The sex of one's child is only a small part of the package. If we could stop treating individuals as A Boy or A Girl, we just might find the business of educating human beings a great deal more interesting, challenging, and rewarding. Certainly we would find it less limited and limiting. In this age, when technology makes the individualization of instruction more viable than it has ever been, shouldn't we be focusing on every child's whole persona and not on his or her gender?
It is time to discuss ways to individualize education, to break it away from the lock step, grade-by-grade progression with curriculum set rigidly for all learners at each level. It seems to me that our current practices destroy the excitement that learning should generate in each child. Along with that goes the destruction of hope — a much more likely cause of the anger and violence that exist in our society.
With the wonders of modern technology, shouldn’t it be possible for teachers to handle classrooms with children working at different levels and different subjects?
I've often cited my father's tales of his childhood, when he attended a little, one-room school in what is now Silicon Valley, CA. The children in his classroom varied widely in age and ability, but they functioned side by side. The older children helped the younger. The children of Mexican immigrants learned English the way babies do, by hearing it spoken — but they learned it faster. The teacher, "Ol' Sully" (Miss Sullivan, who was probably about 35) kept an eagle eye on everyone, tailoring the work to each child's strength or weakness, and produced graduates who could read and write and think with the best of them, girls as well as boys.
Instead of our modern practice of cramming classes full of students perceived to be of roughly equal ability, wouldn't it make better sense to have small classes with students of like age, each of whom was helped to learn at the pace suited to each individual?
Slow learners and average students, after all, do not necessarily learn less than "gifted" students. They simply learn at a different speed. They are often surprisingly thorough and reflective and creative students who retain what they learn as well as or better than those who learn things faster. Brilliance has no lock on perseverance or creativity.
While I'm at it, the idea that all our "gifted" students will be future leaders or discoverers or inventors, etc. is ludicrous. Some of them will be stuck in boring jobs; some will be criminals (the Unabomber comes to mind); some will fritter away their lives without finding any real focus. Their intellectual gifts offer no guarantee of their goodness or effectiveness as human beings.
We can, if we put our minds to it, find ways to tailor education to challenge academically gifted children without separating them entirely from their peers. We can individualize the curriculum even as we keep them with a peer group that is representative of the real world — which is, after all, where they will have to function when they leave school. All children need lessons in compassion and respect for others, especially for others unlike themselves. None need those lessons more than do our academically gifted children.
As a retired schoolteacher, I find myself thinking that both sides are right in the "Who is shortchanged in our schools?" question. Yes, girls may learn differently from boys, and boys may learn differently from girls. But these are not the only questions to consider. They are just one aspect of what plagues our schools.
Let's open up the debate to include more than gender inequities. Let's look for ways to serve multiple intelligences. Let's create schools where everybody can be a somebody. Let's do away with large classrooms and schools and even large school districts, and opt for education on a smaller, more human scale. And for heaven’s sake, let's get started on correcting the problems and get on with the business of treating children of both sexes as individuals whom we are attempting to rear to be intelligent, responsible, productive citizens of the modern world.
©Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
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