For Gender Divided Class Argument

                More and more students are fading fast in America, with less and less students graduating, and there seems nothing can be done about it—or can there? With the economy recovering from turmoil, and the cost of post-secondary education on the rise, increasing education funds seems to be the last thing on anyone’s mind, but is that the solution? No; the solution appears to be more the structure of the classroom rather than the funding for such. The hope for the American education lies in one simple strategy—single-gender classrooms.

                It’s no secret that boys and girls think differently, and thinking is the basis for learning, so it can be inferred that boys and girls learn differently, too. If we aim our classrooms to teach the two sexes separately, we can emphasize their specific learning styles, and maximize their education. Doing so will cut down on the distractions that seem to govern adolescent classrooms, so there would be less scolding and more praising. The work would increase the grades would increase, and the graduation rates would increase. Free from intimidation from the opposite sex, students would build confidence in their work and, ultimately, themselves.

                Socialization is a main concern for people who are against same-sex classrooms, as it should be, but if we set up our schools to only have certain single-sex classes, particularly math and science—the two subjects boys and girls seem to differ most in—we would ensure students still get the interaction between the sexes. Another idea is to have a Monday-Thursday single-sex classes and Friday coed class review day schedule. This would allow for the two to learn their own way, but Friday would be a chance to make sure they are both on the same page and learning the same material. It would also offer a chance for boy/girl socialization.

                By confining a classroom to one general teaching/learning technique, we are allowing the students who do not learn they way they are being taught well fall through the cracks. There is no excuse for not having every student who begins school graduate, and there is nobody to blame for it but ourselves. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a nation to ensure each child is given the same opportunity to graduate with a high school education as the next.

Should Schools Consider Gender-Divided Classrooms?

For years, women have been put on the back burner of society; forgotten about and left out. Historically, when it comes to careers, men are dominant in science and math disciplines. In the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, it states that “women are less likely to obtain a STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] degree” (Tyson et al., 2007, p. 267). Why this is and what can we do to fix it? Many researchers have proposed the Gender-Divided Class room as one option. Maybe by focuses on how each sex learns and emphasizing that in segregated classrooms would help improve the gap in careers.

                Segregating class rooms—haven’t we been there before? If we divide the classrooms because women are not equally represented in the STEM careers, aren’t we basically telling these women it’s their fault? They are less than, and because so, we have to rearrange the classrooms so they can be brought up to speed? In Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, she discusses a testing situation, where, if you go into a class and tell one group of girls to try especially hard and ignore the notion that typically they will do poorly on the exam, and you go into another group of girls and give the exam, the girls who were not told of the stereotype do better (Dweck, 2006). By separating the girls and boys in the classroom, aren’t we doing the same thing Dweck did to the girls who were told girls typically scored below boys?

                Research done by Sherrilyn M. Billger on single-sexed education systems reveals that those who graduated from a SSE school are less likely to meet their educational goals, and they did not receive BA/BS degrees any more so than coeducational graduates. “Taken together,” Billger says, “these results do not provide a ringing endorsement of single-sex education” (Billger, 2009). So why do it? Why separate the boys from the girls if there are not significantly significant benefits to their furthering their education?

                It is thought that boys and girls think differently, and that by separating the two in the classroom, you can focus more on how one learns, therefore maximizing what they learn. While many people would like to believe so, school is not just about learning the curriculum; it’s about learning to socialize and mingle with people to ensure your social skills and communication skills develop.  If you separate the classrooms, especially at a young age and for an extended amount of time, how will the two sexes learn to coexist?

                By dividing classrooms, we can lead to further discrimination of women. If you separate the two sexes, it can be argued that the men are getting a pat on the back for doing so well, and that women are being given the chance to “catch up.” We must keep the two together to ensure equality and equal opportunity in learning and development.

Are Boys and Girls Different?

Two babies are lying in a crib. One baby turns to the other and says, “I’m a girl.” The other baby asks how she knew, and she replies that she overheard her mother saying it was so. The other baby says, “Well I’m a boy.” The girl asks how he’d found out. He throws back the covers and says, “Look! Blue booties!” The point is, from the very beginning we are told there are differences between boys and girls. Boys play sports, girls cheer from the sidelines; boys go out and make the money, girls keep the house clean.

