Although I applaud Meg McSherry Breslin’s intent to create awareness of boys’ unmet needs in the classroom (“Schools pay new attention to boys,” Page 1, Oct. 20), I fear that her article has inadvertently conveyed some messages that will set back the progress made in gender equity during the past decade. There is, for example, a tacit assumption in Breslin’s article that only the boys will benefit from an increased number of hands-on activities in the classroom. Studies suggest that girls, too, respond to take-apart-handle-rearrange-analyze kinds of tasks.
Most girls, however, prefer to do the analysis part of learning in groups, rather than individually. We must not let this tendency to learn in social units be construed as a female preference to be passive.
One of Breslin’s sources is quoted as claiming that ” . . . you don’t see much damage in girls because they somehow put up with boredom better. They put up with a passive role better.”
That’s considered not much damage?
The picture that accompanies the article says it all. A 3-year-old boy is enraptured with his hands-on activity of disassembling a computer. Four little girls are seated in chairs facing him. They are not interested, though, in what he is doing. They are hugging their dolls and talking to each other. How sad that gender stereotypes are still being perpetuated–even at the preschool level. Were those girls encouraged to play with the computer–or was it just assumed that they would prefer to watch?
