Still Failing at Fairness

How Gender Bias Cheats Girls and Boys in School and What We Can Do About It

David Sadker, Karen R. Zittleman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781416552475
• eBook ISBN: 9781439159439
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Despite decades of effort to create fair classrooms and schools, gender bias is alive and well, and in some ways growing. School practices continue to send boys and girls down different life paths, too often treating them not as different genders but as different species. Teachers and parents often miss the subtle signs of sexism in classrooms. Through firsthand observations and up-to-the-minute research, Still Failing at Fairness brings the gender issue into focus. The authors provide an in-depth account of how girls' and boys' educations are compromised from elementary school through college, and offer practical advice for teachers and parents who want to make a positive difference. The authors examine today's pressing issues -- the lack of enforcement for Title IX, the impact of the backlash against gender equity, the much-hyped "boys' crisis, " hardwired brain differences, and the recent growth of singlesex public schools. This book documents how teaching, current testing practices, and subtle cultural attitudes continue to short-circuit both girls and boys of every race, social class, and ethnicity. Hard-hitting and remarkably informative, Still Failing at Fairness is "a fascinating look into America's classrooms" (National Association of School Psychologists).

CHAPTER 1

Didn’t We Solve This Problem Years Ago?

By 1994, Myra and David Sadker had already been researching classrooms for over a decade, documenting what so many missed: despite girls’ terrific report cards and cheery smiles, subtle sexist practices at home and at school were sapping their future potential. Many of the lessons girls were learning in school would actually thwart their success as adults. Gender bias was not about girls only: boys were also being shortchanged and confined to an even tighter gender role of what was, and was not, acceptable behavior. The Sadkers saw the challenge in simple terms: publicize unfair treatment (in this case sexism in schools), create awareness of the problem, and surely teachers and parents would demand change. The Sadkers shared their decades of research in the original 1994 edition of Failing at Fairness.

While there has been significant progress in the past few years, sexism not only persists, but has become both more puzzling and more virulent than ever. Political pundits and far-right foundations have fueled a concerted effort to turn back the clock, to degrade feminist efforts, and to reestablish more restrictive gender roles. They argue that men and women are so different that they should be educated in different ways and for different life roles. Today, the need for a revised Failing at Fairness could not be clearer.

More Public Schools Dividing Boys and Girls

Houston Chronicle (2007)

Harvard President Shocks with Comments on Gender Differences

University Wire (2005)

Civil Rights Commission Turns into Heated Debate on Title IX

CBS Sportsline.com (2007)

The Math Myth: The Real Truth about Women’s Brains and the Science Gender Gap

Time, February 27, 2005

Study Casts Doubt on the “Boy Crisis”

Washington Post, June 26, 2006

Study Notes Lack of Female Professors

University Wire, February 23, 2004

Many teachers, parents, and students are confused. College students in our classes often view sexism as a vestige of a bygone era, more about political correctness than actual inequities. They arrived on the scene after the most egregious examples of sex bias were eliminated, and have yet to recognize how gender bias can (and likely will) inhibit their options. For them, the word feminist is a label to be avoided at all cost. They are not alone.

Just before revising this book, David received a call from a young reporter who wanted to speak to him about his work “in making women superior to men.” This reporter had already constructed his own definition of gender equity, one built on fear, and his writing will likely fuel fear in others. He viewed gender bias in school as boys versus girls. Some authors and media pundits find that combative metaphor useful. We do not. Gender bias short-circuits both boys and girls, and both move forward when gender restrictions are removed. We need to remove the fear of change, of moving forward. Marianne Williamson wrote about such fear.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.¹

There is no doubt that political and social opposition to gender equity has grown in recent years. The critics, often referred to as the backlash, touch a “darkness that most frightens us” by drawing gloomy scenarios of how society will be harmed, boys hurt, and our future imperiled if traditional gender roles are changed. Our purpose is quite the opposite: to encourage parents and educators to help each child grow in a world free of stereotypes, to welcome the light. We hope that Still Failing at Fairness will reinforce Williamson’s idea that each of us is “powerful beyond measure.”

