Inspired by the work of the Stone center, we decided to create a Gender Curriculum that would lend itself to being taught at schools - a version for primary schools as well as for teenagers. We considered that we needed to find a way in, a way to actively interest children in the theme, which is usually rarely mentioned in schools (bar the most enlightened ones) except during sexual education. The first school that was interested in participating in this experiment was Park School, a local school that has won prizes for its curriculum and has a very creative approach to education, which suited us. With the enthusiastic support of the teachers, we gave an introductory talk about the history of gender relations, and created a story about a tribal society where men and women lived separately in Longhouses (based on facts about the Tora Toradja tribe in Sulawesi, Indonesia). In the tribe, in our story, there was some dissent between men and women, and they are faced with a challenge that is announced through a dream that a boy and a girl have at the same time. A "thing" falls to earth, and the children are asked to imagine, write, draw and act out what that "thing" is, and from there the gender differences become visible: the boys almost invariably want to fight and wage war, and the girls wanted to make friends and cuddle. They are then given the challenge to try and find agreement on how to meet this challenge.
After that, we set up the gender dialogue: the girls and the boys meet with each other in a ritual way, and, in their roles as men and women of the tribe, ask each other questions about what is like to be a man or a woman - and some poignant questions were asked! The children themselves came to the conclusion that they needed to listen to each other more. The outcome was that, even eight months after we conducted these sessions, the teachers told us there had been a notable difference, especially in the playground. Boys and gilrs were still interacting with each other, they played and talked with each other a lot more since those gender workshops, and there had been less sniggering. It seemed our workshops had had most positive impact on the older age groups - a group of 6-9 year olds and a group of 8-11 year olds. The children had created a book for us with drawings and photographs of the gender theme, some of which can be found on our website.
It was a great encouragement to hear this, and in the mean time, we had found another school interested, wehere we worked with teenagers aged 13-14 years. The story we had written had to be adapted for the age group but it did still provide a good framework for drama and other forms of engagement. The actual gender dialogue proved intensive and quite emotional. More can be read in the report posted on our website below. Applications for grants are under way for more of this kind of gender dialogue, and we are working towards a creative gender curriculum that can be taught to teachers.
Evaluation of the Gender Workshops for Teens Sessions, KEVICC, Totnes, South Devon, England
Organization: Presence In Action (hereafter referred to as PIA)
Dates: 16th, 23rd, 30th November 2007
Facilitators: Romeck van Zeyl and Stephanie Bradley
Number of participants: 25 – 14 boys and 11 girls
Location: King Edward VI Community College, Totnes, Devon, UK
1.1 Preliminary Comments:
The decision to include teenagers and children in the gender dialogues experience came fairly late to the project, giving a sense of completing the work done by having worked already with both adults and children.
Researching the Target Audience
Due to the positioning of this work at the end of the project, time was short and thus research limited.
We visited one primary school, PARK school in Dartington earlier in the project, and two local secondary schools, SANDS, an alternative school, where the emphasis is on students playing a large part in the running of the school, and KEVICC, the local community college and high school. We first did a project with three different age groups at Park school, which became the tryout for the work with the teenagers.
Our research showed that students at SANDS were extremely emotionally literate, and from both our observations from interacting with students, and talking with the contact teacher, it became clear that the type of work being done at SANDS left little to be added to by a gender course.
At KEVICC, however, we found staff interested and were eventually allocated class time with the head of drama, Jonathan Mason, and one of his year 9 (age13-14) groups.
Co-Facilitator
For this aspect of the project I chose to work with a teacher and trainer with a background of working with language and drama with teenagers. The area of gender issues, however, was fairly new to her.
The Approach Taken
Preparations for the sessions soon highlighted the need for adaptation. The story , originally written for the earlier work with primary school children, served as a starting point but as the planning evolved it became clear that whilst this was useful as a vehicle for drama and self expression, it would not be suitable for exploration in the same way as it had been used with younger children. It was decided to enact some key scenes from the story and use them as a springboard for the gender dialogue. A major concern was that time constraints were particularly tight for this course as the school could only allocate us 3 one hour sessions. The decision was taken to work in close conjunction with Jonathan Mason in the way the sessions evolved, ensuring that our objective of looking at gender issues, and Jonathan’s objective that his students produced some good drama work were both met. Drama felt to us to be the perfect medium with which to work with gender issues with this age group bearing in mind their possible embarrassment at working with such an emotionally charged subject.
1.2 - A Session by Session Evaluative Account of the Course
Session 1 – Friday, 16th November, 2007
The session began with a brief warm-up given by Jonathan which we joined in with, and were then introduced to the students. This was followed by a brief overview of the history of gender relations to give the class some context for the work they were to do.
The students were then told the beginning of the story, where it is clear that the men and women of the tribe in the tale are going to come into conflict, setting the scene for their drama work.
