Gender Equity :: Economics

Gender EquityGender equity is a very important subject matter that teachers mustdeal with in the classroom. As I taught at RAA middle school somedifferences begin to stand disclose between the genders. One thing thatpopped out at me the most was the maturity take of the two. In sayingthat I mean the sexual desires of the students at their age. That isimportant for teachers to see for when we begin to group studentstogether for activity. One instance is that of boxing out inbasketball. The skill calls for the one boxing out to push out withtheir scarcets against the other player. This at the middle school levelis not appropriate for the girls and boys to act in. Theirhormones on the nose a little too much. Another difference I noticed was thedesire of guys to be with guys and girls to be with girls. This hadnothing to do with attraction but dealt with the misunderstanding ofskill level. The men perceive the women to be inferior in sportsskills so in their group they want guys. Th e men seem to rather permitthe least skilled guy over the best skilled girl. I feel they do thisbecause it would be embarrassing for them to be shown up by a girl. Soit is our job, as teachers, to do away with this stereotype, and makeboth genders understand they can benefit skill wise from mix genderactivities. In the simple(a) level the major difference was theage-old argument that girls nasty and guys nasty. The girls definitelydo not want to be paired with guys and vice versa. In basal ithad nothing to do with skill level but everything to do with just thegender. I remember putting a boy with a girl at Buck Lake and it waslike I had made a kid eat peas for the first time. So the differencein elementary and middle school is just the reason why the boys dontwant to be paired with girls. So in noticing that I feel that yes Iwas biased at the elementary level and I figure I did that because Ireally wanted to keep the interest up. I noticed that the one time Ipaired different gen ders the productivity of the boy went down. Iguess that scared me so I shied away from it, but now looking backmaybe I should have paired them up. The students will have to learnone day that the two genders can work together to accomplish a goaland what better time than in elementary.