56 CHAPTER 3 | FRom IdEnTIFyIng ClAIms To AnAlyzIng ARgumEnTs123policy) and then, in the next section, of the nature of the arguments (use of
evidence, concessions, and counterarguments) the authors present.Hidden Lessons
Myra Sadker was a professor of education at American University until
1995, the year she died. Dr. Sadker coauthored Sexism in School and
Society, the first book on gender bias in America’s schools, in 1973 and
became a leading advocate for equal educational opportunities.
David Sadker is a professor at American University and has taught at
the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. David Sadker and his
late wife earned a national reputation for their groundbreaking work in con-
fronting gender bias and sexual harassment. “Hidden Lessons” is an excerpt
from their book Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls (1994).Myra sadker and david sadker■ ■ ■S
itting in the same classroom, reading the same textbook, listening
to the same teacher, boys and girls receive very different educations.
From grade school through graduate school female students are more
likely to be invisible members of classrooms. Teachers interact with
males more frequently, ask them better questions, and give them more
precise and helpful feedback. Over the course of years the uneven distri-
bution of teacher time, energy, attention, and talent, with boys getting
the lion’s share, takes its toll on girls. Since gender bias is not a noisy
problem, most people are unaware of the secret sexist lessons and the
quiet losses they engender.
Girls are the majority of our nation’s schoolchildren, yet they are
second-class educational citizens. The problems they face — loss of self-
esteem, decline in achievement, and elimination of career options — are
at the heart of the educational process. Until educational sexism is
eradicated, more than half our children will be shortchanged and their
gifts lost to society.
Award-winning author Susan Faludi discovered that backlash “is
most powerful when it goes private, when it lodges inside a woman’s
mind and turns her vision inward, until she imagines the pressure is all
in her head, until she begins to enforce the backlash too — on herself.”^1
Psychological backlash internalized by adult women is a frightening
concept, but what is even more terrifying is a curriculum of sexist school(^1) Editor’s note: Journalist Susan Faludi’s book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American
Women (1991) was a response to the antifeminist backlash against the women’s movement.
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