Rationale for Rewrite



Project 1

Rationale for Rewrite

The original article (“A Historical Focus on Gender,” Elizabeth St. Pierre, English Journal) covers the education of women, focusing on a specific audience of English teachers and people in education who are involved in change and implementation of the language arts curriculum. Addressing this audience gives the author certain opportunities not available in addressing a broader, more general audience. As the information about women’s education is of importance, I addressed my rewrite to a broader audience that would include anyone who was interested in education and issues in education including parents, community members, and those interested in current social issues. This audience would not be as informed about specific terms, however, and would not need content containing the specific facts of how the issue affected a particular subject area.

The specialized audience of the first article affected the style and tone in terms of the author was able to use more technical terms and jargon that are indicative of the field of English teachers. Specifically addressing gender studies in the classroom and the affects on the English classroom indicate that the author assumes the audience is aware of the issue and is already familiar with certain reports and findings. In the writing, she adopts a style that makes the audience feel a sense of community, as if they have experienced similar situations. In the rewrite targeting a more general audience, definitions were included for terms that were traditional only in schools and a summary tone was used to keep the audience interested in a relevant issue and not feel bogged down in terminology and specific plans that are only relevant to educators.

The original article was organized with subject headers and bullets, highlighting specific topics so the information was easier to skim. Because the rewrite was a general summary and questioning of how this issue will be addressed in the future, no headings were used as the information built upon itself and was arranged in a spatial and chronological order.

Rewrite of A Historical Perspective on Gender

The Feminist movement had a profound effect on education during the eighties and nineties. Schools that had traditionally, yet unconsciously, been male centered and dominated were suddenly made aware of the injustice that was being served to their female populations through publications like Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls, “Gender Equity in the Classroom: The Unfinished Agenda”, and the study by the American Association of University Women that highlighted the issue of gender bias and its effect on female self-esteem that begins in grade school and continues throughout their educational career. These reports highlighted the areas that needed revision and as a result, programs were implemented in classrooms across the nation to change the way females were perceived and to encourage girls in areas that were traditionally considered male. English classrooms infused the traditional literary canon with female authors and feminine styles and worked to make students aware that the traditional “male” or academic style of writing was not the only correct form. Meanwhile, teachers of science and mathematics focused on providing more opportunities for females interested in the sciences and destroying the stereotype that only boys are good at math and science, while girls are best suited to the more emotional subjects like literature and the arts.

However, the buzz words that controlled education in the early nineties have been replaced with a new focus on multiculturalism and other hot topics. As this change in focus has occurred, simultaneously a new age of feminism has arisen. This new age of feminism has created a different type of girl and a new feminist. Time magazine recently focused attention on these new feminists with its cover, “Is Feminism Dead?”, that featured such noted feminists as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan along side the nineties answer to feminism in the television character of Ally McBeal. Not only do girls have the media image of Ally and other “images of grown single women as frazzled, self-absorbed girls” to model themselves after, but they are being fed a steady diet of characters such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Spice Girls, and “riot grrls”. From these glitzy, beautiful, butt kicking characters, adolescent girls are supposed to find a model to imitate that embodies the strong, independent ideals feminists of the sixties and seventies envisioned for an age as supposedly as enlightened as the years approaching the millennium should be. Such new models as these make one question the success of the feminist movement and education’s role in it. Where did feminism in education begin and how did the hype that dominated the early nineties come to be lost and finally found in a new incarnation of the feminists in the later nineties.

Education has always been the foundation of eradicating prejudice from our society. The effort to rid our society of gender discrimination is an excellent example of these efforts. Society generally defines the feminist movement in terms of three waves or movements. The first wave began in the 1800’s with the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention and ended with the 1920 enactment of the Suffrage Bill. During the sixties, the second wave of feminism pushed women’s issues again into the national spotlight with such events as President Kennedy’s creation of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1961, the publication of such books as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and the inception of the National Organization for Women n 1966. While some say the second wave continues today, others address a third wave that is happening concurrently with the second wave. This third wave focuses on the critiques by under thirty feminists who find the ideology and methodology of second wave feminists disagreeable and irrelevant. The problem faced by feminists as their movement grew and changed, however, was the issue that many women felt that the movement did not address them or their concerns. As schools have to address the concerns and issues of all types of children, the feminist movement and the schools had to revamp not only their definitions, but their plans for implementing change.

