Gender neutral schooling- the results are in

BBC 2 aired a two-part programme asking 'Is the way we treat boys and girls the real reason we haven't achieved equality between men and women? Dr Javid Abdelmoneim took a Primary classroom and made the curriculum and teaching gender free, with before and after quantitative testing.

At the start the girl's self-eteem was 8% lower than boys, and the end it was just 0.2%. Their self-motivation rose by 12%. Boys pro-social behaviour went up by 10% and their observed bad behaviour went down by 57%.

It was really sad to see that girls had low self-esteem,and that boys didn't know how to express emotions except for anger. One scene summed it up. They played the faiground strongman. One girl cried with happiness because she didn't believe she could have done so well. Another boy failed the task and couldn't cope. Watching him I realised how confusing it must be for boys, who are given the message they are just naturally stronger, and better, to then realise this is not true. They are not naturally special. A part of me wonders if this is why so many switch off.

There was another scene where the pupils could choose a task- make a picnic or build a fire. A couple of the boys who chose the picnic went off and claimed it was a girl's task, just after a scene where we saw them struggle to cut cucumbers. I imagine at home girls had been more schooled to watch or help, hence why they found it easier.

To have such a well made recorded experiment helps to show in real terms the impact gender stereotyping has on children. We could see how biased adults are in our assumption of what children want and of how we should interact with them. Some commentated that it was nearing child abuse to 'test' children in this way, but seeing as each successive government experiments with new curriculums and put children into constant test mode, a trial to improve children's outcome should be applauded.

This morning LBC tweeted 'Gender divides are persistent in terms of subjects favoured by boys and girls'. Responses were that girls and boys are wired differently and so chose the subjects they are naturally better at. Anyone who had watched the BBC programme would know this is a direct culmination of gender bias.

In toy selections, girls are given more crafts, dolls and books and boys are given more spacial awareness toys such as lego. In the programme the children were given a selection and enjoyed the 'other gender's' toys given to them. Girls do worse in science etc. because they do not have the earlier years of brain training like boys do with their toys. The class focused on spacial puzzle tasks, which the girls found much harder but became better over time. The struggles children have starts from the early years through the narrowing of their toy choices and sothey only choose what they are good at.

In the programme a neuroscientist explained that there are no male and female brains, but that our brains are moulded by experience. That's what I always remember from psychology, the area of the brain we use more often gets larger, and the size of the areas will change depending on how much we use them.

Children don't get brought up equally, and this is detrimental for their wellbeing and skill set. Our curriculum should focus on the areas left out by pre-school gender bias. I have heard a lot of parents who brought up their child neutrally but school actually made their child more of a gender stereotype. Peer pressure and the curriculum are powerful.

Thankfully the school if going to continue this as a whole school approach because the results were so positive. The teacher involved is trying to get the model into more schools. Sweden has also begun to haeve gendel neutral preshools where children already make less stereotypical choices. Hopefully some heads will trial it, or parents will ask for it. Children have enough disadvantages based to deal. We know we can stop gender being one of them.

'no more boys and girls: Can our kids go gender free' can be watched on Iplayer here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202jz

#culture #Identity #education #genderneutral