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Showing posts with the label genderbias

Kids, Gender Stereotypes, and Independence

My week in the education literature continues. Tracing through the references from the article I mentioned yesterday, I wound  up at Social Behaviors and Gender Differences Among Preschoolers: Implications for Science Activities To be fair, I did read through the entire article, but these two gems in the abstract caught my attention immediately: Findings indicate that the social behaviors of boys and girls were stereotypical and During free time, preference for same-gender peer interactions was observed The authors go on to discuss the aggressive, at times violent behavior of boys, and the generally more caring behavior of girls.  Per normal, these assertions run  contrary to my experiences. I believe the institution the kids are being studied in—public schools—can very easily instill these messages. I do not believe, however, that they have to be the norm. My most recent  experience with the concept that institutions can teach stereotypical gender behavior came almo...

Not All Parents are Moms

A thing happened to us in an LA transit station that never-ever happens in San Francisco: a safety officer tried to shepherd the kids... sort of.  I can't say exactly why this has never happened to us in San Francisco, but I've got ideas: frankly, I think San Francisco is just used to us.  We live there.  We're in and out of the stations several times a day every day. Consequently, I'm guessing the same folks who are in the station day after day have noticed the gang plenty of times, perhaps so many times they've completely discounted them at this point. LA on the other hand, seems not to be used to us yet. Our tale starts a few days back.  The kids had spent most of the day doing a seven mile hike up to Griffith Observatory.  We met downtown shortly afterwards to head out on a Metro train.  The journey was pleasant enough—Metro trains are kinda odd for denizens of BART because you can't move from car to car.  The kids ride subways every day, s...