<
https://www.futurity.org/high-school-biology-textbooks-sex-gender-3184072/>
"The teaching of science has long generated controversy in the United
States—from evolution in the early 20th century to climate change today.
Debates have also often emerged around how textbooks teach concepts related to
social groups, and in particular whether they gloss over complex realities in
ways that may mislead students in providing scientific instruction.
The new study, which appears in the journal
Science, raises questions about
the accuracy of high school biology curricula and offers a roadmap for their
reform in ways that reflect scientific knowledge.
“The findings serve as a call to action—it is important that the high school
biology curriculum is revised so that it reflects accurate scientific knowledge
rather than misguided assumptions that may foster gender stereotyping and
discrimination,” says Andrei Cimpian, a professor in the psychology department
at New York University and a senior author of the study.
The researchers examined whether textbooks communicated “essentialism” about
sex and gender. Essentialism is a widespread, but scientifically inaccurate,
view rooted in the idea that there is a genetic “essence” that makes women and
men the way they are. Because of their assumed distinct genetic essences, women
and men are also assumed to be discrete, non-overlapping groups—not just in
terms of reproductive anatomy, but also in terms of their psychology and
behavior.
The researchers set out to characterize how textbooks describe sex, which is a
complex set of biological features related to reproduction, and gender, which
is a socially constructed interpretation of the biological phenomenon of sex.
The scientific consensus is that sex and gender are distinct phenomena and that
both are inconsistent with the essentialist view that is common among the
general public.
Its analysis of six textbooks—published between 2009 and 2016 and used in an
estimated two-thirds of high school introductory biology classes across the
US—found that none of the textbooks differentiated between the concepts of sex
and gender, despite the clear distinction made between them in the scientific
literature.
In addition, consistent with the idea that textbooks communicate essentialist
views to students, more paragraphs described people of the same sex or gender
as uniform rather than different from each other—whereas in reality differences
are the norm. Women differ from each other substantially—in physical traits,
personality, and preferences—as do men."
Via Rixty Dixet.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
