Another Reason for Girls...and Women to Take Up Taekwondo

A news report on TV caught my attention a few years ago. I don’t recall if it was Dateline NBC, 20 20, etc. But the report suggested that teachers in the classroom tend to pay more attention to male students than female students. In this report, citing various studies, it suggested that the gender of the teacher didn’t change the tendency. Recently, a friend of mine told me that her daughter wasn’t getting enough attention at school and I thought back to that news report. I don’t know if it’s a student/teacher ratio, or a boy vs. girl issue at my friend’s school. However, her comments did make me think about teaching TKD. I would like to think that when I am teaching the kids’ classes, I give equal attention to both genders. But if I haven’t, I will be more self-aware, going forward.

I read some material online lately. Some of it is rather depressing, and would be even more so if I had a daughter! Hopefully, not all classrooms are like this, and if they are, things improve. In the meantime, thank goodness for activities like Taekwondo that do give young and not-so-young women the confidence that the outside world does not. Yet another one of the many reasons that I think women benefit from martial arts training.

This article is rather long, but the bullet points are very interesting.

"Teacher and Student Behaviors (from the website: http://trc.virginia.edu/Publications/Diversity/II_Classroom_Dynamics.htm)
Studies of classrooms ranging from kindergarten through graduate school (Sadker, "Sexism in the Classroom" 513, Hall & Sandler 5-9, and Sandler et al. 10-14) have shown that teachers are more likely to

• call on male students, even when female students raise their hands or when no one does
• wait longer for male than for female students to respond to questions
• give male students more eye contact following questions (thus inviting response)
• remember and use the names of male students
• ask male students more questions that call for "higher order" critical thinking as opposed to "lower order" recounting of facts
• coach male students to develop their thoughts by giving them more extended and more specific feedback on the quality of their ideas
• give male students specific information on how to complete projects themselves, rather than doing it for them.

These patterns remain remarkably consistent despite the grade level of the course, the subject matter taught, the ethnicity of the teacher or students, the geographical location of the school, and the teacher's gender (Sadker, "Sexism in the Classroom" 512). Even more surprising, teachers are usually unaware that they treat students in this way. They may even be unaware of the extent to which female and male students actually participate. In response to questioning, Sadker found that teachers will often say that their female students talk more often than their male students. Videotaping the class, however, and then counting who speaks, revealed instead that female students generally talked a third as much as male ones (Sadker, "Sexism in the Schoolroom" 54). Nor are such patterns limited to overtly sexist teachers. One female teacher, astounded to discover such patterns in her classroom, was a twenty-year member of the National Organization of Women (Sadker, "Sexism in the Classroom" 514).

Teachers are not the only ones who treat male and female students differently-so do other students in class. Perhaps in response to this, female students often respond differently to the teacher's questions than do male students. For example, studies (Sadker, "Sexism in the Classroom" 515, Hall and Sandler 8, and Sandler, et al 12-14) show that female students may be

• less likely to raise their hands immediately in response to initial questions than their male counterparts
• less likely to call out and demand the teacher's attention
• less likely to receive peers' approval if they do "break rules" and speak out in class frequently without being called on
• less likely to receive feedback, whether praise, help, or criticism
• less likely to have their comments credited, developed, adopted, or even remembered by the group
• more likely to be interrupted when they speak or to have other students answer questions directed to them.

Such patterns continue past elementary, high school, and college classes to business meetings and boardrooms. Recognizing such patterns and working to counteract them can help make women and men more effective speakers and listeners.
Differences in Linguistic Styles

Differences in linguistic styles may be one reason male students receive more attention. Linguists Robin Lakoff and Deborah Tannen, among others (Lakoff 204, Tannen 239, Hall and Sandler 9-10, and Sandler, et al. 19-22), have found that female students in the US may be more likely than male students to exhibit the following speech patterns:

• make shorter and quieter statements
• present their statements in a more hesitant, indirect, or "polite" manner o use "I" statements ("I guess . . .," "I was wondering if . . .")
• qualify their statements ("sort of," "maybe," "perhaps")
• add "tag" questions (". . . isn't it?,". . . don't you think?")
• ask questions rather than give statements, even if they know an answer
• use intonations that turn a statement into a question, or accompany their statements with smiles or averted eyes rather than more assertive gestures, such as pointing
• apologize for their statements ("I may be wrong, but . . ."). “

Well, we've still got a lot of work to do, don't we ladies. But being a tough TKD chick is a great start! :)