BIAS IN THE CLASSROOM

The media floods us with restricted gender images of female beauty and male macho. Blatant sexist images inundate movies, television, and advertising, but it is the even more subtle sexist messages that can shape how we view our world. When Failing at Fairness was first published, Myra and David focused on these subtle, all but invisible, examples of sexism in school. But it was their appearances on Dateline in 1992 and in 1994 (before the “To Catch a Predator” epidemic had set in) that underscored the challenge of “seeing” subtle sexism in school.

Jane Pauley, the show’s coanchor at the time, wanted to visit classrooms, capture these covert sexist lessons on videotape, and expose them before a television audience. The task was to extricate sound bites and video clips of sexism from a fifth-grade classroom where the teacher, chosen to be the subject of the exposé, was aware she was being scrutinized for sex bias. The teacher agreed to be the focus so that she could learn and improve her already strong teaching skills. What a great idea!

Dateline had been taping her class for two days when David received a concerned phone call from the show’s producer: “This is a fair teacher. How can we show sexism on our show when there’s no gender bias in this teacher’s class?” David and Myra drove to the NBC studio in Washington, D.C., and found two Dateline staffers, intelligent women concerned about fair treatment in school, sitting on the floor in a darkened room staring at the videotape of a fifth-grade class. “We’ve been playing this over and over. The teacher is terrific. There’s no bias in her teaching. Come watch.”

The teacher was terrific. She was also a classic example of the many skillful, well-intentioned professionals who inadvertently teach boys better than girls. The NBC staffers, like most people, simply could not detect the bias. One literally has to learn to see again, to remove the cultural blinders. The Sadkers froze the tape, pointed out the sexist behaviors, and then replayed it. The producers were amazed that they looked so hard and saw so little. The examples of sexism were like micro inequities: fleeting but persistent, brief but powerful, flying under our conscious radar. Once the hidden lessons of unconscious bias are made visible, classrooms never look the same again.

Much of the unintentional gender bias in that fifth-grade class could not be shown in the short time allowed by television, but the video clips of sexism selected for broadcast were powerful. Dateline showed a math group with boys sitting on the teacher’s right side and girls on her left. Informal segregation by race would likely be addressed, but when done by gender is routinely ignored—with compelling consequences. After giving the math book to a girl to hold open at the page of examples, the teacher turned her back to the girls and focused on the boys, teaching them actively and directly. Occasionally she turned to the girls’ side, but only to read the examples in the book. This teacher, although aware that she was being observed for sexism, had unwittingly transformed the girls into passive spectators, an audience for the boys. All but one, that is: the girl holding the math book had become a prop.

Dateline also showed a lively discussion in the school library. With both girls’ hands and boys’ hands waving for attention, the librarian chose boy after boy to speak. In one interaction she peered through the forest of girls’ hands waving directly in front of her to acknowledge the raised hand of a boy in the back of the room. Startled by the teacher’s attention, the boy muttered, “I was just stretching.” In the fast pace of classroom give-and-take, such behaviors are difficult to detect, much less change. Sexist interactions are part of our everyday culture, imbedded in how we talk and behave. It is much easier to discuss sexism in the abstract than it is to eliminate specific sexist behaviors—especially when you are the teacher.

