The Effects of Sexism in Schools

The Effects of Sexism in Schools The theme about stereotypes and prejudice is really important in our society. Walter Lipmann is the man, who defines first the term stereotype in his book How society thinks (1922). He says that stereotype is something that helps us live in the reality easily. That is the positive said, the negative is, that stereotype thinking stops us from out of the box thinking and open mind. Walter Lipmann also defines the term stereotype à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¾ stereotype is a commonly held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals, standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions. Prejudice is a term, which defines our tendency for judging someone before we know him. These terms have a positive said too- they make communication easy for us. But I think that the negatives about stereotypes and prejudice are more than the positives. There are many stereotypes even in the education system. One of the most common stereotypes is sexism. It affects every said of our lives. Almost every men and woman have same stereotypes about the gender roles. The really important aspect of this problem is that sexism is well known in education system and many kids are suffering from it. It begins in elementary school and continues till graduating from college, sometimes even after that. Little boys and girls are constantly told about their gender roles and how they should react and behave, because of those roles. They are given no choice they should behave as expected and no other way. There is another aspect of the problem. In schools and colleges, teachers and professors expect different results by boys and girls. The boys are considered with less potential and everyone expects lower grades by them. Girls are considered as good in some things, but awful in math, physics and other science like that. Those opinions can make things really difficult for the children, because they cant show their real abilities and skills. Sexism, which entered the lexicon in 1970 as an analogue to racism, connotes a fundamental and pervasive institutionalized bias on the basis of sex, with discrimination usually directed against woman ( Frazier and Sadker 1973).The rationale for sexism is the biological difference between males and females that dictates differential social roles,status, and norms ( Sleeter and Grant 1988). From Sexism in single-sex and coeducational independent secondary school classrooms by Valerie E. Lee, Helen M., Marks and Tina Byrd. In thos pharagraf of theyre study, they explain the term sexism. The study begins with explanation that sexism begins way back in the history. Likek other socializing institutions, the family and the church ,have inevitably transmitted sociocultural sexism, so did the schools. Classrooms, where the process of schooling largely occurs, are primary sites for sexist socialization. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¾ In an ideal world, children would be raised in a society free of gender stereotypes. Such freedom from these stereotypes would allow children to exhibit behaviors and acquire skills based solely on their personal preferences devoid of the constraints of the societal norms that surround their particular gender (Bem 1983). However, in the real world, from the moment of their birth, children are placed into either a boy or girl category (Bem 1983; Fagot and Leinbach 1993; Kimmel 2004). This seemingly fundamental physiological distinction is automatically surrounded by a system of societal expectations that determine which behaviors are appropriate for boys and which are appropriate for girls (Fagot and Leinbach 1993) and facilitate the creation and maintenance of gender role stereotypes (Ridgeway and Correll 2004) in Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Eaglys social role theory (Eagly and Steffen 1984). From this paragraph, we can make the logical conclusion, that something in our society and educational system is wrong. We raise our children in a world, in which these stereotypes are very common. These categories that we put kids in have an effect o n their entire life. In school, boys and girls come with some ideas how to behave. They learn that from their family direct, or by coping models of behavior. Since the first grade, everyone continues to expect from children to act as they are told to- like a girl or a boy. Girls cant play with cars and toy soldiers, because they will become women, and this is not good for a woman. The woman should we nice and tender. If the boys are sometimes a little rude- this is not a problem, because from them this is expected. If they want to play with dolls this is not write, because they can grow up feminize. This is something that reflects really hard on children psychic. When they grow up, they continue to follow that models of behavior and that is cosign a lot of problems. In the education is the same- the boy should we really good in math, but if he can write, this is a little strange. A girl should write beautiful, but nobody would belief, that she knows a lot about physics. This is a h uge problem, because it makes communicating, growing up, developing a hard and intense process, which is put in frame and cant go out of it- other way the kid is consider as strange. As an example for that frames may be considered situation of gender and mathematics in England and Wales. Teresa Smart wrote an article on that mater, which is explains why girls abandon science before leaving school Gender and mathematics in England and Wales. In the article, Smart explains, that the stereotype- boys are good in mathematics is putting girls under pressure and they prefer to focus on other sciences. The difference between boys and girls are also discussed in the study Gender differences in mathematical achievement related to the ratio of girls to boys in school classes by Terje Manger and Rolf Gjestad. This study discuss the importance of the number of boys