Rooting Out Gender Inequality with Middle School Boys скачать в хорошем качестве

Rooting Out Gender Inequality with Middle School Boys

Sometimes the path to leadership involves a bit of following after. For years, female students at Bowdoin have run a weekly mentoring group for girls at Bath Middle School called FFLY, short for “Fostering Female Leadership in Youth.” This fall, Bowdoin male students launched an equivalent group for middle school boys called CCLIMB, which stands for “Creating Compassionate Leadership in Maine Boys.” “FFLY has talked for years about developing a male counterpart to their group,” said one of CCLIMB’s primary organizers, Ben Ray ’20. “They’ve cultivated a culture in the school that the girls participate in and talk about it, and it makes sense to include boys.” The CCLIMB curriculum, while it has a similar mission to FFLY in that it is intended to help provide some guidance to the difficult task of growing up, is tailored to the specific challenges young boys face. “We know that not everything we learn about in our gender studies classes will translate to a middle school classroom,” Ray said with a smile. “But we try our best to make the concepts bite-sized and really concrete for them.” They do this by giving tangible examples, using age-appropriate language, and covering topics that relate to what the boys actually experience, such as peer pressure, an onslaught of confusing online messages, and cyber bullying. “We talk about concepts of masculinity, about emotional vulnerability,” Ray continued. “We’re teaching them that it’s okay to be different, to enjoy hobbies that aren’t in the mainstream, and that it’s okay to talk about feelings with their friends.” An education and history major, and a gender and women’s studies minor, Ray said he jumped at the chance to help launch the inaugural CCLIMB group. “I believe gender is not talked about enough at schools, and ignoring it is actively causing problems in our society,” he said. “So the chance to directly address that was huge for me.” CCLIMB mentor Atticus Carnell ’18, who studies political theory and ethics at Bowdoin, agrees that boys should not be overlooked when addressing issues of gender parity. “Solving problems such as gender inequality is going to involve programs [like CCLIMB] for boys as much as programs for girls,” he said. Though Ray is the program’s official co-leader with Jesse Chung ’18, he said the 10 Bowdoin students who volunteer as CCLIMB mentors work collaboratively to plan the weekly lessons. Besides Ray, Chung, and Carnell, the other participants are George Benz ’20, Ryan Telingator ’21, Luke Carberry ’18, Javier Najera ’19, James O’Shea ’20, Adam Silberberg ’20, Jono Harrison ’19, and Hunter White ’18. Ray, who is interested in becoming a school teacher one day, said he believes that education plays a critical part in excising inequalities from society. “If we want to change how people see the world, and how people engage in their community as citizens, I believe that starts in schools,” he said. “It starts in the classroom.”