[dynamicdoula]

This is a cut/paste from my blog:

So we (DH and I) volunteered to help out with the morning session of field day yesterday at the boys' school. It was fun to see the kids, many of whom I've seen grow up from first graders, now into 4th, 5th and 6th graders. Something really interesting I just had to write about though, a dynamic that disturbed me greatly....

I was running a game where the kids each got one ball, and were separated into four teams. The teams had a row of milk crates that were given a set of points- you know the game at Chucky Cheese where you roll the ball up the little game and try to get it inside of a ring worth a certain amount of points? Same idea, only milk crates. Okay... so the team who had the most points after the round would pick a barnyard animal sound that the ohter three teams had to make while running around this fence.

There were several times when the teams weren't quite even and one of the team mates had to throw twice. There was one occassion where on a team of five kids, three were girls, two were boys. One girl was ROCKING it, she hit it on every throw - killer eye. One boy couldn't resist that 50pt box and missed it every single time. I asked the kids who was throwing twice and the girl says, "I will!" and the other two girls agree, and I'm stoked.... girl power! Then the boy immediately speaks up and says, "No *I* will," and the other boy concurs and the girls all back down. Oh man, I just stood there stunned!!!! I almost said, "She can throw better than you, if you want a chance, she's the one who should throw. What, you don't want her to throw because she has a vagina?!" I was so stunned I just stood there, and I realized that these kids are indoctrinated by a culture of male dominance... and I could just see Dark Daughta standing next to me nodding going, "yes, girl, you finally are GETTING IT" and I felt a little stupid because man, I do get it, but I had never seen it so starkly in my face like this, with children! It just hit me like a ton of bricks.

I actually saw this dynamic more than once, where the boys would override the girls in some fashion and the girls would inevitably back down. It made me very sad.

My DH was on Tug of War and the teams were broken up into girls against boys. Guess who talked the most smack... BOYS... Guess who *agreed* with the boys? The girls!!! Guess who actually whooped ass? The girls!!!! And it's not "Girl power, of course we won!" It's "Holy mackeral, I can't believe we beat BOYS!"

@#[email protected]%!#@[email protected]#!

 

[spedel]

:

My family taught me that I was perfectly capable of doing *anything* that a boy can do. It was a non-issue to me and I didn't realize a difference until elementary school. Teachers would always ask for boy volunteers for the "fun" errands (like cleaning chalkboard erasers, helping the janitors pick up trash, you know, things that involved being physical or outdoors) and I would always volunteer. I'd never get picked and it always bothered me.

I had really hoped that times had changed and my little girl wouldn't have to go through all that @#$%.

 

[Marsupialmom]

I think people are over simplifing problems at schools. Making things boy vs girl.

What you saw might not be realistic day in and day out........

Those boys are more likley to be in remedial classes, drop out, diciplined, labeled, and lost.

http://www.esquire.com/features/the-...06SOTAMBOYS_94

In the end boys are behind girls in language arts and they aren't graduating college. There is a gender and racial divide.

http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/school.html

 

[dynamicdoula]

I think you're right, it is over simplified -- but I wrote about my initial impressions.

I am the mom of two boys and I am constantly arguing against the marginalizatin of boys and men... this one time though, I had to notice the lack of empowerment in these girls, that they saw themselves as inherently weaker than those boys, less capable, etc. It made me sad.

 

[Aura_Kitten]

4th / 5th / 6th grade ~ hmm. I think this is less an issue of the girls not believing in themselves and more an issue of them wanting to attract the boys ~ which they can't do as effectively if they're intimidating them.

ETA ~ yes I know they're still kids but most kids nowadays are at a stage of development during that age group that is very close to puberty. In 6th grade, some of my friends were already having sex.

 

[dynamicdoula]

Nah, you had to be there. It wasn't coy, it was frustrated girls who were irritated at being ignored. They were definitely not smiling and coquettish. LOL

 

[Aura_Kitten]

When I was a kid I beat up all the people I had crushes on.

 

[mommy68]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aura_Kitten 4th / 5th / 6th grade ~ hmm. I think this is less an issue of the girls not believing in themselves and more an issue of them wanting to attract the boys ~ which they can't do as effectively if they're intimidating them.

ITA.

That said, I don't see it as a big deal. I would only be disturbed at something like this if the girls or boys were being forced to act the way they were acting. If they are acting this way by choice then whats the big deal?! I don't get it.

 

[s_kristina]

It seems like the big deal here is that at such a young age girls are internalizing the message that they can't do physical things as well as boys. In reality we know that the musculature of male and female adults is different. As children it isn't that different although I know by the time I was in any of those grades I was already well in to puberty and had reached my full adult height by 6th grade. I would guess many more children are already in puberty at those ages these days. However as the girls won a game it sounds like this was not an issue for these children. It's really just an issue of how life is modeled to them and how they think the world works.

I know I would not want my dd thinking that just because one of her class mates is a boy he can do something better then she can. Thankfully my dd is very much a tomboy and was telling me a story about recess the other day that had me wondering if I was in for a talk with her teacher. My dd is also several inches taller then the next biggest child in her small summer pre-k class. Because of her size we have worked very hard at understanding how different people do different things well. I think in her case the fact that she is in speech classes and has some mild OT issues it makes things easier. She knows because she is bigger she can do some things other kids her age can't. She also knows that even though she is bigger and older then ds there are some things he does better then her due to her OT issues.

 

[mommy68]

Quote:

Originally Posted by s_kristina It seems like the big deal here is that at such a young age girls are internalizing the message that they can't do physical things as well as boys. I know I would not want my dd thinking that just because one of her class mates is a boy he can do something better then she can.

I think this kind of thinking comes mainly from adults. If you sit and watch children on a playground around the grades of 4-6th grade then you will see that they mostly do the same things AND they do what feels most comfortable to them.

Again, unless the girls are being forced to act like girls and the the boys are forced to act like boys then I don't get the big deal. In my sons classes each year there are girls that hang with the boys and do what they do physically and those that do not (the same goes academically as well). At that age they aren't thinking about acting like a girl or acting like a boy. I think as adluts we tend to look at things like this and worry a little too much. Just let them be kids.

 

[teachma]

Why would a teacher even separate teams by gender? It's just asking for these kinds of issues to arise.

 

[happyhippiemama]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mommy68 I think this kind of thinking comes mainly from adults. If you sit and watch children on a playground around the grades of 4-6th grade then you will see that they mostly do the same things AND they do what feels most comfortable to them.

That's true to a point, but THEN how we as adults have marginalized "girl power" in society DOES start to affect the children. Little girls aren't being "forced" to act like girly-girls, they are absorbing through everything they see around them everyday that they are "supposed" to act like girly-girls, thus the backing down in the OP.

I agree with half of what you're saying - this kind of thinking DOES come mainly from adults. And then I disagree with the other half - that it's not anything for us to worry about. This IS a big deal. This is a HUGE deal.

No one forces a teenage girl to not eat - she starves herself in part because society has taught her that she has to be thin to be beautiful, and her body image is shot to hell.

No one forces a little girl to acquiese to a little boy - she backs down in part because she's somehow, somewhere (everywhere!) being taught that a little boy won't like her if she intimidates him, or worse than that, that it's OKAY for a little boy to be indimitated by her if she's better at something than he is, when if we were teaching our children well, wouldn't be the case. She's learning

: to make the assumption that boys are better than she is, even if it's been proven not to be true.

*sigh*