According to the curricula that best suit EG, she must not be a girl.
I've said this before and some may disagree, but I still wonder if boys typically respond better to MCT, MUS, LOF, IEW, etc. written by male authors. "The Minds of Boys" by Michael Gurian, talks about the importance of word play with boys (excellent book IMO). Mr. Pudewa also has some interesting discussions on teaching boys as well.
No one disagrees with this statement (possibly because it's off topic to the original point of the thread), and then two pages later, it's resurrected.
Where, oh, where is the math written by a female author for my dd?
For full disclosure, I think that IEW is for the most part, ridiculous, and I have no experience whatsoever with Math U See. However, EG loves Life of Fred, and is speeding rapidly through her new MCT materials.
For a discussion of sex-related brain differences that I can really get behind, check out Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps - And What We Can Do About It. In the course of the book, Lise Eliot does a fantastic job of explaining research, debunking common myths, and attacking the positions help by authors such as Gurian and Sax. I highly recommend it!
4 comments:
I'm amazed by the fact that so many have bought into that thinking. It is probably some horrid result of "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus" mental conditioning.
While my children are very different from each other, I believe most of the difference are due to their temperaments and not their gender.
I went & looked at the book you mentioned. Are there really parents who wouldn't let their daughter play with Legos? LOL. Crazy.
Bottom line, imo, blaming gender is often easier than actually addressing a child's weaknesses or our own lack of ability to teach to a subject.
I have to admit that I have never considered the gender of the author when evaluating a curriculum - I guess I've been doing it wrong, too.
I've been getting really tired of all the boy/girl specific mentions around, too. There's one poster especially that I'm guilty of some unkind eye rolling when I see the gender of the kids used as an excuse for not starting academics.
@Daisy - I detest that book! I actually did a comparison of gender roles in the Bible vs. that book for my senior year Bible project, and decided people were strange, the book was far more sex-stereotype-enforcing!
@Melanie - I know, right?!? Next time I'm evaluating a curriculum, I'll have to make sure to check the chromosome of the author. ;)
@The Mama - Yes... there was a good thread a while back about how maybe, just maybe, boys were being shortchanged because not enough writing was being required. Uh... yeah. Just maybe. :P
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