Alternative Education

Gender Equality in Education

In 1992, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) made a media splash when it published the report How Schools Shortchange Girls. The AAUW argued that conventional math and science curriculum, biased standardized tests and typical school environments do not account for girls’ special concerns and deprive them of equal access to education. A number of books released in the 1990s documented the psychological and educational neglect girls suffered in schools. They documented lower self-esteem among girls as well as higher depression [Page 55]and they noted that teachers tend to call on girls less often in class and tend to give girls less and lower quality feedback.

Nationwide, there is some indication that some early feminist concerns are more tolerated. Girls are being called on more and getting better quality and frequent feedback from teachers. There has not been much change in the structure of most mainstream educational institutions, however. Families interested in alternative education models still need to go elsewhere to find those alternatives.

Nonetheless, since the mid-1990s, some writers have asserted that boys rather than girls are at a disadvantage in mainstream education as a result of the contemporary focus on girls. Christina Hoff Sommers’ best-selling 2000 book, The War Against Boys, laments that statistically boys are worse off than girls in a number of critical areas. Boys are behind girls in college enrollment; they are more likely to be suspended or expelled and drop out of school; they also are more likely to be designated for special education placement and diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Sommers blames feminists for attributing pathological disorders associated with male behavior. Other books blame schools for not meeting boys’ needs; boys brains, they argue, are constructed differently than girls.

These accusations are curious because little has changed in most educational institutions. In mainstream education, classes still tend to be teacher centered; students take exams and are assessed at the end of the term with grades; competition is used as a motivating force such that students compete for grades, in athletics, and for any distinction a given school might offer; and discipline and punishment are de rigueur-students need to ask if they can go to the bathroom, they are not permitted to leave the building without school passes and they are threatened with in-or out-of-school suspensions or even expelled for committing school infractions.

These types of hierarchal, competitive, and punitive practices are more often associated with masculine behaviors and values. Thus, George Lakoff's model of political metaphors provides a relevant framework for looking at mainstream and alternative education. Lakoff, a linguist, laid out a groundbreaking theory of the differences between conservative and liberal thought in the United States. Characterizing the state as a figurative “parent” and citizens as

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