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 How do schools help promote gender identity? 
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To follow up on Ben's topic on how we know we are male or female. I was just wondering how in school (k-12) help reinforce these gender identity roles for males and females? For example boys playing with cars and girls playing with dolls.

I feel in the early elementary grades, especially preschool, are not as pushy on the roles of males and females. But as we move through the grades it changes. In middle school there starts to be separate rules kind of for each gender and how we are suppose to act. Just wondering what everyone else noticed from school about it.

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Alicia Yewcic


Sun Apr 05, 2009 12:13 pm
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I noticed this same thing! I feel that in the younger grades the children "play" in their gender roles but it is not necessarily separated a whole bunch. By the time children are in the middle grades i feel that the children have the gender separation roles down to a point. Boys act like boys and girls act like girls. I feel that gender roles should definately play a difference in the sex of a child but that playing together and treating eath other equally will create a balance in the classroom.

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Katherine Gray Nelli


Mon Apr 06, 2009 9:29 am
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It is amazing how each sex falls in to their own stereotypes. Boys cuss and spit, girls are polite and are domesticated. Now there are exceptions to the rule but over all I agree that middle school is when the sexes truly divide themselves.

In highschool it really shows. Not many girls take auto tech and not many boys take apparel design. It would help if the students would become educated in the opposite sex roles, it would help create more well rounded children.

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Ashley Rebecca Brooks


Mon Apr 06, 2009 11:43 am
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It would be great if gender roles weren't so prominent in schools. We could all benefit by being a little bit more like the other sex. One problem that I read about recently is that most schools are run with a gender bias. In one of my other classes we discussed how schools are almost always facilitated in a manner that favors females. This is due to the prominence of female educators and the disregard for boys unique cognitive development. With these circumstances they constantly get confined to the gender role of "boys being boys" and soon this behavior becomes an accepted norm for boys.

On the flip side, females also suffer from this bias. They are confined to the gender role of being the good student and the socially well mannered. Any misbehavior or academic struggles are soon as boyish behaviors, when not fitting in at school is an issue shared by both genders.


Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:54 pm
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I feel that in the early grades many students are pushed to do things that are more "gender like" than they many want to. For example in kindergarten more genders are persuaded into certain gender rolls, and this may not be what they would pick if they were not pushed into choosing that. I think it is very important to create a neutral classroom that is appealing to all students.

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Samantha Neader


Tue Apr 07, 2009 8:10 am
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I also have thought that in younger grades, kids are more pushed to gender role activities. But I have noticed in the kindergarten class that I am interning in that most of the toys that students play with are not gender specific and are based more on learning. I really think that it is best for teachers to create a neutral classroom like others have said.

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Leslie Sheppard


Tue Apr 07, 2009 11:25 am
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I have noticed exactly what Alicia said. As we get older the gender definitions are forced upon us and we are more defined as people. I think that it begins in later elementary school and as kids begin to go through puberty it becomes more of a physical understanding of why we are different. This physical view then changes to a mental and emotional view where boys and girls act, feel, and believe different things. We begin to see everyone in different lights and we then see the changes of some males really seeing themselves as females and vice versa.

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Danielle L Epley


Thu Apr 09, 2009 11:59 am
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