While its obvious boys and girls are physically different, they are internally different, too. Yesterday in my biology lab, a guy at my table was trying to make a text box bigger on his graph, but every attempt he made, he ended up losing sight of the box and starting over. I asked why he didn’t just type into the box, and then make it bigger. He just looked at me and replied, “Because that’d be the easy way. I’m a guy; I have to make it difficult.” So, boys and girls think differently. Girls tend to overanalyze situations, but only to ensure we cover all bases. We like to have a plan and we like the plan to be followed. Guys fly by the seat of their pants, and often don’t think enough. Girls look toward the future, guys look at right now. Emotionally, girls get attached to things and let the little stuff get to them. Guys sometimes seem void of any and all emotions. Girls are said to “compartmentalize” information; they store it in neatly packed shelves so it’s easily retrievable.  Guys just toss it all in. Boys see the world differently than girls do.

Men also tend to stick with men, and women tend to include everyone. Take for example, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book about success, he says that success is achieved mostly from opportunities and luck (Gladwell, 2008). Throughout the book he provides readers with examples of famous people who because successful by opportunity. Most of the examples, however, were of men—from a men’s hockey team, to Bill Joy, to Chris Langan. I can only come up with two cases from his book does he mention the success of girls, Marita (who’s opportunity was KIPP, a school started by two successful men) and his grandmother, and let’s face it, it’s his grandmother (which led to his success) (Gladwell, 2008). Mindset, by Carol Dweck has a wider variety of examples, both male and female. Her book focuses more on the mindset of the person being responsible for success rather than the luck that falls upon them.   

Girls and boys are exceptionally different in many ways. Equal opportunities are not always given to both sexes. Differences in pay still exists, even as women work just as hard, if not harder, to ensure equal treatment in places of employment. In 2009, President Obama signed a Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act that allows employees to file a complaint 180 after the last unfair paycheck instead of the first. Ledbetter was receiving 15-40% less than the males at Goodyear (Brunner, n.d.). Double-standards are also in place to widen the difference gap in women and men.

Women and men will always be different, but it is not something that should limit either sex. Equality shouldn’t just be in place for race, it should exist for sex as well. We are all the same when it comes down to it, and we are all capable of great things, boy or girl. We can all make a difference if we try and we shouldn’t hold ourselves back or let others hold us back because we aren’t what they want us to be.

Brunner, B. (n.d.). The Wage Gap. Retrieved from Infoplease website: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/equalpayact1.html

Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine

                Books.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York City: Little, Brown and Company.

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He Said, She Said...

            Success: what is it? What makes one successful? There is not a clear-cut answer to this question, but many people have done their best to interpret and answer it as best they can; two such people are Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success author, Carol S. Dweck. Gladwell and Dweck set out on the same mission—to determine what makes someone successful—but wind up at two very different conclusions.

            Chapter One of Outliers lays the ground for what Gladwell attributes success to: Opportunity (Gladwell, 2008). “People don’t rise from nothing,” says Gladwell, “We do owe something to parentage and patronage,” meaning that we don’t just become successful on our own, it’s making use of opportunities presented and luck-of-the-draw that ultimately deserve our gratitude (Gladwell, 2008, p.19). The entire book adheres to this theory, and Gladwell provides many examples to support it. He talks about hockey and the birthdays of the great players; he mentions Bill Joy and his luck with computer availability; he brings up the KIPP lottery system for accepting applicants (Gladwell, 2008).  For Gladwell’s personal success, it, too, was about opportunity.

            Carol S. Dweck believes in the “power of people’s beliefs” (Dweck, 2006, p. IX). In her book, Mindset, she focuses on the internal motivation of the person’s desire to be successful rather than the circumstances. Dweck establishes two mindsets, the fixed and the growth, and says that success is up to the person and their mindset (Dweck, 2006). As the name probably implies, people with the growth mindset are the successful ones. They push themselves to expand their horizons and don’t let something get them down. The fixed mindsets tend to create fences that they approach, but never motivate themselves to jump across. Success for Dweck is achieved by hard work and dedication. Dweck also mentions the negative aspects of success, quoting Pat Riley, former NBA coach, as saying, “success is the disease of me,” (Dweck, 2006, p. 210). Gladwell does not really mention any negative aspects of success, rather puts on that we should all be thankful and appreciative for any opportunity to be successful we are given.

