By Jill Goetz
American educators -- regardless of their gender or the grade level at which they teach -- continue to focus more attention on male than on female students, education expert David Sadker told 150 teachers and administrators on April 18 in Cornell's Biotechnology Building auditorium.
And that's despite more than two decades of research, much of it conducted by Sadker and his late wife, Myra Sadker (author of 1973's groundbreaking book Sexism in School and Society), strongly suggesting that gender bias in the classroom diminishes girls' self-esteem, expectations and even opportunities later in life.
In a lecture sponsored by the Public Service Center titled "Gender Bias in the College Classroom and Strategies for Change," Sadker, a professor of education at American University, showed the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that educators from kindergarten through college reinforce male students and discourage females.
Sadker spent the first half of his lecture offering blatant examples of sexism, such as a children's book published in 1970, I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl! in which boys become doctors and girls, nurses; boys fix things and girls need things fixed; boys will one day build houses, girls will clean them.
He also invited two male and two female Cornell students on stage, where he asked them to pretend they were sitting in a classroom. As the "teacher," he spent the entire "class" standing next to the men, calling on them to answer questions and challenging them with provocative follow-up questions. Except for a few nods to the women's drawing capabilities, he ignored them.
Next, Sadker demonstrated more subtle examples of classroom gender bias by screening a clip of a 1992 segment of Dateline NBC in which he and Myra Sadker served as consultants, observing a schoolteacher in an Arlington, Va., classroom for two days from behind a one-way mirror.
Though the show's producers (and some members of the Cornell audience) initially failed to see any bias on the part of this teacher, the Sadkers could point to several examples, such as the teacher's facing the boys more often and spending more time with them as she circulated throughout the classroom. And this teacher knew the Sadkers were scrutinizing her.
"What we have here is a pattern that pervades our classrooms," Sadker told the Cornell audience.
One result of such unequal attention, he said, is that girls become less active participants in the learning process, asking and answering questions less often than boys. Such behavioral differences in the classroom are most marked at the college level, he said.
The Dateline segment also addressed the recent debate over the value of single-sex schools and colleges, spurred by studies that have shown such schools can increase girls' self-esteem, leadership skills and interest in science and math.
"I think single-sex schools are a wonderful option," Sadker said. "But the lesson from our research is not to abandon the coed classroom but to make it a better environment for all students."
In his lecture Sadker demonstrated many ways that teachers can do just that.
For example, he suggested that teachers ask more girls to take part in class demonstrations, give girls more time to answer a question before calling on a more vocal male student, and seek out textbooks that depict women in non-traditional roles and that include many examples of influential women.