and girl in the classroom. The authors are analyzing a research, done in 3 grade in classes with many boys and less girls, many girls and less boys, and a class with a balance. The results do not support the single-sex teaching theory. That theory clames, that single-sex school gives an opportunity for developing to both sexes. In that study, authors also prove, that there is a difference between boys and girls in mathematics: The differences in mathematical achievement between boys and girls are well documented in the educational and psychological literature. While the differences in general samples are decreasing (Feingold 1988) disparate proportions favoring boys are well-known in mathematically gifted samples,(Benbow 1988 ; Benbow and Stanley 1983; Hyde, Fennema and Lamon 1990).The differences also vary according to mathematical subskills. Boys seem to perform better than girls on tasks requiring application of algebraic rules or algorithms, as well as on tasks in which the understanding of mathematical concepts and number relationship is required (Mills, Ablard and Stumpf 1993). The newest researches on that matter are proving something different- every one of us has different part of the brain developed more than the other. People, who have more developed write part, are with better achievements in mathematics and other sciences like that; people, who have more developed left part of the brain are good in history, literature and other. That is a prove, that the difference is not coming from the gender. From grade school to graduate school to the world of work, males and females are separated by a common language. This communications gender gap affects self-esteem, educational attainment, career choice, and income. But its hidden lessons generally go unnoticed. Sexism in the classroom: from grade school to graduate school by Myra Sadker and David Sadker. Myra and David Sadker are researching classroom interactions in elementary and secondary schools. Their article is focusing on four of their conclusions of the research. The first conclusion they made is: male students receive more attention from teachers and are given more time to talk in classrooms. The second conclusion: Educators are generally unaware of the presence or the impact of this bias.. The third conclusion: Brief but focused training can reduce or eliminate sex bias from classroom interaction.. The four conclusion : Increasing equity in classroom interaction increases the effectiveness of the teacher as well. Equity and effectiveness are not competing concerns; they are complementary. Myra and David Sadkers first study is proving, that male students are involved in more interaction than females. Teachers are talking more to them and allow them to talk more in class. The teachers observed in this study were both male and female; they represented both white and minority groups; they taught in the areas of language arts, social studies, and mathematics. This proves, that the teachers were affect mainly by the sexism stereotype in classrooms. The educators are not aware of the impact of sexism in the classroom. They dont realize, that their behavior in not adequate. They dont understand, that this way they are stopping females developing, and lowing their chances for receiving good education. This unawareness of the educators is a big problem in schools. Sexism cant be removed, when nobody realizes that its there. All it takes, to removing sex bias from classrooms is to train the educators. They need to know, that sexism has to be removed from the classrooms, that this is cosign problems to females not only in school, but also later, when they are working. When there is sexism in the classroom, the education process cannot be effective. When teachers are not realizing the problem and cant remove it, they cant be useful to the children. If there is equity in the classroom, the process will be effective, this will increase the chances of children to have a good education. In her paper : Gender freedom and the subtleties of sexist education, Barbara Houston is discussing the idea of gender-free education. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ the following three distinct meanings. In the first sense, the strong sense, a gender-free education would be one that made active attempts to disregard gender by obliterating gender differentiations which arose within the educational sphere. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦.Another example of this approach is the elimination of activities, such as wrestling, in which there are thought to be significant gender differences in achievements due to natural and ineradicable biological differences between the sexes. In her paper, Houston is focusing on the education, that eliminates gender and its ignoring it. The idea is, that gender should be no longer used as a criteria, that boys and girls should not be separated and not be given instructions how to behave, judged by their gander : à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ gender-free to mean freedom from gender bias. On this un derstanding, a gender-free education would eliminate gender bias. From this sources, discussing the theme about sexism in school, can be made several conclusions. Sexism, as sociological and culture understanding of the gender differences, exist in schools of all kinds. Sexism is the separation between boys and girls, based on their biological differences and affects a lot their education. Male student are given priority, females are underrated- they cannot show their real potential. This is big problem in classrooms, because sex roles are putting educational process in frames, they stop boys and girls to develop, learn everything they want to, not what they supposed to. Teachers sometimes are not aware that there is sexism in their classroom and they dont know how to eliminate it. The good education is one, that is gender-free, which is not focused on the gender differences and is removing this as a criteria for educating.

