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Anyway, I'm perfectly willing to believe that boys are more misunderstood than girls in their early schooling years and this might lead to some problems. The one sentence that I felt might have a little bit of meat to its bone was:
Nearly half of teachers stopped or redirected boys’ dramatic play daily or several times a week — whereas less than a third reported stopping or redirecting girls’ dramatic play weekly.
That could be unpackaged a bit more. If I had to the guess (and the wording of the sentence obfuscates the facts so much that I DO have to guess), then it seems that there was a question of whether they discipline boys Never, Monthly, Weekly, or Daily (something like that), and 50% of the teachers answered that they did so at least weekly versus 33% for girls (I realize she said "less than" a third, but she also said "nearly" half, which I'm assuming equate to the same thing; isn't editorialized language fun?). I don't know if that shocks my pants off, but it's something. Then, of course, some amount responded to doing it more than weekly for boys, but I'm going to make a grand assumption that some amount also responded to doing it more than weekly for girls, too, but she didn't choose to include that, much less put it in italics. I'm sure if the number of respondents to report daily reprimands of girls were actually zero, then she would have included it in bold-type 25-point font. Unless the exact numbers are listed, I'm having trouble gauging how shocked I need to be.
Again, though, as my rantings on how much our education discourages imagination--and as I've admitted that the specific qualities discouraged are disportionately male qualities--I'm damned close to agreeing with her title right from the get-go. Maybe I'll wade through the Esquire one ... no, actually, probably not. I'll keep looking.
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