any grade. What we don’t have is freedom from gender bias to encourage those so inclined to seek that kind of career.

And then there is the ‘protect your kids from temptation’ approach to sex ed. And I still maintain that the emphasis in sex, and society, really needs to change. We need to specify why people have sex: To make babies. We need our kids to understand this. They need to know that ‘fooling around’ is practice for making a baby, not a way to get to know someone, or a thrilling way to spend an evening (or afternoon recess). Teach kids that sex can bind a couple together, and is a horrible way to pick a spouse. Talk about a need to change, to be more pro-active.

Oh, and explain why the Church and ancient peoples decided bridal chastity was important: To avoid VD. And to secure family inheritances and power. Point out that childbirth is a health risk to the mother, and that the risk is lower in a supportive environment with adequate medical care. If nothing else, show Tony Danza’s lame movie, “She’s Out Of Control” about a teen girl and sex. ‘I want your first time to be special, not sneaking around shamefully.’

I suspect that many of today’s sports programs in public schools were created specifically to prepare young men for military service. The competitiveness, learning teamwork, taking direction from a coach, following rules, overcoming fear, increasing physical toughness. If girls want an equal shot at excelling in military service, they need similar preparation in school.

And while we are focusing on why girls have the opportunities that rethinking gender roles has gained in the last 50 years, explain why we still encourage women to emphasize breast and face to improve social position. Why we elect a Homecoming King and Queen, why rich girls have Debutante Balls to ‘Come Out’ into society so their families can arrange a ‘good’ (profitable) marriage, the rest have Junior/Senior Proms to practice selling the bride. Note how in many wedding ceremonies the Father of the Bride ‘gives’ the bride-to-be to the Groom. The Bride displays the family wealth in the conspicuously expensive gown, the procession, etc.

I applaud Laura for reacting to the gender bias she discovered in her school. Reading between the lines, I suspect she was already feeling hostile at the schools presentation, intended to protect the school from disruption rather than improve the experience for 6th graders. And of the probably numerous reasons to question what the school is doing, this particular point caught her eye.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 10:24 am and is filed under Children, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.