Blog Post 2: Gender norms American culture
A few months ago, my mother posted a link in our family group chat about a controversial decision made by a particularly progressive preschool teacher on Bainbridge Island. The teacher's decision provoked a great deal of thought-provoking conversation within my family about gender equality in our world. This past couple weeks, the gender equality conversations we've been having in class have reopened my thinking on the issue, and so in this blog post I'd like to try to tie together my family's conversation and our classroom conversations into some kind of cohesive whole.
The teacher's decision was about which children got to play with what toys. The young boys in her class predominantly liked playing with trucks, guns, and other violent toys; the young girls in her class predominantly liked playing with dolls, toy houses, and other quintessentially female toys. She saw this as a problem, and decided to not allow the boys to play with toys like trucks or guns, and instead force the young girls to play with these toys.
The pushback from the island's community was immediate and massive. The argument from one side was that taking toys from children is wrong; the argument from the other side was that forcing the girls to play with trucks was helping break down gender norms.
I found myself agreeing with the former and my sister and mother found themselves agreeing with the latter. From my point of view, taking toys from the children felt extremely wrong. I think it comes down to my perception of autonomy. Removing autonomy from anybody feels extremely immoral; and the autonomy of these children to choose their toys was taken from them.
I understand the larger goal. The American Male video from class was a fairly horrific representation of undergraduate frat-boy culture, for the exact same reason that I have a problem with taking away toys: it removes the autonomy of the men living within those cultures to freely choose what kind of person they want to become, rather than become the image that their culture expects them to be.
I think the best solution when it comes to toys is to focus on the positive. Encourage the young boys to play with dolls and houses, so that they can experience diversity of experiences. Encourage the young girls to play with the trucks for the same reason. Don't take experiences away, encourage new experiences.
The teacher's decision was about which children got to play with what toys. The young boys in her class predominantly liked playing with trucks, guns, and other violent toys; the young girls in her class predominantly liked playing with dolls, toy houses, and other quintessentially female toys. She saw this as a problem, and decided to not allow the boys to play with toys like trucks or guns, and instead force the young girls to play with these toys.
The pushback from the island's community was immediate and massive. The argument from one side was that taking toys from children is wrong; the argument from the other side was that forcing the girls to play with trucks was helping break down gender norms.
I found myself agreeing with the former and my sister and mother found themselves agreeing with the latter. From my point of view, taking toys from the children felt extremely wrong. I think it comes down to my perception of autonomy. Removing autonomy from anybody feels extremely immoral; and the autonomy of these children to choose their toys was taken from them.
I understand the larger goal. The American Male video from class was a fairly horrific representation of undergraduate frat-boy culture, for the exact same reason that I have a problem with taking away toys: it removes the autonomy of the men living within those cultures to freely choose what kind of person they want to become, rather than become the image that their culture expects them to be.
I think the best solution when it comes to toys is to focus on the positive. Encourage the young boys to play with dolls and houses, so that they can experience diversity of experiences. Encourage the young girls to play with the trucks for the same reason. Don't take experiences away, encourage new experiences.
The idea of encouraging new experiences is great and for the most part seems feasible. However,
ReplyDeleteI do not think the toys will see much use unless there is an effort to push different toys onto the children. The children already had access to the toys of the other sex, but decided to use those of their own instead. There is already a pressure, especially at this young age, to conform to the preset gender roles. I think a more effective route would be to switch off with the entire class being allowed to only use one set of toys each day Ex. Tuesdays was dolls and toy houses, while Wednesday is trucks and guns. To add onto that maybe instead of trucks and dolls there was an effort to introduce "gender neutral" toys.
I thought the story about girls being forced to play with the boys toys really interesting. While it seems like the teacher is trying to be progressive they are going around it in what I believe is the wrong way. I think it’s important to let children play with the toys they want but let them know it’s okay to play with what are seen as the “boys” toys. Instead of forcing them to play with them.
ReplyDelete