this past November one of my teachers
began using an iPad app to track our
student-centered class discussions she
was interested in analyzing these
discussions in which students take a
lead and our teacher has very little
involvement in determining who speaks
when so she used an app that tracks how
many times and for how long individuals
speak in class and then breaks down
participation by gender I hadn’t really
noticed an issue with these classes in
fact my class discussions in that class
seemed pretty similar to other classes
but I understood at least superficially
the gender and equality in the classroom
is a growing concern among researchers I
was curious to see how my class at fair
one put to the test the data from all
three of the classes she checked showed
that in most of the day as she tracked
the boy spoke more often and for longer
each time than the girls did keep in
mind that these classrooms had a
feminist teacher who work day in and day
out to promote equality clearly no one
teacher can reverse the years of
conditioning in other classrooms and in
the world around us you might be
wondering whether it’s not that boys
speak too often or for too long but that
girls simply need to be more assertive
in class many of my classmates suggested
a similar thing but that didn’t feel
like the issue to me so I did a little
research what exactly explains gender
dynamics and classroom settings and what
are the ramifications of permitting and
perpetuating an imbalance classroom
culture hi everyone my name is orly
Mooney Rapaport and I’m a junior here at
Deerfield Academy from Northampton
Massachusetts my goal today is to
investigate how gender imbalance in
classroom settings is not a benign
occurrence but rather sets the stage for
a future of gender inequality I want to
take a moment and apologize for my use
of the gender binary in my talk today
it’s a way of simplifying my ideas so
that I can use reliable data to explain
my point however I recognize that not
everyone will fit into such constructive
definitions of gender for the purposes
of my talk I hope you find the
simplification appropriate but I
understand that it is by no means
complete
as I was considering why there is this
discrepancy in my classes seminar
discussions I dug a little deeper for
some statistics in terms of classroom
participation a study out of second
grade classrooms in Canada suggests that
boys speak up to nine times as often as
girls in elementary schools many other
studies reinforce this statistic beyond
classroom participation there’s a
plethora of other statistics about
gender dynamics in classroom settings a
Journal article at out of the University
of Virginia summarized these statistics
saying that boys are called on more
often asked more complicated questions
and given more attention in classrooms
than girls are in an article for Time
magazine from 2015 writer activist
shreya Kamali commented on two different
studies about gender dynamics and
classroom settings saying and I quote
researchers found that girls often score
higher than boys unnamed line math tests
but once presented with recognizable boy
and girl names on the same tests
teachers award higher scores to blaze
other studies found that boys are
complimented for their contributions to
the class whereas girls are complimented
for their good behavior the intellect of
girls is often ignored in classroom
settings time and time again teachers
praised the quietness of girls it might
have been obvious to you before I
presented these statistics that girls
and boys are treated differently in
classrooms that’s not a revelation most
of us have noticed this issue but it
doesn’t end there I believe that this
gender-based difference established in
preschool and elementary schools all
across the world and reinforced in high
school and Beyond is one of the
significant reasons why women are
treated differently throughout their
entire lives of course sexism is a far
broader issue than what can be explained
by classroom gender dynamics but we need
to start somewhere in our discussion
think about it for a second it’s a
vicious cycle we learned perhaps
unintentionally in classrooms around the
world that it’s okay for boys to speak
more than girls that it’s okay for girls
to be quiet in fact that’s a good thing
but boys can interrupt
and can speak more often than girls that
a boy should be smart but a girl should
be quiet and well-behaved in class
starting when we were young in
classrooms when boys speak more often
and are treated differently we
subconsciously learned to believe that
there is some inherent validity to the
contributions of boys and men think
about that for a second we need to
encourage a shift in our perspective the
first step in shifting our perspective
is being educated about the facts in a
culture built upon male success there
are more CEOs named John than there are
female CEOs in entirety in the u.s.