Feminism had to redefine itself when women of color, other cultures, and backgrounds objected to the movement that had been created by the white, middle-class educated females who had to this point led the push for change. Feminists came to understand that just because one is female does not mean that the experiences of the sex are universal many things beside gender determine the events that happen to a person. As a result of this realization, instead of having one movement defined as feminism, many new categories within the movement were created such as liberal feminism, radical feminism, black feminism, and postmodern feminism among others. As the parameters of the movement changed, schools began new programs to incorporate the new differences being introduced and also to realize other areas that had thus far been neglected such as the addition of new cultures into the community of the school. About this time, feminism was suffering from strong public resistance to the movement. The media and many people in society began to blame feminists for every problem of society and a very vocal group of other women came to society’s attention with claims they had never felt discriminated against. They did not want equality with men, did not want to work, and had no desire to get involved in politics and the public world. So, coupled with this new trend in society’s attitude to feminism and a new focus on the addition of various cultures to previously single race or integrated school communities, the educational system focused its attentions on a new target, multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism, the term used for integrating all cultural differences and the diversity presented by them into one classroom, was the buzz word of the later nineties. The women who objected to the white, middle class feminism that had previously been focused on now had the opportunity to be addressed, not just as women, but through all of the issues that were relevant to them. And, the new cultures that were being represented in society were given the opportunity to add their perspective to a system that had previously focused on only one or two cultures. In doing this, gender seemed to get lost as teachers realized that one could not focus solely on one issue with disregard to another. Veering away from gender focus leaves the door wide open for the question of where do we go with the girls who no longer identify with the opinions and practices of the feminist pioneers, but find an identity in the images of “feminist” females that worry more about appearance than career, use violence over brains, and control men through sexual desirability.

While at times, one might question what then has education accomplished through all this in the area of dispelling gender discrimination and bias, the answer is quite a lot. No longer do English classes present a literary canon that consists of little, but your typical dead, white men but are working to eliminate sexist language in speech and writing. Science and math courses recruit female participants and more girls than ever participate in athletics and win scholarships to play college athletics thanks to programs like Title IX. Teachers also realize how females and males innately acquire and process knowledge differently and that they must account for that in their teaching strategies.

Schools have come a long way by following the path of feminism as it winds through a complicated and ever changing world. The year 2000 and beyond will hold many new things too, as evidenced by an already unique and thoughtful group of new feminists. That these women are identifying with a new generation and are speaking up for themselves gives the indication that maybe the reports of the nineties that negatively portrayed schools and their effect on females are being challenged and a new generation of more confident girls is emerging. The question that schools must face is where do we go from here to connect the past to the future and continue the progress and change made by feminists in their own gender and the world.

References

1. Bellafonte, Gina. “Feminism: It’s All About Me!” Time 151, 25. June 29, 1998. 54-60.

2. Croker, Denise. “Putting It on the Table: A mini-Course on Gender Differences.” English Journal 88, 3. January 1999. 65-70.

3. Labi, Nadya. “For the next generation, feminism is being sold as glitz and image. But what do the girls really want?” Time 151, 25. June 29, 1998. 60-62.

4. Rubinowski, Leslie. “Young Women Vs Self-Esteem.” The Pittsburgh Press. February 3, 1991.

5. Slack, Delane Bender. “Why Do We Need to Genderize? Women’s Literature in High School.” English Journal 88, 3. January 1999. 65-70

6. St. Pierre, Elizabeth. “A Historical Perspective on Gender.” English Journal 88, 3. January 1999. 29-34.

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