Gender Social Conditioning

The Influence Of Education On Gender Socialization The parklands misconception almost sex activity nowadays is that it has the same meaning as sex, something born(p) and natural. However, since 1970s, increasingly more(prenominal) anthropologists like Marg aret Mead agree that sexuality is something that stand be conditioned and is prone to companionableization. Since a preadolescent age, possibly around deuce to three years old when an infant begins to develop higher cognitive functions, high company bombards them with different signals that slowly condition them into a particular(prenominal) sex role male or female.By sex activity role, I am referring to a set of attitudes or behaviors that is encouraged or at least anticipate of a person based on his or her gender. This also subject matter that gender is malleable and a product of socio-cultural and historical contingencies a social construct. Normal traits that we associate with a specific gender like aggressiv eness with men and gentility with women are not as natural as they seem. In fact, these seemingly normative behaviors create been slowly fortifying our bear perspectives about gender roles but also help shape people into a gendered being.Therefore, boys are raised to conform to male gender role and little girls are brought up to fit the female gender role. In a westbound Society for example the US or Europe, raising becomes an integral spokesperson of a childs livelihood from a very young age. The submits from development that condition children into specific gendered beings cannot be ignored as cultivate time accounts for most of a child or teenagers life.I am highlighting that this is common in the West because family expectations or apparitional traditions major poweriness be the bigger factor or influence for gender socialising in communitarian or new(prenominal) types of societies. I would like to crop up with an observation I made about this particular issue c harm looking through an English language textbook for beginners. In a chapter about occupations, I noted that most jobs associated with the human beings sphere ordinarily carry male connotations with them, for example, fireman or policeman.Furthermore, the pictures depicting people in these public sphere jobs unremarkably have male models. On the other hand, jobs related to servitude or fealty such(prenominal) as waitresses or nurses usually has female models portraying the jobs. This is where I first encountered an example of the issue of gender socialization in the education field. This particular example shows us that children from a young age have been conditioned to relate male with the public realm and also as dominant providers whereas females are linked to obedience and serving others.This fits in with Sacks argument that women are discouraged to work in the public realm where their work could be by rights evaluated and valued. These subliminal signals from school alon g with their familys structure and parents roles or occupations could fortify the childrens expectations for genders. This in turn would affect the childrens preference of jobs where they shoot something that conforms to their genders characteristics and thus, the cycle of gender conditioning begins again.Another very important gender socialization process that occurs during a childs educational years is self-socialization. I first noted this phenomenon when I saw a teenage girl being ridiculed for wanting to play basketball with the boys and thought of another mail service when my male friend was mocked for participating in a drama production. The common trend I have noticed is that when an individual does not manage or conform to his or her testify genders expectations, society often reacts in a disapproving or negative manner.Thus the deviant individual through outside(a) rack or other mechanisms like shame or punishment would hope to correct his or her own behavior so tha t it is more in tune with their gender expectations. From an beforehand(predicate) age, boys and girls would have started self-correcting their own behaviors so that they received less negative feedback from the external reality. This, however, reinforces the differences seen by children between male and female and ultimately leading to the final result that you can only behave like one or the other.The wave-particle duality of gender actually limits opportunities and potential an individual can have because if that specific skill or quality is not within a genders characteristics, it might be self-corrected and discarded through self-socialization. We can crimson see an example or offshoot of this issue in the homosexualism debate occurring right now, men who are acting in a supposingly devious manner are being discriminated against not because of any biologic reasons but because of socio-cultural pressure to conform to normative gender expectations.This process of self-social ization starts from a relatively early age to shape us into what our society constitutes as male or female genders. Lastly, another aspect of education that has undestroyable effect on forming gendered beings is the way a differentiateroom is ran and methods of teaching. There seems to be an emerging trend of a new style of teaching which uses a more open and interactive organization, we see this in new schools such as School Without Walls. However, the majority of public or private schools in the US, or even around the world in this case, still follows a strict guideline on how bookmans should behave in a classroom.Desired qualities in an ideal student from a teachers perspective would be obedience, quietness, maturity, passiveness and patience. In a system where examinations and tests account for the majority of the marker criteria, a student behaving according to these qualities would do better than a student who is more active, rebellious or passionate. One might notice that the characteristics that would lay off a student to succeed in school are relatively feminine.Especially considering that girls are thought to develop at a faster footstep than boys and reach full cognitive maturity sooner. The female gender might have an intrinsic advantage at doing better in our education system over male students who are often described as more energetic, easily distracted and physical. The ways the education system functions and evaluates brook more matured female students to focus and excel in studies date more physical male students would start to lose interest in education all together.This is a trend we have started to notice in the US where the dropout rate for male students is 50% higher than female students in a specific state the significant gap shows that the education system clearly has different effects on male and female. To sum up how our way of teaching in classrooms can form gendered beings, one can say that boys are discouraged from educatio n or demotivated due to the education systems inadaptability with intrinsic characteristics usually associated with male children such as aggressiveness and spirited.This in turn would lead male children to focus more on their own physical aspect while female children who have better chances at completing school, would have less external pressure and could focus on their own mental capabilities and schoolwork. Thus, this social process successfully highlighted the gender differences and strengthens notions about how genders are formed socially. This particular process could by and by on lead to selecting careers that are clearly relegated to a specific gender.The reinforcement of ideas about the duality of gender into our childrens minds would help them form their own concepts about gender roles and potential. From a childrens textbook to how a class is ran, it seems that our society is crammed with subliminal or direct signals that slowly shape us into our gender roles or to beco me a gendered being. According to Margaret Mead, gender is something that varies from culture to culture and the gender roles we have established here might not be the norm for another society.Her work shows that gender roles or expectations are complex products of socio-cultural, economical and historical contingencies and not just something unconditioned in our biological differences between male and female. Following her idea, I realize that in our society, a lot of these gender socialization processes have been institutionalized and even the smallest things could help form us into the gendered beings we are today. Hence, I started at an early stage of cognitive development where the mind is the most absorptive so to speak.In conclusion, Ive found out that not only is the education system itself very much reinforcing these gendered ideas but as the children progress in this system, they also increasingly bolster these ideas in their peers through self-socialization, somewhat standardised to a mutual exchange of ideas. Therefore, one can understand that the influence and effect of the educational system cannot be overlooked on how gendered ideas and ultimately gendered beings are formed as these ideas carry themselves into the real and adult society where these gender expectations are then passed on again to the next contemporaries like a cycle.Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila. Veiled Sentiments Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley University of California, 1986. Print. Mack, Julie. A Closer Look At The Gender Gap In High School Dropout. The Kalamazoo Gazette. N. p. , Apr. 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2013. Mead, Margaret. Sex and Temperament in trinity Primitive Societies. New York HarperCollins, 2001. Print. 1 . Mack, Julie. A Closer Look At The Gender Gap In High School Dropout. The Kalamazoo Gazette. N. p. , Apr. 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2013.