Learning Strategies

What is it about yearbooks that makes boys unwilling to serve as editors? Year after year, when I look at the list of Weston High School yearbook editors, what do I see? Pulling out four recent yearbooks at random, I find the following:

• 13 girls, 0 boys
• 13 girls, 0 boys
• 12 girls, 1 boy
• 13 girls, 0 boys

But it’s not just in high school that boys have this problem. In the Saturday Course at Milton Academy, the sixth-graders put out a yearbook, and a couple of dozen kids sign up to work on it each year. Once again, it’s usually 100% girls and 0% boys.

OK, perhaps this is a recent phenomenon. So I dig up a 1978 Lincoln-Sudbury yearbook: 9 girls, 2 boys. I suppose that’s a tad better, but not much. (And one of the boys was a cousin of mine, so maybe he doesn’t count.)

Let’s go back even further. No use going all the back to my own 1965 yearbook, since P.A. was all male at the time, but I find the 1970 L-S one — from my first year of teaching! — which will surely be different. But no, it’s once again 9 girls and 2 boys. And to complete the stereotyping, one of the yearbook editors was also the only girl on the Math Team.

What’s going on here?

Labels: teaching and learning, Weston