Failing at FAIRNESS by Myra David Sadker

Author:Myra David Sadker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TOUCHSTONE
Published: 2003-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The first grant we ever received was to investigate sex bias in college books. In the late 1970s, we spent more than a year examining the twenty-four best-selling teacher education textbooks. We read each line, evaluated every photo, and assessed the books from cover to cover—from the table of contents to the index. Twenty-three of the twenty-four texts gave the issue of gender equity less than 1 percent of book space. One-third never mentioned the topic. Those least likely to include girls and women were the books about how to teach mathematics and science courses. Not one of the twenty-four texts provided teachers with strategies or resources to eliminate sexism from the classroom.

Using these college texts, tomorrow’s teachers would actually learn to be more sexist. One book offered a lengthy rationale for paying female teachers less than male teachers. Another author advised prospective teachers to stock their classroom libraries with twice as many books about males as females. The author explained that “boys will not read ‘girl books’ but girls will read ‘boy books.’” An educational psychology text offered this helpful tidbit to increase teacher efficiency: “If all the boys in a high school class routinely get distracted when a curvaceous and provocative coed undulates into the room to pick up attendance slips, tape the attendance slips to the outside of the door.”

A science textbook explained that girls “know less, do less, explore less, and are prone to be more superstitious than boys.” Another education text emphasized the impact of technology with a fascinating analogy: If it were not for recent technological breakthroughs, “all women over twenty years of age in the United States would have to be telephone operators to handle all the phone calls.” A reading textbook offered recommendations for bringing parent power into the classroom: “Some fathers could help the third-grade boys make birdhouses easier than the teacher could; some mothers could teach sixth-grade girls how to knit; many mothers would be glad to drive a carload of children to the airport, to the museum, or to the public library.”

Adding to the stereotyped narrative was the male world presented by the books. From the photographs to the index listings, education was pictured as populated and experienced by boys and men. One text highlighted seventy-three famous educators, seventy-two of whom were male. Another text featured the work of thirty renowned educators, all men. The message to tomorrow’s teachers, most of whom are women, was clear: Even in this female profession, it is the men who deserve to be remembered.

To turn this picture around, we developed a set of nonsexist guidelines, suggestions for publishers interested in creating fairer college texts. Several publishers distributed our guidelines to their authors. A few publishers actually sent our research findings to the authors of the textbooks we had critiqued and requested that they “repair” their work in future editions.

Considering the job done, we turned our attention to classroom interaction, but in 1991 we were jolted back into the world of college books.

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