women make up only nineteen point four
percent of our Congress consider the
countless women who have discovered
something new either ignored on account
of their gender instead of the countless
examples of women whose work a man took
credit for again this phenomenon extends
far beyond class from gender dynamics
but it starts there when young minds are
trained to listen to boys voices over
girls voices oftentimes in STEM related
fields which are already male-dominated
take Barbara McClintock in 1948
McClintock discovered that human genes
had transpose ax balelo’s and were
capable of swapping thus causing genetic
mutations she challenged the traditional
system of Mendelian genetics with this
revelatory discovery yet despite its
accuracy and relevance to the fields of
science and medicine McClintock was
largely ignored until 1961 when a group
of men explained the identical
phenomenon and people paid attention
they went on to win a Nobel Prize for
discovery they didn’t make or take
rosalind Franklin who in 1951 during her
studies in King’s College in London
created a diffraction image of DNA to
male scientists studying DNA at the same
time James Watson and Francis Crick came
upon the image in passing and used it to
develop the famous double helix model of
DNA still used in biology textbooks
today they went on to win a Nobel Prize
for this groundbreaking discovery but
they stood on the shoulders of Franklin
as you probably expect by this point
Franklin received no
credit for decades for the photo that
cracked the centuries-long mystery of
our DNA it extends beyond the field of
science to think about the number of
female authors an artist who had to
pretend to be male to be to be taken
seriously as Virginia Woolf famously
said in a Room of One’s Own about works
of literature attributed only to
anonymous and I quote I would venture to
guess that a nan who wrote so many poems
without signing them was often a woman
even as recently as 1997 soon-to-be
best-selling author Joanne Kathleen
Rowling published her first Harry Potter
novel under the pseudonym JK Rowling
because she was concerned that boys
would not want to read a book by an
author they knew to be female she didn’t
even put her photo on the back of the
book
would she have become as famous if she
had presented herself as a woman from
the beginning the world will never know
isn’t it possible that these examples in
science writing and more originate from
what happens in our classrooms to change
the big things to change the culture in
which women are often ignored not
believed and seen as lesser than men we
need to start small we need to ensure
that in elementary schools all across
the world girls are given the time and
attention they deserve we need to ensure
that we see boys and girls as equals
when they’re young that we invite girls
perspectives that we do not blame girls
in a classroom when discussions are
unequal and to the students in high
school and college it’s on us now there
is a trend in education toward student
driven classes and we need to take the
initiatives to ensure that class
discussions are equal the teacher I told
you about in the beginning alerted our
class to an issue but one teacher alone
can’t make a dent in a gender and
equality in a classroom it’s everyone’s
responsibility we all have a hand in
creating a balanced classroom teachers
boys and girls sometimes we as students
have to do the hard work ourselves by
inviting girls perspectives into the
room and ensuring gender equality and
speaking time maybe then we’ll start
forming a culture in which women’s
voices are valued everywhere not just
when an iPad app to an issue thank you
began using an iPad app to track our
student-centered class discussions she
was interested in analyzing these
discussions in which students take a
lead and our teacher has very little
involvement in determining who speaks
when so she used an app that tracks how
many times and for how long individuals
speak in class and then breaks down
participation by gender I hadn’t really
noticed an issue with these classes in
fact my class discussions in that class
seemed pretty similar to other classes
but I understood at least superficially
the gender and equality in the classroom
is a growing concern among researchers I
was curious to see how my class at fair
one put to the test the data from all
three of the classes she checked showed
that in most of the day as she tracked
the boy spoke more often and for longer
each time than the girls did keep in
mind that these classrooms had a
feminist teacher who work day in and day
out to promote equality clearly no one
teacher can reverse the years of
conditioning in other classrooms and in
the world around us you might be
wondering whether it’s not that boys
speak too often or for too long but that
girls simply need to be more assertive
in class many of my classmates suggested
a similar thing but that didn’t feel
like the issue to me so I did a little
research what exactly explains gender
dynamics and classroom settings and what
are the ramifications of permitting and
perpetuating an imbalance classroom
culture hi everyone my name is orly
Mooney Rapaport and I’m a junior here at
Deerfield Academy from Northampton
Massachusetts my goal today is to
investigate how gender imbalance in
classroom settings is not a benign
occurrence but rather sets the stage for
a future of gender inequality I want to
take a moment and apologize for my use
of the gender binary in my talk today
it’s a way of simplifying my ideas so
that I can use reliable data to explain
my point however I recognize that not
everyone will fit into such constructive
definitions of gender for the purposes
of my talk I hope you find the
simplification appropriate but I
understand that it is by no means
complete
as I was considering why there is this
discrepancy in my classes seminar
discussions I dug a little deeper for
some statistics in terms of classroom
participation a study out of second
grade classrooms in Canada suggests that
boys speak up to nine times as often as
girls in elementary schools many other
studies reinforce this statistic beyond
