Feminism and 'The Schooling Scandal'

Christine Skelton, Becky Francis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134050437
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Feminism and 'The Schooling Scandal' brings together feminist contributions from two generations of educational researchers, evaluating and celebrating the field of gender and education. The focus throughout is on the years of compulsory schooling, examining key concepts in gender and education identified and developed by international thinkers in educational feminism. Topics covered include:

• social class, ethnicity and sexuality in relation to experiences in school;
• theories and methodologies for understanding gender;
• pedagogy and practice in education; and
• the direction of educational policy and the 'problem of boys'.

Providing a comprehensive overview of contemporary research and theory emerging from 'second wave' feminism and assessing their impact on pupils and teachers in today's schools and classrooms, this book forms essential reading for anyone studying gender and education.

1 Introduction

Those of you familiar with the first flurry of books on girls’ education that came out of the women’s movement of the 1970s might recognise the phrase ‘the Schooling Scandal’. It was the sub-title used by Dale Spender for her 1982 book Invisible Women in which she argued that it was men’s knowledge and understandings of the world that were taught in schools and it was male interests that dominated the curriculum and the classroom. Spender’s book was one of many that caught the consciousness of myriad, mainly women, teachers and academics, working in schools and universities at that time. A glance at our own bookshelves offers up an array of contributions on girls and schooling that began to appear in the 1970s. Feminists across the western world started to raise the issues that formed the ‘gender agenda’ for the coming years; in Britain, the majority of these followed the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975.¹ Of course, feminist concerns with education were not unique to the UK and some of the earliest writings on girls’ schooling came from the USA² (see, for example, Sexism and Schooling and Society by Frazier and Sadker, 1973; And Jill Came Tumbling After: Sexism in Education by Stacey, Bereaud and Daniels, 1974).

Several decades have passed and several hundred books on gender and education have been written since the publication of these early texts. Although some of these UK academics have put together retrospectives of their work (see Arnot, 2000; David, 2003) there is no one book that brings together the ideas generated by these key feminist thinkers in education and follows them through to the present day. Furthermore, this book provides an opportunity to recognise and pay tribute to the work of those UK educational feminists who have contributed so much to our knowledge and understanding of gender and education and who are now reaching retirement age.

Our aim in writing this book is to provide an overview for those new to gender and education of the developments in feminist thinking on, and approaches to, gender and schooling in the context of the UK educational system. We have chosen to focus predominantly on the research studies undertaken and written from a UK perspective for two reasons. First, the intention is to track the debates in the specific context of the UK; and second, as we have said, the book is to recognise specifically UK feminists from 1978 to date. In so doing we have had to skim over the contributions of the many feminists located in other countries who have added substantially to our knowledge and understanding. A further point relates to our attention to the compulsory educational sector. This focus reflects the initial interests of second-wave feminists from which the themes of this book derive; as well as our own recognition that it is impossible to cover everything in a single book. We realise that this means we are not attending to the substantial bodies of feminist work that have emerged in early years, Further and Higher Education, Special Needs education, and other extra-compulsory aspects of education. It also needs to be said here that, even within our sector of focus, we recognise that we cannot address all the work that has been done, for example on particular curriculum areas; and in any book like this in which one aim is to ‘celebrate’ feminist work, there is always the risk that we have missed many important contributions. We do not mean to exclude, and hope that, rather, any feminist researcher readers will take the book for its aims (to provide an overview), and excuse any omissions!

We decided to include the phrase ‘the Schooling Scandal’ in the book title for a particular reason. It has been thirty years since Spender and her colleagues showed that the ‘scandal’ of schooling lay in the ways girls were treated as though they were of less consequence than boys. For example, curriculum text books centred around boys’ interests (e.g. history books focused on political and military events); school and classroom organisation emphasised difference and status (e.g. registers separating boys’ names and girls’ names with boys coming first, separate playgrounds for ‘girls and infants’ and ‘boys’ football games’); teachers’ perceptions of boys as more active and able learners than girls with the consequence they received more time and attention than girls and their work assessed more positively than girls. Doubtless, in the intervening decades there have been changes in teaching practice, social expectation and legislation regarding gender and schooling. Yet, the reason for retaining the phrase ‘the Schooling Scandal’ is to highlight how two of the central concerns of early second-wave feminists are as prevalent (and relevant) in the present day as they were over thirty years ago, namely: ‘achievement’ and ‘gendered experiences in schools’.