            While Gladwell tends to take the extrinsic view of success and base it, for the most part, on outward influences, and Dweck likes the intrinsic view point that it is all up to each person, they can agree on some things. Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule and Dweck’s disbelief in “naturals” go hand in hand. Gladwell claims that anyone who has success in doing something has practiced at the task for upwards of 10,000 hours, going back to the old saying, “practice makes perfect” (Gladwell, 2008).  Dweck has similar thoughts, saying that “naturals” are only the products of tons and tons of practice more than innate ability (Dweck, 2006).

            I can see aspects of both their ideas in my “little successes” I’ve come across. Had I not lived in the same small town for the better part of my entire life, I may not have walked in to the local grocery store, talked to the manager I’ve known for 15 years, and gotten a job on the spot, which then led to me having the money to attend the community college in Ashland throughout high school, which gave me a bit of a head start when I got to Marshall. My living here and knowing people would be where opportunity comes in; my determination to get a job before I left the store that day would be where my mindset played a role. Not until you appreciate both these aspects and use them to their greatest potential, can you be completely successful.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York:
          Ballantine Books.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York City: Little, Brown and Company.

'Success is the Disease of Me'

            Success is something we all try to achieve. No one wants to fail or fall short of succeeding, especially at something they truly love to do. For me, it’s biology. If I could, that is all I’d do, all day long. For Pat Riley, it seems to be coaching. For 24 years, Riley was an NBA coach whose record is nothing short of astonishing—1210 wins and only 694 losses, 3 time Coach of the Year and in the 1996-97 season, one of the NBA’s Ten Greatest Coaches, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008 (XML Team). Obviously, he’d be deemed very successful; yet on page 210 of Mindset, he is noted for saying that his success was the “disease of [him]” (Dweck, 2008). Riley was probably alluding to the fact that sometimes success can send someone one an ego trip, causing them to lose sight of what is really important. Often times, people “get the big head,” and fail because so.

In the case of this past Super Bowl, the “under dogs” (Packers) won over the Steelers. The Steelers were said to be a strong, more experienced team, yet they were beat. It is possible the Steelers went into the game with the fixed mindset, assuming they would win and not pushing themselves as hard; the Packers, with the growth mindset, learned from past mistakes and fought like it was nobody’s business to pull through, and they did. All in all, if you let success can become your worst enemy when you let it go to your head, and this is what Riley was saying.   

Where Dweck implies success is all in the mindset and up to the person for the most part, Malcolm Gladwell says success is, basically, dependent upon chance and opportunities provided. How would he feel about success being a disease? Personally, I think he’d find offense to it. If we are given opportunities that can further our success, it would be an insult to call them a “disease;” yet, Gladwell seems to focus solely on attaining success rather than what can happen once it is earned. I tend to agree with Dweck in that success is what you make it, it doesn’t make you. You have to put work into becoming successful rather than it falling into your hands, and once you are considered successful, it’s just as hard to maintain the status as it was to get it. For Gladwell, it is all about becoming successful, and once you are, it stays.

No matter how wonderful it is at the time, if you let something get the best of you, in Riley’s case, success, it can destroy you as fast as it made you. Learning to balance is the key to maintaining your sanity. You have to stay grounded, but not diminish the achievement you worked so hard for. My mom always says, “You’re the only person you have to lay down with at night,” meaning, in the end, if I can truly be happy with myself, that is all that matters. It is not up to anyone but me do make peace with what I have done. If I let something get the best of me in a bad way, like letting success go to my head, she is the first person to remind me that I’m still human like everyone else. For Riley, I think he realized he was human, too.

Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York City: Little, Brown and Company.

XML Team. Pat Riley NB & ABA basketball coaching record. Retrieved from basketball-refernce.com. website: http://www.basketball-reference.com/coaches/rileypa01c.html

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Are You a Natural at Something?

