I recently heard a speaker state that men and women think differently, and that education should take account of that. I would like to review recent history before I explain what this has to do with purple cats.
In the 1960s, everyone knew that men and women think differently. Women were not good at logic – subjects like maths and science – and complex tasks like map-reading or metalwork, and men were not good at emotional things or remembering birthdays and anniversaries (of course they could remember scheduled Rotary or Council events.) Teachers expected the boys to shine at the logic subjects, and accepted the odd girls as talented.
The odd girls felt very odd, and were teased about their talents. The same happened to the odd boys who appreciated classical music, visual arts, or dance – and the very odd ones who went for ballet or poetry. It was a time when a grandmother would advise an A-student girl “Don’t let your intelligence show too much, dear, men don’t like girls who are smarter than they are.”
Women were mostly expected to leave work once they married – wages were based on the assumption that a man would support his wife and family. (Pay rates were the same whether single or married, so women supporting a family got less than single men.) In Australia until 1966 women were dismissed from public service positions as soon as they married. Therefore, education was based on the assumption that most women would be at-home parents. However, things had advanced from the late 1800s, when women had to struggle to be allowed to attend University lectures and there was an assumption that too much book-learning made women … odd.
Working-class boys and girls were not expected to try for University – they often took apprenticeships by 15 years of age. Things were changing: in the 1950s, they and Aboriginals would have been told that it wasn’t worth their trying.
Oddly enough, boys excelled at maths, science, and map-reading; few women took the science subjects in University, and few low-income families had children go on to University studies..
With the social movements of the 1960s and 70s, things changed.
Now, housing prices rely on the assumption that a family has two working parents. It is assumed that people should get the same pay for the same work (although confidential pay agreements and sex-linked work-type pay rates somehow find men’s work more valuable.) In many families, academic excellence in girls as seen as a great thing, opening the way to a high-status profession or at least a high-income career. It is assumed that bright students from any background can succeed at University.
Oddly enough, more low income families have children go on to University, girls take science subjects at University, and a middle-aged man is shocked as a teenage girl reads the street directory efficiently.
Current Problem: Back to the first line.
There is concern that girls are outshining the boys academically now – is it just that previously pure logic approaches (naked Maths and Physics, for example) are being dressed up in essay-style work, where boys may be at a statistical disadvantage? Is it that teachers are using a teaching style better suited to one range of learning preferences? Is it the range of other activities available, and do we need more Tiger parents? Is it that girls and boys learn differently, and we should have single-sex classes?
I suspect a combination of factors, including one not mentioned in polite society: the girls are no longer performing the 1960s’ version of the role of “girls at school”.
It was shown in the 1960s to 1990s that education in gender roles begins before children can talk. It is partly affected by the child’s preferences, and there are gender differences in some child behaviours which can affect adults’ treatment of them – I particularly like the 1999 study suggesting that male baby vocalisations tend to be preferred to female baby vocalisations based on physical structures affecting their sonorance. ( 1) Nonetheless, it was clearly shown that infants with disguised gender were treated differently on the basis of their perceived gender, and that the adults were unaware of the biases in their behaviours. (e.g. (2))
From everyday observation I can confirm that the experiments would find the same results today. The actual treatments the babies would receive now are different, being based on different underlying assumptions. Indeed, with the increasing range of cultural backgrounds from both migration and the range of electronic viewing preferences available, the range of actual treatments is also greater.
It is clear that the society-wide gender assumptions are still powerful – have you seen the toy catalogues? Have you seen the “boys” and “girls” sections in book advertising (and, alas, libraries?)
The consequences of breaking society’s gender role expectations at school are still unpleasant. I am particularly concerned for the sensitive years just before and during puberty, where breaking the expectation can lead to questioning of sexual orientation. In real terms, schoolchildren (and some adults) assume that if you don’t think like a “real” child of your gender you must be gay. Or a (squid / squint / nerd) asexual brain.
Therefore, students who struggle with the “proper” style for their gender in the wider culture may avoid playing to their strengths.
What have Purple Cats got to do with it?
If adults , especially teachers, accept the current “Men are from Mars …” approach, ignoring the inevitable ranges of human individuality and disregarding warnings such as Dr Fine’s “Delusions of Gender” (3) , the risk is that they will expect boys to learn / behave in one way (or set of ways) and girls to learn in another.
Now to the cats.
A busload of highschool students were waiting for the bus home. They noticed a cat climbing in a nearby tree, but got only a brief glimpse before it was hidden in the leaves. Some said it was white, some said it was grey, some said it was brown. “No,” said one, “It was purple.”
“But there’s no such thing as a purple cat!”
It turned out that a family had dyed their white cat purple.
Are cats like babies?
It is a rare person who sees the unexpected. One of the most common problems for those who change their behaviours is that everyone else continues acting as though they were still behaving in the same old way; a woman who does not shave her legs or underarms and is not a radical lesbian separatist is likely to be seen by workmates as a vegetarian even if she has eaten a meat pie in the office (yes, that happened to me); and you can change many things in a scene without people noticing – it’s all in the way the human brain processes daily life. We simply haven’t the processing space to see what is really there most of the time, so we rely on learned patterns to fill in the gaps.
If the pattern you learn is an assumption about how people think, you will be at risk of missing the moment when it is clear that you have a non-standard thinker. It’s the things we think are so which aren’t that cause the most difficulty – avoid the delusion of gender when you deal with students.
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1. Bloom, K. Moore-Schoenmakers K., & Masataka, N. (1999). Nasality of Infant Vocalizations Determines Gender Bias in Adult Favorability Ratings. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior Volume 23, Number 3, 219-236, DOI: 10.1023/A:1021317310745)
2. Culp, R.E., Cook, A.S., & Patricia C. Housley, P.C. (1983). A comparison of observed and reported adult-infant interactions: Effects of perceived sex. Sex Roles 9(4), 475-479, DOI: 10.1007/BF00289787
3. Fine, C ( 2010) Delusions of Gender: The real science behind sex differences. Icon Books.
Erasmid 