The students then worked in two separate gender groups to look at the things they thought the men and women of the Torada tribe were angry with one another about. Both groups quickly identified stereotypical things for the tribespeople to be angry about; the women, the boys said, didn’t do enough work, didn’t help to hunt or build houses. The girls said that the men didn’t help with childcare or the cooking.
The groups then listened to the next part of the story, the prophetic dream, and then went into their separate groups to start to get into role as tribespeople and talk about what the village should do about the unknown happening, from which they were later going to create a ritual discussion.
This first session ended without the groups coming back together, but beginning to get a feel for being members of a tribe where the men and the women lived quite separately. There was a short dramatic interlude where the boys and girls, after working in smaller groups, enacted cameos of life in their village which included a group of the girls spying on the men’s activities, a larger group of girls sitting by a river washing clothes, and a group of boys going out on hunting parties.
Session 2 – 23rd Friday, November 2007
We started this session by recapping what had happened in the story so far. Certain character types were suggested to include in the ritual discussion; an elder, a young member of the tribe who had had the prophetic dream that had heralded the crisis which the tribe now faced, and a rebel.
A format was described whereby the students would create a ritualized entry into their cave. Then the concept of a ritual circle with a talking stick was introduced for them to use as the forum for the tribe members to discuss how they were going to tackle the crisis. Then the girls and boys moved into separate groups to start to prepare their piece of drama.
With both groups it took quite a bit of work to bring the students into the space and to encourage them to tap into their creativity. The girls became engaged when they got involved in the story of the rebel and how she would make the discussion difficult and how she would finally be dealt with by the elder. Costume became important with the girls improvising with their scarves and hooded jackets.
Meantime the boys, working with myself and Jonathan, were already at rehearsal stage, bringing their simple lines of dialogue to life.
Session two finished with the girls witnessing the boys’ performance of their dramatized ritual. The boys stayed in role and produced a polished piece of drama. The watching girls were obviously deeply affected by what they saw; photos taken of this session show a range of facial reactions that we interpreted quite differently; were the girls intensely focused and impressed, or were they taken by surprise by a hither to unseen level of maturity displayed by the boys?
Session 3 – 30th Friday, November 2007
The final session began by the whole group enjoying a photo slideshow taken of their work in the previous sessions.
The girls then had a short time to complete their preparations for their ritual enactment whilst the boys extended their enactment into two cameo stills showing the two major choices made in their ritual the previous session, which reflected the polarity of the traditional male action response to confront the unknown as a perceived threat, and the traditionally more feminine response; receiving the unknown with awe and devotion.
Then the boys were witnessed in their stills by the girls, followed by the boys witnessing the girls’ ritual enactment.
Small single gender groups were then formed and students asked to discuss what questions they would most like to ask of the other gender based around the central question “What is it you most want to understand about the men/women, boys/girls?” They were given a choice as to whether they preferred to ask as if they were the men/women of the tribe, or if they had questions of their own to ask.
What emerged from working with the girls was that there was quite a live gender issue burning in the group, and a reluctance to want to work with some of the boys.
The final activity of the session, and of the series, was the gender dialogue. The boys and girls sat together, forming two halves of a circle. Students were invited to come into the middle with a question they wanted to ask of the other gender. Students of the other gender could then enter the circle either to respond, or simply to acknowledge that the question meant something to them.
This activity highlighted the real need for gender work with at least this group of young people. Although the girls initiated the dialogue with some questions posed as women of the tribe they did eventually feel safe enough to challenge the boys with what was really on their minds: “Why do you only date girls from the classes below ours?” This produced vehement response from many of the boys who eventually retaliated with “Why do you only date boys from the higher classes?” The ensuing discussion was heated and it was only with great difficultly that we were able to contain the amount of feeling present within the group. Resolution was not possible, though it felt healthy that there had been the opportunity for the young people to vent some of their feelings openly.
Unfortunately this was the end of our work with the teenagers. What it suggests is that work of this nature is valuable with this age group and that ideally a longer series of sessions would be planned, thereby allowing the teenagers to work though some of the issues raised perhaps with some role play, and offer an opportunity for feedback.
1.3 Conclusions
To summarize, as with the trial course run for adults, it seems crucial to this type of work that more time is allowed for the gender dialogue phase itself to develop and that there is then adequate space for feedback.
Another area for consideration is awareness of how the same gender groups often require different lengths of time to prepare before feeling ready to come back together.
A further aspect of the same gender group work which is striking was the way in which the groups approached the task of creating their piece of drama. The boys were noticeably more focused on their work once they had a clear goal to aim for. The girls, on the other hand, were visibly distracted by the stories they became involved in that often took them away from the main task, seeming to need to weave quite elaborate characterization into the situation they found themselves in before they could really engage with producing their contribution.
Engaging in gender work with teenagers presents a challenge to find a way in which to meet their very often raw emotions and offer a safe, held structure within which to explore them.
Evaluation written by Stephanie Bradley & Romeck van Zeyl, March 2008
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