                Often times, people are said to be “naturals” at something they really excel in without straining themselves. Things—like basketball, football, painting, decorating—just come easily for these people, and once they get going there is no stopping them. But is there such a thing? I like to agree with Dweck on this one; she says there isn’t, that naturals are merely people who put a lot of work and effort into something, and it pays off (Dweck, 2008). In this sense, I think Dweck and Gladwell share similar points of view. Gladwell refers to the 10,000 Hour Rule in his book, which says that people are so great at things because they practiced for at least 10,000 hours (Gladwell, 2008). These people weren’t born knowing how to play sports, or program computers, or paint a masterpiece; they were taught to do so. For me, the term “natural” is something endowed by nature. I’m a natural brunette with naturally fair skin—I was born this way. Natural things just happen. Making a shot from half court with a second to go in the championship game doesn’t just happen—it comes with practice and perseverance.   

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary states natural (noun) as being 4 a : one having natural skills, talents, or abilities b : something that is likely to become an immediate success c : one that is obviously suitable for a specific purpose (Natural, 2011). While I agree that people can be inclined to do better at certain tasks, I don’t think they will just be better because of these inclinations. For example, tall people are supposed to be awesome at basketball. My uncle is six-foot-four and probably couldn’t make a layup or block someone. Had he continued on after sixth grade and practiced daily, he may have been great. Frequently, I feel, people bank on their “natural” ability carrying them, and don’t practice like they should. These people tend to fall behind of the ones that consistently exercise their talent. I think, too, that people who really like something and do it a lot because so are considered naturals, which makes since.

                Personally, I don’t really consider myself a natural at anything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting myself down or anything, but if you held me to others’ standards of being a natural, I think I’d fail. There is nothing that comes especially easy to me. I can cook and bake, but I occasionally burn things and often times have to refer to recipes or instructions; I love biology and do really well in it but I still study and review. No matter what, I have to work at what I want to be good at, and I think that if you look around, you’ll realize everyone else does too.

                So do naturals exist? And if so, what do they consist of? While abilities can be natural, what you do with them is not. You have to apply yourself and use the abilities and fine tune them into what you want them to become. In other words, you have to make a diamond out of a lump of coal.

 

Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York City: Little, Brown and Company.

Natural. (2011). In Merriam-Webster. Retrieved February 4, 2011

College Students and Test Grades

From the very beginning, Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, is far different from Outliers. Dweck discusses the importance of having the right mindset in order to succeed. She says there are two types of mindset—fixed and growth. The people with fixed mindsets tend to “prove [themselves] over and over,” while people who have growth mindsets encourage people to improve themselves (Dweck, 2008). She uses these mindsets to explain a situation involving college students and their test scores. She says that students who have this fixed mindset chose to only look at others’ exams that had done worse on the exam themselves, rather than those who had done better. On the other hand, the students with the growth mindsets were eager to look at people with higher scores. This directly falls back on the definitions of the two mindsets. The students that are fixed are continually trying to prove themselves, and by acknowledging that they had done poorly on a test, or at least worse than someone else, would be a direct contradiction to their feelings of being the best. They would find the scores discouraging and as a blow to their ego. The growth individuals, however, would be encouraged to look at others’ test and would see it as a way of improving their next test score. They could reevaluate their study partners and get study tips from the students that did better.

            It’s funny, because I can see myself as someone with both mindsets. In some cases, I can empathize with the people that didn’t want to see those who had done better. If I know someone studied less, or acted like the exam was irrelevant, and I studied for hours and put everything I had into it, I’m bothered if they did better, and I certainly don’t want to look at how much better they did. on the flip side, if I miss a question or do poorly on a test, I like to confer with someone who got the right answer or a better score and see how/why they got that so I know for next time.  I can see why either side would choose to look or not to look.

So far, I really like Dweck’s interpretation of success and how it is attained, but then again, I don’t like the use of “fixed” for describing a mindset. I don’t necessarily think everyone has a fixed mindset, much less a fixed “fixed” mindset. I think there is always room for improvement and that a lot of people, once they realize they are looking at things in a close-minded way and not looking to better themselves, can change their ways and be more open to improvement.

Dweck, C. S. (2007). Mindset: the new psychology of success. Ballantine Books.