In the literature on gender and schooling in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the discussions focused on the take-up and underachievement of girls in maths and sciences in comparison to the successes of boys in these areas (Fennema and Sherman, 1977; Harding, 1980). However, feminists researching education also commented on how boys were underachieving in literacy. For example:

Boys and girls might learn to read and write together, but it is clear that they pick up very different messages about reading. Girls seem likely to bring more suitable experience to the printed page than boys do … We’re not offering the same opportunities to the boys – they are missing out!

(Lee, 1980: 126)

Boys, far more often than girls, are referred for ‘learning disabilities’ typically involving problems in reading and/or writing.

(Serbin, 1983: 24)

Understandings about the ‘school pupil’ in research and literature on education and schooling had largely been based on boys and their experiences (see for example, the discussions on ‘pupil’ pro- and anti-school subcultures based on Hargreaves [1967] and Lacey [1970] research on two boys’ schools [Meighan, 1981]). In order to redress this imbalance and lack of representation of female experiences, second-wave feminists focused their attention on the particular issues for girls, and the gendered implications of boys’ underachievement in literacy were not, at this time, pursued. At the same time, whilst girls’ underachievement in the maths/sciences areas of the curriculum were thoroughly researched and some interventions introduced into schools to tackle this problem (see Chapter 6), it remains the case today that girls continue to avoid these subjects, thus limiting future career opportunities. Of course, what the intervening years of research into gender has shown is that it is far too simplistic to compare ‘boys’ with ‘girls’ as if all boys and all girls liked the same subjects, achieved or underachieved in the same ways. To gain a more accurate understanding of gender differences requires that we consider how a range of factors impact upon pupils’ experiences and educational opportunities, including such variables as ethnicity, social class and sexuality.

In this book we trace the debates and discussions from ‘The Schooling Scandal’ of the 1970s to ‘The Schooling Scandal’ of today. Indeed, the present day ‘schooling scandals’ (the ways in which girls’ experiences of schooling have changed little over the past decades, the gendered underachievement of boys in literacy, and the underpinning of gender inequities by social class and ethnicity) are attributable to the same two themes identified by early second-wave feminists: achievement and experience. What has changed is the broader social and economic context. The neoliberal market which placed schools in competition with each other magnified the focus on ‘achievement’ whilst simultaneously playing down the effects of ‘experience’ on the construction of learning identities.

As we have observed, the discussion in the book will be concentrated mainly on the situation in the UK – however, where appropriate, reference will be made to the debates as they emerged in the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe. The main themes emerging from the early texts that have continued through to the current day are: sex roles and schooling (gender identities in today’s idiom), social class, ‘race’, sexual harassment and sexualities, curriculum and subject choice, the education and schooling of boys and teacher gender. Where we draw out statistics to illustrate our discussion of achievement, we use Key Stage 2 data (the exams in England at the end of primary schooling, age 10–11). This is the mid-point of compulsory education, marking the transition between primary and secondary schooling.

Before starting out on our exploration of those issues, which have shaped the debates about gender, schooling and education from 1978 to the present day, we spend some time on the findings of feminist historians of education such as June Purvis, Anna Davin and Carol Dyhouse, whose analysis of the social, cultural and political agendas around girls’ and women’s experiences in schooling provides a backcloth for what follows in this book. In particular, the work of feminist historians showed how significant social class was (and is) in shaping the opportunities and experiences of girls and women.

Girls’ and boys’ education: an historical context

In England the Education Act 1870 (known as The Forster Act) introduced the system of mass state schooling for girls and boys aged between the ages of 5 and 10.³ However, it was not until 1880 that schooling became compulsory and it was only in 1891 that it became free (Purvis, 1995). Some form of schooling was available prior to state education. In England there were a range of offerings from the prestigious public schools for upper-class boys through to, for example, Dame Schools, Ragged Schools and Factory Schools.

