The Role That Gender Bias Plays In The American Classroom

In the third chapter of the Education: The Practice and Profession Of Teaching textbook, McNergney & McNergney discuss the topic of gender bias in elementary school classes. I was intrigued by this topic because I wanted to know about how to treat each of my students with equality and fairness, and also about the mistakes that teachers make about the matter so that I do not repeat them in my classroom. When I searched for resources online about gender bias, I found the essay Gender Bias In Teaching which Kathryn Scantlebury wrote. Through this essay, I was exposed to an elaboration of the points discussed by McNergney & McNergney, such as how the reason why female children are less likely to perform well in mathematics classes is due to the belief of many educators that females are not mentally inclined towards this subject, which results in their having less expectations for this population. This helped me to understand why male children perform well in this subject. This phenomenon is mostly due to many teachers encouraging them to pursue mathematics classes in formative education and to pursue vocations that require large amounts of mathematics, which is often not the case with female children. Therefore, it is likely a self-fulfilling prophecy that results in female children struggling with mathematics, as they are not given as much encouragement in this subject as their male counterparts.

Now that I have discovered this information, I want to try my hardest to not judge my students as a result of their gender. I feel that this act is inappropriate for educators to partake in due to it resulting in them not considering each student as an individual, but instead as a member of a specific category. For example, in an elementary school classroom, I may have a certain percentage of male children in my class who are fluent readers, but another percentage of students who are not. These percentages do not indicate in any way a particular superiority or inferiority that male children have in contrast to female children, as the female children will be represented through similar percentages. Because of this, I do not plan on holding male children to a particular standard in any subject due to stereotypes about their gender, as one male child may have similar strengths and weaknesses to another female child.

Works Cited:

Gender Bias In Teaching

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McNergney, Joanne M. & Robert F. McNergney. Education: The Practice and Profession of Teaching. 6th      Ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2009. Print.