Last night in class, a fellow classmate made the following comment:

"We all have the students that remind us of us. The one who behaves well, has such neat writing and who does well. And we say 'Ah, she's a little angel'. Then you have the skateboarder who comes in and spits on the floor. What do you do with him?'

I attacked first without thinking enough - and told him to not pick on skateboarders, asking when one did come in and spit on the floor. Then I said that I relate better to the skateboarders, but I can talk to the good kids no problem. ANd then, I said to him that I didn't like his stereotypes - the skateboarder and that his good child was a girl. He said stereotypes were his point, but I don't think he got what he was saying as well, they weren't his point in his comment. Then we had to move on, I was still enraged and kept thinking about it.

First, the gender division. Automatically, the good child was a girl. The girl has the automatic placements in the ancedotes as good child. This always seems to place the standard of being good on the girls - they have, once again, the bar set to be something that they may not be, yet have to live up to. And the boys get the impression that they never have to live up to it.

Then, of course, the bad person is a boy. But not just a boy. A Skateboarder. Automatically they are taken from a gender stereotype and placed into another stereotype. This states that skateboarders are male and they are bad. They'll spit on your floor. And what do we do then? Or something of that nature. And it's a boy. The boy can do the spitting. The girls then feel they are outside of this group and that they once again have to be the good ones. Not that I want anyone spitting on my floor, but I do know that a good girl is just as likely to do it as a skateboarding boy. Likewise, a skateboarding boy is just as likely to be a good student and the quiet girl a bad. Or the genders could be reversed for all examples.

See, I know that we do sometimes have to place genders in stories. But why always those for those roles? We are socialized to place them there, that's why. Automatically we can picture the good girl. Just like we can picture the bad boy. But why do we continue to purpetuate this? Especially within a group of teachers?

Society builds schools that make students into the society they want to build. Seems like they're doing a good job of that.

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