Many parents could not afford the ninepence per week fee charged by some school boards between 1870, when state schooling was introduced, and 1891 when it became free. As a result, the education that working-class girls and boys received tended to be rather haphazard. When working-class parents did have the money it was more likely that it would be spent on educating their sons rather than their daughters. And, middle- and upper-class parents either employed tutors or sent their sons to public schools.

Feminist historians have commented on how the very question of whether girls should be educated at all was highly contentious. Victorian society in the mid-to late-nineteenth century was evidently and obviously gendered and classed, and there were distinct differences in expectations of males and females with women occupying a clearly subordinate role in relation to men. Pauline Marks (1976) and Dale Spender (1987), in researching the history of girls’ schooling, have shown that education was regarded as physiologically undesirable as it might interfere with the female reproductive system. There is some evidence to suggest that this concern was not solely because of fears that education might ‘weaken’ the physical constitution of girls (Measor and Sikes, 1992) but also because it might encourage more middle-class women to become ‘bluestockings’; intellectual women who, on principle, rejected marriage and motherhood (Jackson, 1989; Purvis, 1991). However, girls were included in the move towards mass state schooling, but as the system was heavily inscribed by patriarchal relations then both middle- and working-class girls were to be educated for their future domestic roles (Davin, 1978; Delamont and Duffin, 1978; Dyhouse, 1981; Purvis, 1991).

The different forms of domestic curriculum received by middle- and working-class girls were in accordance with dominant versions of ‘respectable’ ladies and women. As June Purvis (1987) has said:

What was considered appropriate, relevant and attainable for middle-class women was inappropriate, irrelevant and unattainable for working-class women.(p. 255)

The cultural ideal of the working-class female was conceptualised in the ‘good woman’, whilst for the middle-classes the model was the ‘ladylike homemaker’ (Purvis, 1991). The ‘good woman’ was one who demonstrated her practical abilities and skills as housekeeper, wife and mother. In contrast, the ‘ladylike homemaker’ was achieved by middle-class women using their organisational skills to provide a stable, ‘tastefully elegant’, supportive, domestic environment. The forms of curriculum offered by the schools catering for the different social classes were then in accordance with these ‘ideals’.

Elementary schools taught working-class girls domestic skills which they could employ in the home and with their families. In the early 1870s, girls would spend as much as one-fifth of their time in school doing needlework (Sharpe, 1994). What subjects were to be taught was largely a matter of what grants the Education Department gave out; for example, domestic economy was made a compulsory subject for girls in 1878, followed by cookery in 1882 and laundry work in 1890. The emphasis placed on domestic subjects has been explained by considering wider societal and economic factors. First, a constant supply of army recruits was needed for Britain to maintain its empire but the poor health of many working-class males made them ineligible. This was seen to be the result of inadequate knowledge of nutrition and hygiene amongst working-class women (Davin, 1978; Turnbull, 1980), and schools were given responsibility for addressing this problem. Second, training working-class girls in domestic subjects would equip them with the skills needed to enter domestic service (Dyhouse, 1981; Purvis, 1995). A third explanation has been put forward by Lisa Picard (2006) who says that philanthropists, such as Angela Burdett-Coutts, were so dismayed by the children who arrived at the Ragged Schools wearing, literally, rags, they insisted that the education these children needed was, first and foremost, those skills that would enable them to survive. This included the ability to make clothes and keep themselves fed; given the gendered expectations of the time these domestic skills were taught to the girls.

For middle-class girls the situation was different. To begin with, between 1870 and 1914, girls of the more prosperous middle-classes were still educated mainly at home by governesses and their family, although in the early part of the twentieth century there was an increasing number attending the prestigious private schools such as Roedean. For a majority of middle-class girls, schooling, if it did take place, occurred mainly in the private sector and in secondary rather than primary schools (Purvis, 1991). The curriculum offered by the private schools to middle-class girls varied according to whether the headteacher could be classified as a ‘separatist’ or an ’uncompromiser’ (Delamont, 1978). ‘Separatists’, such as Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham Ladies College, wanted better standards of education for girls but this did not mean they were expected to study the same subjects as boys. The curriculum would, then, include subjects like deportment, drawing and callisthenics (Cobbe, 1894). The curriculum offered by ‘uncompromisers’, such as Frances Buss of North London Collegiate School, was similar to that of equivalent boys’ public schools but, nevertheless, still ‘aimed to prove that educated women and girls could still be feminine by insisting on respectable womanly dress, deportment and behaviour’ (Measor and Sikes, 1992: 39). Unlike elementary schools, the curriculum offered by these private girls’ schools was not subject to any official government educational policy.

