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Originally Posted by smooth
A lot of this seems really cynical, as in over the top. But I was in home ec classes (less than 15 years ago, I don't think they've disappeared yet) and they weren't like that at all. Now, perhaps it's because of a critical mass thing. While I have seen males be jackasses, they don't usually do it when they are vastly outnumbered by the females. Numbers of genders change the tone and interactions, in my experience.
Now I hear what you're saying, I just don't think that we should project what we've learned as adults onto fairly unsophisticated children. While it seems crass, the notion that males would interrogate gender roles to the extent that they would denigrate a woman's character or marriagability over it. I do agree that many boys woul get out of it, so there would a structural component that would reproduce traditional gender roles, but unless someone just had it out for a particular female, I don't think you'd hear the kind of statements you're fearing on a general level.
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You may be right on a general level, but what I described was almost exactly my own experience, though it happened in slightly different contexts (because we didn't have home ec). I am cynical about this for good reason, and if I am unable to wrap my head around how the majority of teenagers can rise above this, it is because I really don't see how this could possibly play out well. But maybe that's to be expected from a woman who was one of five girls that were targeted by boys on the football team multiple times. Getting my parents' house vandalized on multiple occasions and then seeing that somebody bought a full page ad in our yearbook with a proud picture of "the guys" about to throw eggs at something just out of the picture's scope has been scarring to some extent.
And I didn't grow up in the middle of nowhere. This happened in a Los Angeles public school just six years ago. It will take a lot more for me to not be
cynical about this. If we're interested in keeping it more
real around here - how do we integrate my experience into the idea of requiring cooking lessons in Life Skills 101 at today's high schools? If there were no safeguards in place for me and no authorities for me to turn to six years ago, how does adding cooking to the curriculum make this better?
This is why I think 'life skills' should be learned at home, or independently as adults. I have no problem with the idea that I am learning certain skills as I need them. We learn as we go, and the opporunities to learn are rife. That's what life is! I don't understand this view where we need to "train" teenagers as if they don't already exist in the real world, nor do I understand the suggestion that these kinds of lessons should fall on the schools to impart. Sure, maybe it's a nice idea that every graduating high school senior can cook a Thanksgiving turkey, balance a check book, change a tire and do their taxes... but isn't school were we go to learn chemistry and Shakespeare? Most parents have the resources to teach that "life" stuff when it is necessary for their kids to know it, but most parents don't have a science lab in their house, or the ability to teach their kid how to read literature critically. That's the kind of stuff teachers learn in teacher school, isn't it?