Annotated Bibliography: What About Girls?

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Pages: 6

Coulter, R.P. (2012). What about the girls? Education Canada, 52, 6-9

According to Coulter, it is common to be placing the boys as the “problems” in education, with statistics showing that girls are excelling in academics, in effect removing the attention from girls and their educational needs. Coulter references the research conducted by Gidney & Millar (2012) who discuss how girls in the early parts of the twentieth century did not complete requirements for higher education based off societal expectations and the limitation of resources readily available to boys. Furthermore, Ailwood (2003) argues that the uprising in discussion on boys failing or scoring poorly within literacy are not only silently masking the girls who may need help in
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Coulter’s article references a sign which was put up at Brescia University College, which had a photo of a young woman, upon which were the words: “Her mind is as sharp as her heels.” A common theme among viewpoints of this poster was that it reinforced a more traditional view of women, being they should be feminine but also perfect in every other aspect such as academics. (The Gazette, 2010) Renold and Allan (2006) explore how there’s even pressure placed upon girls at the elementary level, girls must excel academically while remaining feminine and passive. Girls are still being pushed towards minimizing their academic achievement and feel pressured into the classical view of femininity. Young girls are learning through their dolls and through media that, the way to success is through a hypersexualised image of a conventionally attractive woman such as their Barbie doll. Girls who grow up with relative privilege are more commonly achieving both academically and having successful careers but 3 or 4 out 10 girls will struggle but remain quiet rather than ask for help and just drop out later in life. Another overlooked aspect of the divide between boys and girls in their education is girls are more commonly told to watch their siblings or aid with someone sick which sometimes …show more content…
This dissertation had 51 references with a wide variety of views on the topic which aided me in believing that the source was unbiased and was reporting on fact-based findings. The studies conducted found that there was no inherent advantage of dividing classrooms by gender and teaching students based on their