Publisher: John Catt
Author: Charlotte M Woolley
Details: 118pp, £14.00
ISBN: 978-1912906826
Charlotte Woolley’s book begins with the familiar narrative of girls outperforming boys when it comes to their academic achievements: that girls are simply more “‘school-friendly” than boys and this contributes to their success in education.
However, she then poses an interesting question: if girls are our success stories, why do we not celebrate their achievement, instead choosing to focus on “where did it go wrong for boys?”.
The feminist in me woke up and paid attention at this point. I realised that I had been just as guilty as everybody else of underplaying girls’ success (they don’t need praise, they’ll just get on with it).
The tag line of the book expresses the view that a feminist revolution in education will benefit everyone, and it is immediately intriguing.
I know, I know, feminism has had a bad press over time and the concept of it being of benefit to everyone - presumably males as well as females here - could be a stretch for some.
However, in an educational landscape that is almost entirely focused on the “boy problem”, this is a refreshing take on an often overlooked issue: the issue of our girls.
Celebrating girls’ success in school
Following this question up with statistics on women’s achievement (or lack thereof), once they enter the workplace, immediately highlights the fact that while boys’ underachievement is a short-term problem, girls’ achievement is the longer-term issue.
Where are our girls in business, in management, in politics? It is evident, in Woolley’s view, that the fight for gender equality has slowed, with women still on the back foot.
The second part of the book deals with curriculum-specific strategies that can help to hone our teaching and challenge our own unconscious biases, whatever those might be.
Tackling inequality
Woolley recommends an audit of our curriculum areas, and provides thought-provoking questions to ask to bring any biases to the fore.
So how does this audit help teachers at the chalkface? Well, as an English subject lead, I found the questions for the English curriculum useful and have begun to consider the numbers of male and female authors that we study from key stage 3 to KS4.
This may well provide the next steps that I can take to ensure that my department will deliver a more balanced curriculum, thereby addressing one of four strands Woolley suggests we, as education professionals, deliver - that of demonstrating the value women have in society.
Woolley presents a table of the GCSE exam boards and breaks down the numbers of male to female authors on offer. While the balance favours males at GCSE level, this simply means that steps can and should be taken to redress the balance at KS3 where control of the curriculum is in our hands.
The chapter on science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) is well-researched and provides a number of studies around the stereotypical assumption that boys are better at Stem than girls, and gives the reasons why such assumptions arise.
The majority of these assumptions begin in early childhood and the way we socialise our children.
Girls who work in Stem areas are not the exception in terms of capability - it is a societal stereotype that has had far too much influence. Woolley suggests ways in which such stereotypes can be addressed through school.
A number of other subjects are catered for in this way, with research provided to support the assumptions that have been made and how to challenge them.
Four calls to action
The third part of the book deals with the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development elements of teaching girls, with a focus on the language used around “female problems” and how these impact on girls’ confidence as they grow up. Part four presents a model of a feminist society.
I like the way that Woolley works valiantly to overturn the somewhat radical perceptions the reader may have about the word “feminist”, but I fear that the associations are far too deeply entrenched for society to take heed.
Woolley puts forward the point that “education must face up to its social responsibilities and help to write a new narrative, by encouraging young people to see beyond the contemporary patriarchal messages that damage us all”.
Her four strands of action to achieve this are as follows:
- Recognise our part as educators in perpetuating stereotypes and cultural expectations. We need to actively demonstrate the value of women to society.
- Model genuine appreciation of traditionally feminine and masculine qualities but expect them in different places. For example, more ambition in pastoral care, more compassion in academic studies in order to reduce the privilege allocated to the more academic masculine side.
- Challenge whole-school unconscious bias from uniform to seating plans to language used.
- Empower young women to be whomever they want.
Overall, the strands Woolley outlines are nothing new.
However, in today’s climate, when the focus is almost exclusively on boys, a reminder is needed to refocus on girls and how we are letting the immediate problem of our boys overshadow the longer-term problem of our girls.
My concern here is that because the girl problem appears to be out of our hands, so to speak, it is not and will not be the priority that boys’ underachievement is.
As a profession, we are subject to the Department for Education and the data dashboard.
The dashboard does not, on the whole, show a problem with girls’ achievement; ergo, this is not a problem that schools need to deal with and so they won’t.
And this is why, sadly, while there is some extremely useful thinking and strategy provided here, I don’t believe The Lost Girls will gain the traction of its counterpart Boys Don’t Try in our schools.
Sana Master is an English teacher at a school in Yorkshire. She tweets @MsMaster13
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