ACHIEVEMENT BY GENDER

How has achievement by gender changed since the end of

World War II

How has achievement by gender changed since the end of

World War IIa

Introduction

Before the 1920s, progressive reformers tended to concentrate their efforts in public education, applying scientific management techniques to the administration of schools, reforming curriculum, and creating secondary, vocational schools. Around the 1920s many progressive educators began to focus on private schools attended by middle-class children. These schools, often the creation of parent cooperatives or talented practitioners, stressed individual freedom and that schools help children develop their potentials. These schools, commonly referred to by educators as “child centered” were often founded by female practitioners reacting against the strict methods of the existing public schools.

1945-1960

During the post-World War II period, the patterns that emerged during the progressive era were continued. First, the debate about the goals of education (i.e., academic, social, or both) and whether all children should receive the same education remained an important one. Second, the demand for the expansion of educational opportunity became perhaps the most prominent feature of educational reform. Efforts were also directed at finding ways to translate these expanded opportunities into more equal educational outcomes at all levels of education. As in the first half of the twentieth century, so too, in the second half, the compatibility of expanded educational opportunity with the maintenance of educational standards would create significant problems. Thus, the tensions between equity and excellence became crucial in the debates of this period.

These debates can be best understood by examining reform cycles of the twentieth century, which revolved between progressive and traditional visions of schooling. On the one hand, traditionalists believed in knowledge-centered education, a traditional subject-centered curriculum, teacher-centered education, discipline and authority, and the defense of academic standards in the name of excellence. On the other hand, progressives believed in experiential education, a curriculum that responded to both the needs of students and the times, child-centered education, freedom and individualism, and the relativism of academic standards in the name of equity. Although these poles and educational practices rarely were in only one direction, the conflicts over educational policies and practices seemed to move back and forth between these two extremes.

From 1945 to 1955, conservative critics attacked progressive education. Critics assailed progressive education for its sacrificing of intellectual goals to social ones. They argued that the life adjustment education of the period combined with an increasingly anti-intellectual curriculum destroyed the traditional academic functions of schooling. Throughout the 1950s the debate between progressives who defended the social basis of the curriculum and critics who demanded a more academic curriculum raged on. What was often referred to as “the great debate” ended with the Soviet launching of the space satellite Sputnik.

Discussion on Gender Roles

Gender roles and identity are also influenced by teachers and by institutions, in indirect ways through modeling, and more directly through rewards and punishments. Most mathematics and physics teachers are men, which suggests that these positions are masculine roles, and most language arts, elementary teachers ...