Abortion Cases of the 19th Century :: Essays Papers

Abortion Cases of the 19th Century Although abortions were very dangerous, as well as socially unacceptable during the nineteenth century, women were not altogether unable to obtain abortions and many suffered accusations of infanticide. Here I will present a few of the more famous cases from the period, demonstrating the occurrence of abortion, the availability of providers, and the consequences faced by those who necessitated the procedure. One case that dominated the pages of The Revolution, the paper owned by Susan B. Anthony and edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, was the sentencing of a young girl to hang for the death of her child. While not a case of abortion, the death was termed an infanticide and drew strong opinions from the public as well as both the editors. The unfortunate Hester Vaughan, an English girl living in Philadelphia, was discovered in a tiny tenement room devoid of furniture February 8, 1868, forty-eight hours after giving birth. Alone during labor, without food or heat, she was found frail and feverish with her baby dead beside her. She was immediately brought to the police and imprisoned, under the assumption that she had killed her child. For thirty dollars, she acquired the services of a lawyer by the name of Goforth and underwent a brief trial. Having never actually confessed to committing the crime, she was nonetheless sentenced to death by County Judge Ludlow, and placed in Moyamensing Prison until her execution. Once news of the case reached the public, the women of The Revolution unleashed their sympathies in article after article denouncing the indictment. In an August 6, 1868 editorial it was written: â€Å" If that poor child of sorrow is hung, it will be deliberate, downright murder. Her death will be far more horrible infanticide than was the killing of her child. She is the child of our society and civilization, begotten and born of it, seduced by it, by the judge who pronounced her sentence, by the bar and jury, by the legislature that enacted the law (in which because a woman, she had no vote or voice), by the church and the pulpit that sanctify the law and deeds, of all these will her blood, yea, and her virtue too, be required! All these were the joint seducer, and now see if by hanging her, they will also become her murderer.† However, Hester never had to face the day of her execution and instead spent nearly two years in jail.

Nine Dragons Paper Essay

1.How does MRs. Cheung Think?What does she believein when it comes to building her business? Mrs. Cheung is a very innovative person. Her thinking is extremely positive, creative, advance and quite original. She possess perseverance, determination with a business and marketing mentality and with her know-how business approaches, constructed a corporation that was a leading force in the industry. Her creativeness and originality is evident as she was the first to use waste paper to create packaging paper. When it comes to building her company, she believes in expansion, premeditated and tactical planning . 2 .How would you summarize the company’s financial status? How does it reflect the business development goals and strategies employed by Mrs. Cheung? NDP has been investing at an incredible pace – best demonstrated by comparing the company’s cash flows from operating activities in 2007 and 2008 with the cash flows from investing activities. –NDP has clearly been profitable in recent years, and demonstrates a high rate of profitability one would not ordinarily see in this type of semi-commodity based business –NDP’s rate of profitability, however, has been sliding, reflecting rising input prices and greater competitive markets for its products –The company’s growing debt burden is large and getting larger . 3. Is NDP in trouble? How would your answer differ if you were an existing shareholder, a potential investor, or an analyst? The company still appears to be marginally profitable in this difficult business environment,but profitability is a concept which focuses more on the corporate income statement, not cash flows. The result is that it appears the company will need to borrow even more to survive the year. †¢ Existing shareholders are clearly down, and would like to see the company executive management take measures to improve share price sooner rather than later. They are, however, minority shareholders, Mrs. Cheung and family holding more than 70% of the firm. †¢ Potential investors might see the company has a ‘good bet’, given the current share price low and the prospects for long-term competitiveness .