Sitting in the same classroom, reading the same textbook, listening to the same teacher, boys and girls receive very different educations. From grade school through graduate school, female students are more likely to be invisible members of classrooms. Teachers interact with males more frequently, ask them better questions, give them more precise and helpful feedback, and discipline them more harshly and more publicly. Over the course of years the uneven distribution of teacher time, energy, attention, and talent shapes both genders. Girls learn to wait patiently, to accept that they are behind boys on the line for teacher attention. Boys learn that they are the prime actors shaping classroom life. If frustrated, boys quickly discover that they can call out or act out. Teachers learn that the way to “manage” a class is to control the boys. In today’s sexist school culture, boys assume that they are number one, and begin to understand the inherited power of entitlement. This sense of entitlement is a two-edged sword: soaring boyhood hopes often crash into adult realities. Boys are led to expect much from the world, often too much in the way of power and material wealth. Few boys will become president or an astronaut or a millionaire or a sports star. Many boys will become men who sell life insurance, fix furnaces, or work long hours on two jobs. School teaches girls what society expects from them: patience, waiting, a second-class citizenship, and quiet frustration (and too often depression). Sexism sends both girls and boys into the world with these powerful lessons—lessons they would be better off unlearning.

After several decades of research and thousands of hours of classroom observation, the stubborn persistence and subtlety of sexist lessons are startling. When Myra and David began their first research project in the early 1980s, they visited one of Washington, D.C.’s most elite (and expensive) private schools. Uncertain of exactly what to look for, David and Myra decided to write nothing down, but simply sit quietly and observe. They felt like meditating monks in the midst of a whirlwind of activity. So much happening at once! Classroom life is so fast paced that one could easily miss a vital phrase or gesture, a tiny inequity that might hold a world of meaning. Sometimes, subtlety was not the problem. On the second day, they witnessed their first clear example of sexism, a quick, jarring flash within the hectic pace of the school day:

Two second graders are kneeling beside a large box. They whisper excitedly to each other as they pull out wooden blocks, colored balls, counting sticks. So absorbed are these two small children in examining and sorting the materials, they are visibly startled by the teacher’s impatient voice as she hovers over them. “Ann! Julia! Get your cotton-pickin’ hands out of the math box. Move over so the boys can get in there and do their work.”

Isolated here on the page of a book, this incident is not difficult to interpret. Some might not even find the comment particularly offensive. But if race rather than gender was the distinction, the injustice is brought into sharper focus. Picture Ann and Julia as African-American children asked to take their “cotton-pickin’ hands” away so white children “can get in there and do their work.” Whether the child was black or female, if Ann and Julia’s parents had observed this exchange, they might justifiably wonder whether their tuition dollars were well spent. But few parents actually watch teachers in action, and fewer still have learned to interpret the meaning behind fast-paced classroom events.

While the teacher talked to the two girls, she was also keeping a wary eye on fourteen other active children. Unless you actually shadowed the teacher, stood right next to her as we did, you might miss the event entirely. After all, it lasted only a few seconds. The incident unsettles, but it must be considered within the context of numerous interactions this harried teacher had that day. Perhaps the teacher feared that without some constructive activity, the boys might have gotten into mischief. Keep them on task and the girls will mind themselves. But the hidden lesson to those students was obvious.

Most sexist behaviors are far less obvious. It took Myra and David almost a year to develop an observation system that would register the hundreds of daily classroom interactions, teasing out the imbedded gender bias. Trained raters went into classrooms in four states and the District of Columbia, recording the dialogue of teachers and students. They observed students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds as they attended math, reading, English, and social studies classes. They saw lessons taught by women and by men, by teachers of different races. In short, they analyzed America’s classrooms. By the end of the year, there were thousands of observation sheets, and after another year of statistical analysis, a syntax of sexism emerged, one so elusive that most teachers and students were completely unaware of its influence.² Boys had become the center of teacher attention; girls had become quiet spectators.

BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER

Women who have spent years learning the lessons of silence in elem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Also by the Authors
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Authors’ Note
• 1: Didn’t We Solve This Problem Years Ago?
• 2: Opening the Schoolhouse Door
• 3: The Beginning of the Classroom Compromise: The Elementary School Years
• 4: Self-Esteem Slides: The Middle Years
• 5: Life in High School
• 6: Tests, Grades, and the Boys’ Crisis
• 7: Higher Education: Peeking Behind the Campus Curtain
• 8: Single-Sex Education: A Good Idea?
• 9: Possibilities, Such Possibilities
• Notes