Of gender and classrooms

Warning: minor rant incoming (at least, it is planned to be minor; I'll try to stick to that, since there's yarn content to be gotten to before dinner comes out of the oven).

I picked the girls up from school today, and as we were walking out to the car, Tess was giving me the update on her day. I was listening with half an ear (I was also thinking about how to go to the store to get milk, and what homework needed to be done; you know how it is). I heard her say something about her human values class, and that she was an ambassador for the girls (here's where my attention was caught) to bring their complaints about the boys to the boys' attention.

Huh?

So I asked some questions. What do you mean ambassador? She told me that their assignment for human values this week was for one ambassador from the girls (her) and one from the boys (someone unnamed) were to gather from their constituencies complaints about the other group. They were then to bring those complaints to the opposite ambassador, who would negotiate a change in behavior on the part of his or her constituency. She mentioned that she'd already gathered some complaints from the girls, and that they included poor hygiene, general aggression, name-calling, etc. The boys had already levied complaints about gossip.

I about foamed at the mouth.

Two general issues come up here. One is the whole boys versus girls thing. I teach future teachers. We discuss with them the pedagogical and social problems with setting up a constant boys/girls, us/them mentality, and how to avoid it. And here these people are, advocating it. In particular, setting up a complaint sharing in this way is just asking for stereotypical complaints to arise, and lo, they did. (I'm telling you, I'm tempted to write a paper about this, I honestly am.) I also have a very serious problem with the "you all do these things, and I know it because someone said so, but I can't tell you who" set up here. It's exactly *not* what I'm trying to teach the girls. I would SO rather they felt able to walk up to a person honestly, say, "this bothers me, can we talk about it", and go from there. Grrrr...

So, I called her teacher. She was as upset and surprised as I was (the human values program has generally been very good, and I like what they talk about). She's going to talk to them, and deprogram the kids, and I've spoken to Tess. The funny thing is, this being a Montessori school, the kids are less concerned with gender issues that I've seen elsewhere (and frankly, the girls are just as dirty and aggressive as the boys, who gossip plenty!). So, we'll see what happens.

OK, rant over (for the moment).

I got some pictures of Kivrin's socks this morning:
(note the toes turned out in approved Irish dancing fashion) I'm pretty happy with them, especially given that they're all my own design (such as it is). She's quite charmed with them herself, and insisted on wearing them to school, which is the reaction that a mother wants. Of course, I didn't quite manage to use up the sock yarn, so I still have little tiny dribs and drabs of the Cherry Tree Hill and the STR yarn. Ah, well.

I also got my Dream in Color today! Three colors, and I love them all:
Those colors are (from left to right): Summer Sky, Beach Fog, and Visual Purple. The strange thing was that I almost didn't get the Visual Purple, and at this moment, it's the one I'm most excited about knitting up. Funny ol' world, isn't it?