After perusing the Rethinking Schools site of both current and past articles, “Women of the
Day” by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca stood out to me the most. I strongly related to this because of both
my high school experience in addition to what we have talked about in class during our previous
sessions. In the three quotes below, I will go further into depth on my personal connections in
addition to the connections we have already established in class.
- “...they wanted to talk about curriculum, and more precisely, about the lack of women they encountered in the pages of textbooks, classroom handouts, short stories, and novels. They were outraged and coming to me for advice about how to demand a change.”
In the beginning, high school history teacher, Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, was approached by one of her students to talk about the lack of women in their classes. As we discussed in class, we want and need to see ourselves in books, especially as children. However, this is especially important for these high school girls going into the real world with no knowledge of the female aspect of history. The solution was to create not a Gender Studies class, but Women’s studies. This allowed the students to learn not just about gender as a social construct, but also about women’s history, lives, and existence.
- “The trick now will be to transfer the lens from Women’s Studies to other contexts, making sure there is a diverse array of women — not just cisgender white women — showing up in my curriculum, in my writing, in the articles and tweets I share online, in my daily references to popular culture, literature, and politics.”
I was so excited to read this quote. Learning Women’s Studies is so much more than just cisgender white women, and not creating lessons on diverse women is part of the problem, and is almost as problematic as only educating students on cisgender white men. If feminism is not intersectional, it is NOT feminism.
- “Right now 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are men, more than 75 percent of congressional seats are held by men, and more than 90 percent of the directors of top Hollywood films are men. If I do not use my classroom to proactively resist the overrepresentation of males in our dominant discourse, I will condemn another generation of students to sit in classes empty of women’s lives, voices, and vision.”
This final quote perfectly sums up the article. I strongly respect and idolize Ursula Wolfe-Rocca and hope to see more high school teachers follow in her footsteps and those of her three students, Veronica, Rachel, and Meg. She is correct when she says that if she does not “resist the overrepresentation of males,” we will be confined to our future generations sitting in more classes lacking women representation. As we said on the first day of class, we must acknowledge our privilege to make a change, and in this case, they recognized the white man’s privilege and women’s marginalization to make the change.
Hi Vanessa,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I really liked this article as well. I think as teachers many of us worry if it is better to teach a superficial knowledge of a lot of things or a deeper knowledge of just a few things. I think this article showed that even if you only teach about something for 5 minutes per day, it ends up adding up. It reminds me of the saying: the sum is greater than its parts. Each woman is great individually, but when learned about together they come together to weave a whole new fabric of history. One to which connections can be drawn, and women can be valued. I think your picture at the end sums up this sentiment well.
Great text and i love how it shows that these are complex issues that rarely can be confronted in simple ways.
ReplyDelete“Right now 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are men, more than 75 percent of congressional seats are held by men, and more than 90 percent of the directors of top Hollywood films are men. If I do not use my classroom to proactively resist the overrepresentation of males in our dominant discourse, I will condemn another generation of students to sit in classes empty of women’s lives, voices, and vision.”
ReplyDeleteThis a serious issue in regards to bringing about systemic change. As long as the demographics of those in charge are not reflective of society at large, creating change will be difficult.