Sex-Role Learning and the Woman Teacher: A Feminist Perspective

Karen Andrews, a human rights activist, was with the Toronto Public Library.

This book tries to challenge the commonly held views of researchers on sex-role stereotyping. It shifts attention away from teachers as major culprits to issues relating to lack of resources, the sexist homelife of students, and the administrative mechanisms of the school system itself. Clearly, Tite has a point, but what begins as a limited defence of the teaching profession emerges as a shocking exposé of its inadequacies.

Tite documents the experiences of herself and five other elementary school teachers who attempt to strategize and problem-solve around feminist issues in their teaching. We are told that none of the five teachers had any prior familiarity with the study of women’s issues and that none had ever tried systematically to eliminate sex-role sterotyping in their classrooms. We also find out that their colleagues are amused by their early endeavors and that no one involved in the project had read any of the Ministry or Federation publications on sexism that had been in circulation for at least five years prior to their work. Perhaps the most disturbing revelations come as a result of the project itself. For example, only as a result of their project do these teachers begin to see the connection between their work in the classroom and the problems that women face as adults. One brilliant soul manages to detect sexism in the storybooks that she uses. Such naivete would have been acceptable 20 years ago — it is untenable today.

Sexism and sex-role stereotyping are serious problems and should be everyone’s concern. Tite’s attempt to deflect some of the major criticism leveled at the teaching profession, however, achieves quite the opposite effect.