Talking Point #7 (Orienstein)

In this article Peggy Orienstein argues that there is a hidden curriculum that is being taught by schools. Schools have been teaching not only math and science, but also about social roles and norms. Most classrooms that you go into mostly have pictures and posters of male figures and very rarely do you see females represented. In this article Orientstein talks about a teacher, Mrs. Logan's class, were see does the opposite in her classroom. In Judy Logan's classroom there are all posters and pictures of great female figures. This gives the girls in the class someone to look up to and also points out to the students how other classes focus many on male gender and that is not fair.

1. "This is a classroom that's gone through the gender looking glass. It is the mirror opposite
of most classrooms that girls will enter, which are adorned with masculine role models; with male heroes, with books by and about men-- classrooms in which the female self is, at best, an afterthought."

I liked this quote because I myself have never thought about the classroom as having a hidden curriculum, but after reading this article I relieve that most of the classrooms that I have been in growing up all have pretty much decorated the class with male role models, with posters, picuters, book authors and books about men. By doing this they are teaching about social roles and norms and they are forgetting to talk and teach about female works. This quote make a good analogy saying that boys are looking at mirrors in the classroom and females are looking through windows. Judy Logan does the opposite in her class allowing women to look at mirrors and men to look through the window probably first their first time.

2. "Women are one-half of the world's people; they do two-thirds of the world's work; they earn one-tenth of the world's income; they own one one-hundredth of the world's property."

This quote which was early on in the article states that women do most of the work in the world but they still recieve very litttle income and dont own that much property. This is becuase of how people are thought to look at women. Males and females are taught through a hidden curriculum that men are better or superior than women.

3. "When boys feel like they're being forced to admire a women they try to pick one that they think behaves sort of like a man. Thats what they can best relate too."

This quote I feel relates a lot to my first quote about mirrors and windows. The boys are use to looking at a mirror and admiring a masculine man but when they are forced to admire a women they are not use to looking through a window so they find a window that is most a mirror by admiring a female who behaves more like a man.

This article reminds me of the Carlson article we have read earlier in the year. In carlson, classrooms are ignoring the gay population and in Orienstein's article, females are being ignored and Orienstein says we need to make the school curriculum include women and be male bias.