“Just girls” Response to Chapter 5

By the time I got to this chapter of Finder’s book, I had already thought about the myths she debunked through her data collection based on my own experience as teenager. To Finders, the “Myths of Adolescence” act as “terministic screens” that somehow frame adolescents into a set of expected behaviors excluding those who do not fit these criteria outside of the considerations of their teachers and school system, and thus making their needs invisible. Although it is true that during adolescence the body goes through a series of biological/hormonal changes the author makes it clear that the lives of teenagers are not controlled by these changes to the point that all their actions should be blamed on the hormonal imbalances they go through.

 As the author mentions, ideas of assigned gender roles are also perpetuated by classroom roles available for girls and boys. As a teenage girl I also was expected to select novels and magazines for my class projects but different from the boys at Northern Junior High who actually read something, my male counterparts could get by easily by selecting comics or even expressing difficulty on selecting any text because reading was not their “thing.” Girls were always expected to be well behaved, polite and studious while boys were allowed and even expected to be louder and rebellious and better at “masculine” subjects, such as math or science. After reading page 124 and how teachers “spaced” girls in between loud boys I understood why I was always the only girl in between two or three of the loudest boys of the classroom. Like Cleo, I was not only expected to keep them in line but also to “help” them with language arts.  

“The Myth of Inclusion” reminded me of our discussion on E.D. Hirsch and his idea of “cultural literacy” and “shared knowledge.” The disparity between the experiences of the students in the “social queens” group and the “though cookies” proved that our socio-economic environment and our particular interests shape more what we have, or not, in common with our peers that an established list of thing deemed important based on their historical value. The author’s findings reveal that classrooms are very complex settings and that there are multiple factors to take into consideration when putting different pedagogy theories to practice. There is no perfect method to teaching but those that have been successful have favored the majority of the students, even if they fail to acknowledge the needs of some.