03.30.07
Gender Play: Third Post (”Boys and Girls”)
This book is really interesting so far. One of the things that keeps striking me while reading this, however, is that little of what Thorne describes is familiar to me. I can’t recall spending much time standing in lines, although Thorne claims children in both schools she observed in spent enormous amounts of time doing this. Thorne says “boys and girls” is the typical phrase used to address the students by all adults in the school system. This, frankly, surprised me. At first, I couldn’t remember any teachers actually ever calling us “boys and girls”. On further thinking, I recalled one music teacher who called the class that - and we thought she was completely insane and dreaded her class! We disliked her for many reasons, but the “childish” way she spoke to us was one of the big ones. I guess that’s my biggest problem with the phrase “boys and girls” - it sounds incredibly childish!