The evidence of domesticity so prevalent in the curriculum for working-class elementary schoolgirls did influence the curriculum of the girls’ high schools but in a rather different form. Rather than emphasising the practical skills of housekeeping the stress was on the ‘scientific principles’ underlying domestic management. In 1900, Sara Burstall, the head of Manchester High School, introduced a housewifery course. The content actually covered a much wider range of subjects than those offered to working-class girls; that is, it included English, history, French, specialised household arithmetic, science, cookery, laundry work, hygiene, household management and needlework (Burstall, 1933). The place of science in the curriculum is worth noting here. In her book The Science Education of American Girls, Tolley (2003) comments on how, in the US, in the early part of the nineteenth century, science was taught only to girls in the form of astronomy, natural philosophy (physics), chemistry and botany. At this time, the prestigious curriculum subjects were the Classics and these were regarded as the preserve of boys. Such information sheds light on how subjects are culturally constructed, and is something discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.

The granting of the vote to women of 30 and above in 1918 and developments in technology leading to an increased demand for typists, telephonists and clerical labour, forced changes to the curriculum of schools (Weiner, 1994). However, whilst the Elementary School Code of 1904 did recommend that the curriculum be widened to include a broader range of subjects, a Board of Education Report in 1923 criticised schools of both sexes for offering too academic a curriculum to their (working-class) pupils. At the same time, this report retained the notion of an education based on ‘natural’ differences:

… equality does not demand identity but is compatible with, and even depends upon, a system of differentiation which either sex seeks to multiply at a rich interest its own peculiar talents.

(Board of Education Report, 1923, reported in Weiner, 1994: 36)

This idea of ‘appropriate’ and different forms of schooling for boys and girls was one which continued throughout the early part of the twentieth century, even where there was an emphasis in educational policy on the concept of ‘equality’. An example of this can be found in the Butler Education Act of 1944, which was intended to redress inequalities experienced by working-class children by directing them towards different types of school, specifically grammar, technical and secondary modern schools. The decision as to which school a child attended was based on their measured intelligence, that is how they performed in the 11-plus examination (David, 1993). Although the tri-partite system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools was not intended as socially divisive, inevitably it was the academic grammar schools which were seen as having higher status and it was places for girls in the grammar schools that were at a premium. As Rosemary Deem (1981) noted, this was achieved through various sleights of hand, e.g. having fewer grammar school places for girls than for boys and then weighting the results differently. Goldstein (1986: 3) explains:

What was happening was that, because girls obtained higher average scores than boys but then had their scores adjusted downwards to equalise the sex distributions, some girls were being refused admission to grammar school despite having higher raw sores than some boys who had been selected. The reason for this differential treatment was the assumption that, although boys were ‘manifesting less potential at the time, they actually have more potential for the future than do girls’

(cited in Gipps and Murphy, 1994: 8)

Dean (1995) has also pointed to the way in which education from the 1940s was shaped by the need to ensure that men who had served in the military services during the war could be re-employed and one means to achieve this was to encourage the view that both middle-class and working-class girls’ futures lay in domesticity:

At the close of the war the major concern was that a rapidly demobilizing military machine, predominantly male, should find employment in peacetime Britain … The immediate task was to lure women back from the workplace to the home. What seemed to be required was a mixture of persuasion, education, rewards and warnings.(p. 19)

A consideration of the wording of the Education Act 1944 and subsequent education reports demonstrates that Dean’s argument is not unsubstantiated. For example, one section of the act calls for schools to:

… afford for all pupils opportunities for education offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Sex roles and schooling
• 3 Social class in schooling
• 4 Ethnicity, gender and education
• 5 Sexualities and sexual harassment in schools
• 6 Curriculum, knowledge and schooling
• 7 Schools and boys
• 8 Gender and teaching
• Notes
• References