The Importance Of Gender Boxes In Education

Sit still. Pay attention. Stop looking out the window. All things that boys hear at best a few times during their school year. Many boys come into the classrooms on the first day to a teacher who are preconditioned to think that they will be trouble and so they are treated accordingly like they are causing trouble even if they are not. There is a reason as to why boys are doing academically worse than girls and a large portion of it is the societal expectations that they will do worse even before they come into the first day of classes. Coupling this with the fact that now, as Michael Kimmel in Guyland, reading and being educated is seen as a feminine thing, and being seen doing “girlie” things is something boys avoid doing. But who made these …show more content…
Boys are expected to do sports, like cars, get into fights, be into video games; while girls are expected to stay indoors, read, draw, express themselves more in the creative field rather than a physical one. Of course, everything has an exception and there are shy and studious boys, and outgoing and sports oriented girls, but in large, that is outside the normal despite how far we 've expanded the gender boxes from where they first started. Reading is an essential part of learning, without reading our education system would be nowhere, that’s why reading has to be taught at the home, but who is it taught by? Just as Peg Tyre in her article The Trouble With Boys said, Mom is the one who does most bed time reading to the young children and it’s Mom who the child is most likely walk in on reading a book. In that crucial development stage boys get it ingrained in them that it’s women who do the reading and that it’s a girl thing to do, thus they can not be seen doing it if they want to fit in with their peers. One way to fix this would be to encourage fathers to read to their kids more, showing them, both boys and girls, that everybody reads and that there is nothing to be ashamed of