A Culture of Disrespect

Mercury, March/April 1997 Table of Contents

Kelly J. Smith
Agoura High School

For some young women, sexual discrimination in high school is a useful lesson in the cynicism of adult society. That is hardly an excuse for the treatment they receive.

Do you ever wonder where sexism originates? We all want to believe that it is a disease that would never infect us, yet we know it exists in many places: from our colleges to our medical schools to the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court. But now I am going to push the concept even farther. I contend that sexism exists in our high schools, and that we are being taught to accept its rules.

Kids must deal with sexism in the science classroom on a daily basis in high school. It is a simple fact that women are treated differently from men. Yet this is considered to be "part of the course." Many girls will not report their teachers for fear of grade sabotage. Girls say that part of getting the grade they need for college involves not rocking the boat and not challenging the teachers' harassment. The girls that I have interviewed rationalized their inaction by placing the importance of their grades over their self-esteem and pride.

In my freshman year, I heard that a teacher arranged the seats so that all of the women sat in the front rows of the classroom. As if this weren't blatant enough, reports of the teacher making unwelcome advances to the women filtered out of his classroom. The students said that the teacher made vaguely sexual comments to them, commented on their looks, and criticized their clothing as "trashy." According to these reports, even though most of the students in the class were female, the teacher would call on the women only if the men did not raise their hands to respond. Also, many women complained that the teacher gave harsher grades to women on projects and subjective tests.

The aspect that bothered me the most about this was that the men in the class accepted the teacher's actions. Many of the male students I interviewed said they were just glad it wasn't happening to them. They "didn't have time to worry about the women's plight," one told me. As a male student, I was confused. How can one of my friends sit there and honestly say to me, "Who cares"? As I thought about it, I realized that this was the prevailing attitude of nearly every male student in my high school.

Abuse of Power

One day, I noticed that one of my friends was looking sad. When I asked her what was wrong, she broke down in tears. After ten interminable minutes of sobbing, she choked out her story, stopping only to dry her eyes. She said the teacher cursed at the women every time something didn't go his way; insulted the women every time they made a mistake; called their work "crap"; would never answer their questions; and the list kept on going. But it was the last revelation that absolutely floored me.

She said that the teacher called her up to the front of the class, handed her what appeared to be a Playboy magazine, and told her that she might like to look through it. She threw it on the floor and told the teacher how offended she was. The teacher then picked it up, peeled back the cover, and revealed to her that it was a Road & Track magazine with the Playboy cover pasted over it. She was so humiliated that she ran out of the class and did not come back.

I was furious, but at the same time, rather relieved. I knew that, once a teacher receives tenure, it takes a gross violation of the rules to be disciplined. With this incident, she could get that teacher fired! But when I asked her whether she was going to report the teacher to the administration, she said no. She told me that her grade would suffer if she made an official complaint. Because I was also a committed student, I could empathize with her. If a student went in and voiced his or her concerns, many teachers would make it harder for the student. True, no one likes to be told that they have offended someone, but that doesn't give them the right to play with our grades.

By then, I was no longer shocked by the injustices dealt out to women in my school. After hearing them from my friends for two years, I discovered that my original anger and disgust had faded away, only to be replaced with a sense of hopelessness. If women were caught in a Catch-22, what could we do but accept it? There was no other alternative. Live with it, or have your grade decimated by your teacher. So, in my junior year, it came as no surprise that the same ridiculous behavior continued to plague our female students. They said their teacher swore at them constantly, criticized their work, called them "stupid," and made fun of their discomfort. The teacher then sat back and gloated over the reign of terror he had created.

So This Is the Real World

Finally, I could stand it no longer. I decided to try and find someone who would take a stand. I asked every female student I knew whether they would try to remedy their plight and bring these monsters to justice. Every one of them refused. As if this weren't disturbing enough, many of them said they had learned to accept it "as part of life." This left me speechless. Over 30 of our best and brightest students had resigned themselves to a life of ridicule and embarrassment. They suffered because of it. One girl dropped out of her Advanced Placement courses because she had lost her confidence and withdrawn into a shell of silence. To this day, she has not recovered.

Yet something amazed me. Some of these same women exuded a confidence that I had never seen in my freshman year. They were all stronger people. Could this be true? Can harassment actually strengthen a person? I asked one woman, and she agreed. She went so far as to say, "I thank my teachers for all they put me through. I wouldn't be successful as I am today. They taught me about real life." Which view should we believe? In my view, although there is a small percentage who succeed in spite of sexism, the remainder suffer greatly.

Because sexism is commonplace and widely accepted in our high schools, it will be difficult to convince people that it is not acceptable to ridicule someone because they are female. The only way to change someone's mind is to fight back, regardless of the consequences. When one person wins the battle, others will follow their lead. But if we sit back and allow it to become "part of life" and say "who cares?" sexism will continue to be ingrained in the minds of students.

KELLY J. SMITH is a senior at Agoura High School in Agoura, Calif. He first became involved in politics in seventh-grade, when he wrote a letter to the local newspaper in support of a proposed property-tax raise to benefit local schools. He got involved in school-board elections, student government, and city-council elections. Last year, he started an orientation program for incoming freshman and their parents. Smith also tells us he enjoys playing bass and acoustic guitar and watching The X Files.

For information on gender differences in science education, see "Creating Gender-Friendly Astronomy Classrooms," January/February 1994, p. 25. For information on the sexism experienced by female astronomers, see "Discrimination in the Workplace," January/February 1992, p. 29 and "The Double Life," September/October 1995, p. 28.

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