 Dusty:Starlight:Culture
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kids in america
2005-10-27 4:57 p.m. My myriad jobs over the last several years has included a teaching stint at a tech school or, perhaps more accurately, an engineering school. Yes, tech schools need humanities teachers too; I think I never realized how much until early this week. In one class, I was covering Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", using it to introduce students to secondary source research possibilities in discussing historical context. I used one of my favorite pieces - a 1905 article about the destruction women who enroll in university courses could cause to humanity at large. Seriously! Women in higher ed., "Dr. Smith" argues, render their bodies unfit for motherhood (a woman's studying brain draws blood away from the "organs of generation" (er, uterus? fallopian tubes?), rendering them shriveled and useless), and their brains "unfit for wifehood" (no one who is smart wants to be told what to do). So who will men marry? Who will have babies? It's the apocalypse! As I was talking to the class about the author's central argument and what it reveals about the mentality of the period, my class comedian raised his hand. I called on him, but wasn't prepared for what happened. "So this guy is saying women don't belong in college?" he said. "That's it exactly," I said. "Does this guy teach at our school?". The class giggled, and exchanged what I can only characterize as "knowing looks". The BOYS, in particular. My HOMIES. Who aren't particularly...sensitive to gender issues and oppression. I had to stop and ask why this seemed to be a shared attitude, why they would equate a clearly sexist and ridiculously "justified" turn-of- the-centry article emphasizing women's "place" with contemporary teaching methods or attitudes at our school. Our school in New Jersey, blue state New Jersey, about three miles from New York City. Let me clarify something before I go on: the student body - and the faculty, for that matter - is about 80% male. It's often that I have a class with only male students; at most, I think I've had seven female students in a class of 22. This follows the typical standards set by the fields the school trains for: engineering, architecture, programming, management and other technical areas are male dominated. But with the revelation that women can do math too becoming more popular in the last twenty years or so, the school's female population has risen. But now, today, or rather Tuesday, if you want to be all technical about it, I'm hearing from my students - male and female alike - that girls are marginalized in the technical classroom. When I pressed them, I was told "My physics professor never calls on girls, even when they raise their hands a lot," and "My professor doesn't spend much time answering my questions in studio. He's too busy with the guys." It was that knowing look and that laugh after Chris said what he said about the faculty and their attitude towards women that got me: it showed me that the students were well aware that this was an issue; that it became a kind of joke to them. I decided to ask my next class (at the same school) how they felt about what my earlier class had told me. To my absolute dismay, they agreed, and didn't even seem surprised to hear what I was telling them. If this discrimination, these extra obstacles some students face simply because they're female, is so widespread and endemic, why isn't anyone complaining? "I think some girls do," one of my female students told me, "but look - I'm going into civil engineering. I have to get used to dealing with people who don't think I belong because of my color and my sex." Props to her for contemplating how her non-white and non-male status outline restrictions for her in our racist, sexist society, but...she has to get used to it? Her passivity frightened me, and her anger frustrated me. And her. It was obvious my students think these professors' behavior - and the sexism that exists within these fields, in general - is wrong. But when I suggested they DO something about it, stand up for themselves and their fellow students, they buckled. Why? Why? WHY? Tell me. Please? When did we teach people not to be angry? When did it become perfectly fine to just look away or tolerate people's discrimination of you? I find students to be so uppity and entitled sometimes that I never would have thought they'd remain so silent! Are these the same students who last week told me how "unfair" it was that I asked them to read so much? That's annoying, sure, but it illustrates how they're willing to create a dialog with me, and demand something. Me, their professor. I hear other people saying the same about their students: they're willing to challenge authority, argue about a paper grade, point out how unfair a teacher is being about an assignment. Why is it NOT ok to say to someone - the professor himself, a department chair, an advisor, "I'm being ignored and dismissed in the classroom" ? Here's a legitimate complaint students need to engage in, but they don't seem to think they "should", or could. Did "The Real World" make young people dumb and compliant? Is this because of boy bands? Is this because we can't teach science anymore or let students ask questions about sex in school? Is this because we've banned The Catcher in the Rye? Or is it because of our ultra-PC, "everyone has the right to their values" culture? Do we think that we have "no right" to demand that some outdated professor change his attitude concerning women, or at least his behavior toward them? One student made me think this when, in my response to my "why" questions, he said "cultural differences". I'm assuming this meant one of two things: that the professor is from a place where women may sit not in the classroom itself but in the janitor's closet across the hall, lest they distract the male students, or that the professor is a big ol nerd and is socially awkward in the first place. Either way, we allow him this and forgive his ignoring or marginalizing his female students? Uh-uh. So what do I do? Direct the students to the women's center? Advocate for sensitivity training workshops? Something tells me we've been down that road before at the school; glad to see it's worked out. This is very embarassing for the university - I can't wait to bring it up at next week's faculty meeting. Think I'll be taken seriously? I let my emotions get the best of me, and talked for some time about how each student is entitled to fair and equal treatment despite their external characteristics of race or gender. I asked them if people would speak up if a professor never called on Hispanics or didn't pay attention to Indians in studio. They said yes. When I asked what makes this any different, everyone sort of shut down. After class, one student, who always asks me about what I do, what I watch, what I eat, and so on, asked: "Do you listen to U2?" He's the king of non-sequiturs, so I just ignored it and said "Yes, Alex, I like the band a lot." He said he could "totally tell" after what I "said today". Huh? HUH? Are we equating standing up for oneself and telling people they have the right to an equal opportunity education with something "retro"? Does he see "my generation" and any even small discussion of social issues as a "trend" of the past, losing popularity and acclaim with some forgotten U2 song? Only to be dragged out during a "resurrection weekend" on some radio station? Seriously - HUH? So it is the boy bands' fault! Welcome to the decline of Western civilization? That's too easy, and probably too misanthropic. Humbug. Kids these days, and all that. So what should I do? Write an article, which would so totally get published if I spent some time to do some research, and embarass the school by exposing these internal sexist practices? Should I write to the school paper? Make the students write to the school paper? Address the provost? A dean? :( Ew, I never do smiley or frowny faces. See what this is doing to my head? Oh happy day, though: DeLay, Libby, Rove and Cheney going down? Thanks to the Unitarian Church for praying so hard for justice. But more about that later - I'm so ready for some pizza. xoxo
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