classroom participation there’s a
plethora of other statistics about
gender dynamics in classroom settings a
Journal article at out of the University
of Virginia summarized these statistics
saying that boys are called on more
often asked more complicated questions
and given more attention in classrooms
than girls are in an article for Time
magazine from 2015 writer activist
shreya Kamali commented on two different
studies about gender dynamics and
classroom settings saying and I quote
researchers found that girls often score
higher than boys unnamed line math tests
but once presented with recognizable boy
and girl names on the same tests
teachers award higher scores to blaze
other studies found that boys are
complimented for their contributions to
the class whereas girls are complimented
for their good behavior the intellect of
girls is often ignored in classroom
settings time and time again teachers
praised the quietness of girls it might
have been obvious to you before I
presented these statistics that girls
and boys are treated differently in
classrooms that’s not a revelation most
of us have noticed this issue but it
doesn’t end there I believe that this
gender-based difference established in
preschool and elementary schools all
across the world and reinforced in high
school and Beyond is one of the
significant reasons why women are
treated differently throughout their
entire lives of course sexism is a far
broader issue than what can be explained
by classroom gender dynamics but we need
to start somewhere in our discussion
think about it for a second it’s a
vicious cycle we learned perhaps
unintentionally in classrooms around the
world that it’s okay for boys to speak
more than girls that it’s okay for girls
to be quiet in fact that’s a good thing
but boys can interrupt
and can speak more often than girls that
a boy should be smart but a girl should
be quiet and well-behaved in class
starting when we were young in
classrooms when boys speak more often
and are treated differently we
subconsciously learned to believe that
there is some inherent validity to the
contributions of boys and men think
about that for a second we need to
encourage a shift in our perspective the
first step in shifting our perspective
is being educated about the facts in a
culture built upon male success there
are more CEOs named John than there are
female CEOs in entirety in the u.s.
women make up only nineteen point four
percent of our Congress consider the
countless women who have discovered
something new either ignored on account
of their gender instead of the countless
examples of women whose work a man took
credit for again this phenomenon extends
far beyond class from gender dynamics
but it starts there when young minds are
trained to listen to boys voices over
girls voices oftentimes in STEM related
fields which are already male-dominated
take Barbara McClintock in 1948
McClintock discovered that human genes
had transpose ax balelo’s and were
capable of swapping thus causing genetic
mutations she challenged the traditional
system of Mendelian genetics with this
revelatory discovery yet despite its
accuracy and relevance to the fields of
science and medicine McClintock was
largely ignored until 1961 when a group
of men explained the identical
phenomenon and people paid attention
they went on to win a Nobel Prize for
discovery they didn’t make or take
rosalind Franklin who in 1951 during her
studies in King’s College in London
created a diffraction image of DNA to
male scientists studying DNA at the same
time James Watson and Francis Crick came
upon the image in passing and used it to
develop the famous double helix model of
DNA still used in biology textbooks
today they went on to win a Nobel Prize
for this groundbreaking discovery but
they stood on the shoulders of Franklin
as you probably expect by this point
Franklin received no
credit for decades for the photo that
cracked the centuries-long mystery of
our DNA it extends beyond the field of
science to think about the number of
female authors an artist who had to
pretend to be male to be to be taken
seriously as Virginia Woolf famously
said in a Room of One’s Own about works
of literature attributed only to
anonymous and I quote I would venture to
guess that a nan who wrote so many poems
without signing them was often a woman
even as recently as 1997 soon-to-be
best-selling author Joanne Kathleen
Rowling published her first Harry Potter
novel under the pseudonym JK Rowling
because she was concerned that boys
would not want to read a book by an
author they knew to be female she didn’t
even put her photo on the back of the
book
would she have become as famous if she
had presented herself as a woman from
the beginning the world will never know
isn’t it possible that these examples in
science writing and more originate from
what happens in our classrooms to change
the big things to change the culture in
which women are often ignored not
believed and seen as lesser than men we
need to start small we need to ensure
that in elementary schools all across
the world girls are given the time and
attention they deserve we need to ensure
that we see boys and girls as equals
when they’re young that we invite girls
perspectives that we do not blame girls
in a classroom when discussions are
unequal and to the students in high
school and college it’s on us now there
is a trend in education toward student
driven classes and we need to take the
initiatives to ensure that class
discussions are equal the teacher I told
you about in the beginning alerted our
class to an issue but one teacher alone
can’t make a dent in a gender and
equality in a classroom it’s everyone’s
responsibility we all have a hand in
creating a balanced classroom teachers
boys and girls sometimes we as students
have to do the hard work ourselves by
inviting girls perspectives into the
room and ensuring gender equality and
speaking time maybe then we’ll start
forming a culture in which women’s
voices are valued everywhere not just
when an iPad app to an issue thank you
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