The Legendary Invention of Silk

Is the fabric known as silk 7000 years old? Did people wear it from as long ago as 5000 B.C. -- before civilization began at Sumer and before Egyptians built the Great Pyramid? If silkworm cultivation or sericulture is as much as seven millennia old -- as the Silk Road Foundation says it may be -- the chances are poor that we will ever know exactly who invented it. What we can learn is what the descendants of the people who discovered silk wrote about it and what their legends say about the origins of processing silk. Although there are other stories and variations, the basic legend credits an early Chinese empress. She is said to have: 1. Cultivated the silk-producing caterpillar (Bombyx mori).2. Fed the silkworm the mulberry leaf that was discovered to be the best food -- at least for those interested in producing the best silk.3. Invented the loom to weave the fiber. Raising Silk On its own, the silkworm larva produces a single, several hundred-yard-strand of silk, which it breaks as it emerges as a moth from its cocoon, leaving residue all over the trees. In preference to gathering the tangled silk caught in the trees, the Chinese learned to raise the silkworms on a fattening diet of the leaves of carefully cultivated mulberry trees. They also learned to watch the development of the cocoons so they could kill the chrysalis by plunging it in boiling water just before its time. This method ensures the full length of silk strands. The boiling water also softens the sticky protein holding together the silk [Grotenhuis]. (The process of pulling out the strand of silk from the water and cocoon in known as reeling.) The thread is then woven into beautiful clothing.   Who Was the Lady Hsi-ling? The main source for this article is Dieter Kuhn, Professor, and Chair of Chinese Studies, University of Wà ¼rzburg. He wrote Tracing a Chinese Legend: In Search of the Identity of the First Sericulturalist for Toung Pao, an international journal of sinology. In this article, Kuhn looks at what the Chinese sources say about the legend of the invention of silk and describes the presentation of silk manufactures invention across the dynasties. He makes note of the contribution of the lady of Hsi-ling in particular. She was the principal wife of Huangdi, who is better known as the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor (Huangdi or Huang-ti, where Huang is the same word we translate as Yellow when used in connection with the great Chinese Yellow River, and ti is the name of an important god that is used in the names of kings, conventionally translated emperor) is a legendary Neolithic era ruler and ancestor of the Chinese people, with almost godlike proportions. Huangdi is said to have lived in the third millennium B.C. for 100-118 years, during which he is credited with giving numerous gifts to the Chinese people, including the magnetic compass, and sometimes including silk. The principal wife of the Yellow Emperor, the lady of Hsi-ling (also known as Xi Ling-Shi, Lei-Tsu, or Xilingshi), is, like her husband, credited with discovering silk. The lady of Hsi-ling is also credited with figuring out how to reel silk and inventing what people needed to make clothing from the silk -- the loom, according to the Shih-Chi Record of the Historian. Ultimately, the confusion seems to remain, but the upper hand is given the empress. The Yellow Emperor, who was honored as the First Sericulturalist during the Northern Chi Period (c. A.D. 550 - c. 580), may be the male figure depicted in later art as a patron saint of sericulture. The lady Hsi-ling is more often called the First Sericulturalist. Although she had been worshiped and held a position in the Chinese pantheon since the Northern Chou Dynasty (557-581), her official position as the personification of the First Sericulturalist with a divine seat and altar only came in 1742. Silk Clothing Altered the Chinese Division of Labor One could speculate, as Kuhn does, that the job of making fabric was womens work and that therefore the associations were made with the empress, rather than her husband, even if he had been the first sericulturalist. The Yellow Emperor may have invented the methods of producing silk, while the lady Hsi-ling was responsible for the discovery of silk itself. This legendary discovery, reminiscent of the story of the discovery of actual tea in China, involves falling into an anachronistic cup of tea.   