There is always another battle or another issue
I of all people should know better. The civil rights movement in the U.S. told women to stop talking about gender issues because first the fight against racism had to be won. The feminist movement frowned at women of colour raising their issues, insisting that first the fight against the patriarchy had to be won. The nationalist movements in Africa insisted that feminism was a corrupt and decadent western import, and that first we had to capture our earthly kingdoms, and achieve our panAfricanist Nirvana, before we started looking at "side issues". And those of us who are interested in our contemporary political dynamics have fallen into the same pit of not tackling the prickly, the uncomfortable questions now: we are waiting to win the larger battle before we clean our house. There is always another battle or another issue, and the matters that matter to the foot soldiers are postponed for yet another day. Yet, these issues ARE the battle. We fight for freedom --and do not imagine we are doing anything less--because it is the freedom to live our lives the way we want, from the jobs we choose to the people we fall in love with. If we cannot tackle them, then we are not equipped to tackle anything. What are the lines of difference we draw? For what do we engage, argue, participate and in some heroes' cases, take awful risks? For what?
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Activism | Civil Rights | Feminism | Ideology | Politics | Race
Because school is about submission
Submitted by liza on 5 May 2006 - 1:24am.
Duh!
It's horrible.
I do think school discriminates against boys because submission is what is demanded from kids. I mean, the majority of "ADD" kids are boys and not girls.
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And Did You Notice. . .
Submitted by JJ Ross on 5 May 2006 - 2:23am.
. . .that the female quoted in the story is called the schools' "CEO" -- suggesting that to make it in school administration, this female had to change herself to fit the male business success mold, and now she represents the worst of both failing cultures at the same time, too-female classrooms teaching the wrong lessons to both sexes, and too-male executive function that punishes them all when they dutifully internalize those lessons and begin to live them.
So it seems the problem is not that either sex is insitutionally "out of balance." It's that both males and females are being systematically dehumanized by our institutions, which supposedly exist to serve the needs of us individual humans, not the other way around!
Liza might remember this from NHEN's original legislative e-list?
"Public schooling in practice today is a socialist collective. Home education is an individual repudiation of that collective. Every debate. . . seems to rest on this tension between the claims of the collective and the yearning for self-determination -- for ourselves AND our own children.
No wonder home education is viewed as such a threat by collectives like unions and government bureaucracies [and theocracy!] who perversely claim they can strengthen and support individuals by subsuming them.
. . . Maybe the real issue is not homeschooling [or gender equity or racism or whatever], but community versus collective. . ."
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She May Be A HE
Submitted by JJ Ross on 5 May 2006 - 12:17pm.
I think my aging eyes misread Arne as Anne. But there are plenty of both hes and shes not getting that this is about real individual boys and girls, not percentages and quotas and the system, until you get to story's end and a mom says it just the way I'd have done:
Julie Woestehoff of Chicago's Parents United for Responsible Education said the first mission should be to make sure Chicago is using the fairest -- and least gender-biased -- measuring stick to pick college prep kids.
"To me, we shouldn't game the system. We should fix the system," Woestehoff said.
"Everybody hates this system and how many times it's changed and how confusing it is and how scary it is. . ."Gender weighting would only increase the likelihood that the kids who will get in will be the kids that somebody [with clout] sent.
"After all, this is Chicago."
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Heck, We TEACH Gender Jiggering
Saw this on my way to add a May 3 news story into my blog essay - but comment access is closed for that now, and here's a new live discussion where gender jiggling fits!
I always sensed that "school" was set up more for girls but then, it would seem the real answer is to change THAT, not just rejiggger the admissions process so it's even more unfair to more people and even further from the original intent.
Why not change the prevailing school culture instead, so it accommodates itself to our girls and boys, rather than these institutional machinations trying to make the existing student demographic (and future society) fit IT?