Secret Teacher: it seems feminism is still a dirty word in the classroom

Secret Teacher says, relationships, pornography and violence towards females and girls are just some of the issues that must be taught to engage students in feminist problems. Photograph: Alamy

The F word: frowned upon, hotly contested, and, sadly, infrequently used in British secondary schools. I’m talking about feminism, of course.

It looks feminism is nonetheless a dirty word in the classroom. As a instructor, I was not notably shocked by the fact that 17-yr-old Jinan Younis did not feel supported when she started a feminist society at her school. Nor was I especially stunned when sixth formers from a close by boy’s college responded with a flood of misogynistic abuse on Twitter.

I have also encountered a distinctly derisive mindset towards any mention of gender, allow alone feminism, given that I began educating two many years in the past. In one particular instance, my senior (female, middle aged) mentor pointed out that the boys in my lessons had been contributing a good deal more than the girls.

When I talked about this suggestions to my (young, male) mentor I was advised that: “she usually says stuff like that. She’s acquired a actual bee in her bonnet. Just disregard her.” Successfully, a fully valid and needed developmental level was dismissed out of hand for getting been tainted with the ‘feminist’ brush.

It is not just the disdainful attitude of many teachers in the direction of feminism which is denying college students an insight into 1 of the most considerable human rights and equalities movements of the final century, it’s also the national curriculum.

Across a selection of important stage three schemes of work and the recent national programme of examine in background (which I teach), ladies are far and number of amongst. In the new nationwide curriculum for background, they’re referred to implicitly beneath the rubric of ‘society, economy and culture’. Other than that, the part of females as examples of examine comes up just twice in the varieties of the women’s suffrage and the Elizabethan religious settlement. That effectively means that the function of half the population is pointed out immediately just twice out of the 38 suggested subjects.

Luckily for most historical past departments, this will indicate minimal modify to their current schemes of perform. A single of my most shameful moments as a teacher was when one particular of my female 12 months 7 students asked me at the end of the 12 months: “Why do we just examine kings in history, miss?” I don’t believe my college is unusual in waiting to expose students to the function of ladies in history until finally Henry’s wives crop up, and even then, it is their function as wives that qualify them for this privilege.

Obviously, there are fewer substantial political female figures in the medieval and early present day periods than male ones. But which is why academic historians have been so keen to level out that human encounter extends past the political realm. Our curriculums, in history and other subjects, need to current younger people with a balanced appreciation of the roles of guys and females if their notions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are to reflect something approximating equality.

These gendered biases ingrained in our education program occur towards a worrying consensus that gender equality has been achieved, or even surpassed in favour of ladies and women. This myth has rendered feminism irrelevant and even embarrassing to many. The evidence, however, suggests that gender equality is nevertheless a lengthy way off. In the United kingdom nowadays, a single in 3 teenage girls experiences sexual violence from a boyfriend, one particular in 3 youthful girls experiences sexual bullying in college on a every day basis, 1 in 5 younger males fear that porn is influencing their behaviour and practically a third (31%) of boys believe female politicians are not as good as male politicians.

A single of the causes why feminism has been shunned from our schools is due to the fact of the now commonplace – and very required – recognition that on regular girls’ academic achievement is larger than boys. This yr, girls’ performance surpassed boys more than at any time given that the introduction of GCSEs in the 1980s.

Rather than this constituting a cause to ignore feminism, this achievement differential is screaming out for an method to teaching and learning which takes account of gendered variation. In my expertise, one of the primary factors boys are not attaining as hugely as women is due to a broadly idealised edition of adolescent masculinity – the ‘alpha male’. In other phrases, the dominant mode of masculinity does not make it cool to behave effectively, or to demonstrate academic interest and enthusiasm.

The educational achievement gap demonstrates how much we need a gendered method to training – for boys as effectively as ladies. But the relevance of feminism in schools goes past academic achievement. It is during a youthful person’s school many years that their gender and sexual identities are formed. If we want a much more equal society then it is essential that colleges engage with some of the issues that feminism is concerned with: relationships, physique politics, violence against girls and girls, sexual well being and reproductive rights, pornography and consent.

How can we assume younger individuals to comprehend that pornography does not represent healthy or commonplace sexual activity, that ‘no’ implies no or that homophobia is not acceptable, if we never openly engage with them on these issues?

There are, of program, many teachers who are already carrying out this critical perform, but far significantly less who are performing so with any explicit reference to feminism. Without connecting these discussions to feminism these conversations lack any sense of the historic movement from which they came. They also deprive college students of a important framework for understanding the gender inequalities in our society, and how they can be challenged.

It is essential that youthful men and women are exposed to ‘herstory’ as well as background and are engaged in conversations about the concerns that feminists have been pointing out are important for the realisation of gender equality. As one activist stated on the Feminism belongs in colleges site: “If boys and women can discover to talk to each other about their hopes and fears, probably males and females will as well.” Feminism can aid this occur in colleges.

Probably if the boys who’d derided Jinan Younis’ feminist society had been exposed to feminism themselves they wouldn’t have turned to verbal abuse to deal with anything they did not understand. Possibly they would also be doing far better in college.

This week’s Secret Instructor performs at a secondary college in London.

• Would you like to be the following Secret Teacher? Received an thought for an anonymous blog post about the trials, tribulations and frustrations of school existence? Get in touch: kerry.eustice@theguardian.com.

Secret Teacher: it seems feminism is still a dirty word in the classroom