Chinese scholarship from the seventh century A.D. says that before the Yellow Emperor, clothing was made of bird (feathers can protect against water and down is, of course, an insulating material) and animal skin, but the supply of animals didnt keep up with demand. The Yellow Emperor decreed that clothing should be made of silk and hemp. In this version of the legend, it is Huangdi (actually, one of his officials named Po Yu), not the lady of Hsi-ling who invented all fabrics, including silk, and also, according to legend from the Han Dynasty, the loom. Again, if looking for a rationale for the contradiction based on the division of labor and gender roles: hunting would not have been a domestic pursuit, but the province of the men, so when clothing changed from skins to cloth, it made sense that it would have changed the storied gender of the maker. Evidence of 5 Millennia of Silk Not quite the full seven, but five millennia puts it more in line with important major developments elsewhere, so it is more easily believed. Archaeological evidence reveals that silk existed in China as far back as around 2750 B.C., which puts it, coincidentally according to Kuhn, close to the dates of the Yellow Emperor and his wife. Shang Dynasty oracle bones show evidence of silk production. Silk was also in the Indus Valley from the third millennium B.C., according to New Evidence for Silk in the Indus Valley, which says copper-alloy ornaments and steatite beads have yielded silk fibers upon microscopic examination. As an aside, the article says this raises the question of whether China really had exclusive control of silk. A Silken Economy The importance of silk to China probably cant be exaggerated: the exceptionally long and strong filament clothed a vast Chinese population, helped support the bureaucracy by being used as a precursor to paper (2nd century B.C.) [Hoernle] and to pay taxes [Grotenhuis], and led to commerce with the rest of the world. Sumptuary laws regulated the wearing of fancy silks and embroidered, patterned silks became status symbols from the Han to the Northern and Southern Dynasties (2nd century B.C. to 6th century A.D.). How the Secret of Silk Leaked Out The Chinese guarded its secret carefully and successfully for centuries, according to tradition. It was only in the 5th century A.D. that silk eggs and mulberry seeds were, according to legend, smuggled out in an elaborate headdress by a Chinese princess when she went to her groom, the king of Khotan, in Central Asia. A century later they were smuggled by monks into the Byzantine Empire, according to the Byzantine historian Procopius. Silk Worship Patron saints of sericulture were honored with life-size statues and rites; in the Han period, the silkworm goddess was personified, and in Han and Sung periods, the empress performed a silk ceremony. The empress helped with the gathering of the mulberry leaves necessary for the best silk, and the sacrifices of pig and sheep that were made to the First Sericulturalist who may or may not have been the lady of Hsi-ling. By the 3rd century, there was a silkworm palace which the empress supervised. Legends of the Discovery of Silk There is a fanciful legend about the discovery of silk, a love story about a betrayed and murdered magic horse, and his lover, a woman transformed into a silkworm; the threads becoming feelings. Liu recounts a version, recorded by Tsui Pao in his 4th century A.D. Ku Ching Chu (Antiquarian Researches), where the horse is betrayed by the father and his daughter who promised to marry the horse. After the horse was ambushed, killed, and skinned, the hide wrapped up the girl and flew away with her. It was found in a tree and brought home, where some time later the girl had been transformed into a moth. There is also a fairly pedestrian story of how silk was actually discovered -- the cocoon, thought to be fruit, wouldnt soften when boiled, so the would-be diners got their aggression out by beating it with sticks until the filament emerged. Sericulture References: The Silkworm and Chinese Culture, by Gaines K. C. Liu; Osiris, Vol. 10, (1952), pp. 129-194 Tracing a Chinese Legend: In Search of the Identity of the First Sericulturalist, by Dieter Kuhn; Toung Pao Second Series, Vol. 70, Livr. 4/5 (1984), pp. 213-245. Spices and Silk: Aspects of World Trade in the First Seven Centuries of the Christian Era, by Michael Loewe; The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland No. 2 (1971), pp. 166-179. Stories of Silk and Paper, by Elizabeth Ten Grotenhuis; World Literature Today; Vol. 80, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug. 2006), pp. 10-12. Silks and Religions in Eurasia, C. A.D. 600-1200, by Liu Xinru; Journal of World History Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 25-48. Who Was the Inventor of Rag-Paper? by A. F. Rudolf Hoernle; The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Oct. 1903), pp. 663-684.