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Observational Field Study Of Gender Differences In The Article By Karin Martin

489 Words2 Pages

Karin Martin begins the article with her perspective that “…. Preschools serve as places where children learn bodily discipline… preschool teachers use subtle rewards and punishments to teach girls to dress up, sit quietly, restrain their voice, and otherwise act ‘feminine,’ while encouraging boys to reject femininity and to act ‘masculine’” (Martin, 27). Her theory is that preschools are institutions where children learn how to act like their specific sex and gender. The article looks at preschools curriculum as another construct. Throughout the years we have been taught to think that children are born with gender based normative. Boys are born liking blue, being loud, and destructive, and etc. While girls are born the opposite; liking the color pink, only liking wearing dress, and playing with dolls, sitting pretty. …show more content…

“The effects of dressing up or bodily adornment, the gendered nature of formal and related behaviors, how the different restrictions on girls’ and boys’ voices limit their physicality, how teachers instruct girls’ and boys’ bodies, and the gendering of physical interactions between children and teachers and among the children themselves” (Martin, 31). Her findings in the study prove that the interactions with teachers help set the tone of the classroom, which in tune sets the standards for the children to act accordingly. Children interacted nicely, but there were some differences based on age, boy or girl, but mostly the children acted in the way they were instructed, either by their teachers or even their home

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