Above: GENDER DISCREPANCIES: Male students raise their hands in a staged photo at Clarke Central High School. Male and female students are often treated differently in the classroom, which can lead to differences in how students feel expected to behave. “High school is really where you solidify some kind of idea for what you want to do with the rest of your life, and it’s where your personality really starts to form,” CCHS senior and Women in STEM president Maggie DeMaria said. “If you’re always taught, ‘No, don’t talk in class’, (or that) you’re supposed to be the weak one, you’re not gonna go out and do the things that you want to do.” Photo by Naomi Hendershot Right: NEGLECTING GIRLS: A male student raises his hand while a female student sits quietly in a staged photo. Female students are often conditioned to be less confident or assertive than their male counterparts. “We’re socialized to be polite, to be nice, to play down our brilliance, our intelligence, and to stay in our place,” University of Georgia Institute for Women’s Studies Director Dr. Juanita Johnson-Bailey said. Photo by Naomi Hendershot
Engaging with gender
At Clarke Central High School and around the nation, differences between how male and female students are taught and engage in class can cause female students to have less confidence.
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poll of the Clarke Central High School student body conducted by the ODYSSEY Media Group showed that 85.9% of students believed that there was either “some” or a “large” difference between the way male and female students behave in the classroom. According to the article “Gender Differences in the Classroom” from Educational Psychology, teachers interact 10 to 30% more with male students than female students. University of Georgia Institute for Women’s Studies Director Dr. Juanita Johnson-Bailey believes that the way students of different genders are treated in the classroom can have long-term effects on their behavior. As a result, although the average female student has greater academic success than the average male student, the differences between how teachers interact with them can cause female students to participate less in classes and have a lack of confidence.
BY NATALIE SCHLIEKELMAN News Staffer
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odysseynewsmagazine.net
“If you just look across the research, women students tend to have higher GPAs, (and) they tend to have a higher rate of graduation,” Johnson-Bailey said. “But what I have found is that overall women students tend to speak less, to speak less affirmatively, even to write less authoritatively. Men tend to speak and write in a declarative way. Women tend to be more hesitant in the way that they write and in the way that they speak.” CCHS senior and Women in STEM co-president Maggie DeMaria believes that these differences can also be seen in classrooms at CCHS. “There is this idea that guys are supposed to be the talkative ones. They’re supposed to be the ones that get up and do the math on the board, and the girls are supposed to sit back,” DeMaria said. “That’s the way that the world has said that women are supposed to behave, (and) that’s what ends up happening because it’s so culturally ingrained.” According to CCHS Assistant Principal Summer Smith, a former CCHS math department teacher,
it can be easy for teachers to accidentally neglect female students in the classroom. “You tend to find yourself getting pulled to the voices that are louder, and sometimes that could be more male,” Smith said. “I think (the disparity) starts at upper elementary and middle school, and it has to do with girls seeking approval and not wanting to be too smart, or too whatever, if you’re in a situation that doesn’t honor smart female people. (Teachers) have to watch out for girls and not let them downplay (their intelligence) to try to be cute for whoever.” According to Johnson-Bailey, another way teachers may contribute to gender-related differences in the classroom is through perpetuating the “learned helplessness” effect. “What learned helplessness means is that, when a young girl can’t solve a problem, we step in (and) help her,” Johnson-Bailey said. “But when a boy has a problem, we say, ‘Oh, you can solve that. Just give it another try. Just keep on going.’ So we’re actually
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