The Following Blog is submitted by Rashmi Bhat.
Ontario's Education of Women over 25 yrs of age (2006 Census data):
- 13% hold no certificate, diploma or degree even after the age of 25
- 25% hold a high school diploma or equivalent
- 6% hold a trade school or apprenticeship diploma
- 24% hold a non-university diploma e.g. college
- 5% hold a university diploma below the Bachelor's degree level
- 26% hold a university bachelor's or higher
- Of the total population of Canada that is educated to a high school
- diploma or equivalent or higher, 19% are Ontarians and of that 19% i.e
- 6.6 million, 51% are female i.e. 3.4 million.
There is currently no curriculum in Ontario's high schools specific to women's studies.
The Miss G__ project is the first grassroots project in Canada by young persons in the university and high school environment to start a movement to include a women's studies elective within the social sciences curriculum in Ontario schools. They are asking people to write to the Minister of Education of Ontario to encourage the adoption of the curriculum they have developed in consultation with the Ministry and had expected to have rolled it our in September 2011.
They found out in January of this year that it would not be released until September 2012 due to further edits to the course outline. See http://www.themissgproject.org/update.html
http://www.themissgproject.org/about/missg.html
ReplyDeleteThe Miss G___ Project is named for, and dedicated to, the unidentified Miss G___. This is her story.
In 1873, Dr. Edward H. Clarke of Harvard Medical School wrote in Sex in Education: or, A Fair Chance for the Girls, of a certain "Miss G___" who was a top student "leading the male and female youth alike" at a time when women were just beginning to push the boundaries holding them from higher education.
Unfortunately, Miss G___ died.
Dr. Clarke, a respected Doctor and Man of Science, explained with the accepted "Conservation of Energy" theory that Miss G___ died because, as a woman, "she was unable to make a good brain, that could stand the wear and tear of life, and a good reproductive system that should serve the race, at the same time that she was continuously spending her force in intellectual labor."
Following in a whole line of theories (some that get rehashed even today) on how women are, by nature, ill-equipped to be included in education, Miss G__ and others like her were lost in history.
Resistance
Before we go any further, we should point out that there were doctors who wrote AGAINST the faulty theories of Dr. Clarke, and these resisters should be acknowledged.
In 1874, physicians and educators wrote a reply to Clarke entitled Sex and Education: A Reply to Dr. E.H. Clarke. Edited by Julia Ward Howe, a poet and activist, other contributors to the book included Dr Alida Avery, a resident physician at Vassar College.
Another strong critic of Clarke's work was a fabulous doctor, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, who happened to be a woman. According to an article on Dr. Jacobi at the U.S. National Library of Medicine:
In 1876, Dr. Mary Jacobi's essay, "The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation," won the Boylston Prize at Harvard University. In this influential paper she refuted the supposed physical limitations of women, in response to Dr. Edward H. Clarke's publication Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls (1873), which questioned the expanded role of women in society and the professions.