Just Because You're Pissed About Common Core Doesn't Mean You Get To Use Gendered Stereotypes
4 min read
Dr. Alan Singer put out a piece on Huffington Post Education today ostensibly about how New York State education officials don't want to hear about objections to the Common Core standards. However, the piece goes off the rails into a criticism of a single person, and any point gets lost in the process.
The first seven paragraphs rehash New York education politics, including a summary of the New York Regents Research Fellows. In the eighth paragraph, things get messy.
On the EngageNY website and for the Regents Research Fund the chief salesperson for Common Core is Kate Gerson, a very attractive woman who appears to have minimal teaching experience. Although she is not an actual employ of the State Education Department, Gerson represents them at Common Core meetings across the state and is the featured Common Core cheerleader on EngageNY online videos.
Let's take a step back here. Kate Gerson actually has a title: Senior Fellow at USNY Research Fund. Singer knows this, because he links to her LinkedIn profile later in the article. Calling her a "salesperson" is an underhanded swipe. If things stopped there, this could be defensible.
However, Singer proceeds to refer to Gerson as "a very attractive woman with minimal teaching experience." If the point here is to highlight Gerson's lack of classroom experience, her physical appearance is irrelevant. While authorial intent is difficult to ascertain, Singer certainly appears to be playing on sexist stereotypes of women being promoted based on their looks, rather than their ability.
In the next sentence, Singer proceeds to call Gerson "a cheerleader", thus cementing the gender-based efforts to undermine the credibility of Gerson.
For those of you reading along here who don't see how Singer's words play on stereotypes, try this: if you are a male, find a woman colleague, preferably someone above you in the hierarchy. Tell them how attractive they are. Follow it up by telling them that they are as pretty as a cheerleader. Then, ask them if their cheerleader-pretty looks helped them overcome their lack of experience in their career.
Singer responded to criticism with a comment on Huffington Post.
I thought about the way I described [Kate Gerson] a lot because I did not want to reenforce anti-female stereotypes. Watch the video. They are using her to market common core and she has been rapidly promoted because she acquiesced to being spotlighted this way. I believe they chose her to be their inspirational speaker because she comes across like a female talking head on the television news. My intent was not to offend. I consider myself a feminist and resent the way they use her and the way she has agreed to be used.
I'm not going to digress into definitions of feminism because there are countless other people who can do it better than me, with a perspective that I am not capable of bringing. But I'll leave it here: whether you agree or disagree with Common Core, using gender-based stereotypes as part of your argument doesn't further the conversation. If you want to highlight someone's experience, talk about their experience. If you want to highlight points of disagreement, make your argument. Ideally, suggest something different or better. Using the wrong means to make what you consider to be the right point doesn't help.
NOTE: On April 27th, a person giving her name as "Wendy" commented on this post. The comment was thoughtful and used her direct experience working with her child to ground her concerns with the Common Core rollout. I posted a response to this comment. Then, unfortunately, while cleaning out spam comment, I accidentally deleted her original comment and my response. Wendy - if you are reading this, I am incredibly sorry. I appreciate the time you made to comment, and regret that my mistake removed your comment. I care - a lot - about people discussing and sharing their ideas, even in the face of disagreement. I am incredibly sorry that my mistake deleted your contribution. That's not how I like to do things.END NOTE
