Gender and the Curriculum If you were to select one document that illustrates a classroom's, school's, district's, or state's

views on a particular issue, you would do well to look at its curriculum. The message that it contains reveals a particular position on matters of culture, class, and gender. At a cursory glance, a curriculum might seem to address only academic subjects. But a closer look would disclose some important underlying assumptions. For example, certain attitudes toward women are reflected in a course in American history in which there is little, if any, mention of outstanding American women of the particular period being studied. Most state curriculum guides identif y the philosophies that undergird specific curriculum content. A state curriculum should also give suggestions for adapting content to special groups, helping teachers to highlight, for example, the role of American women in education, medicine, business, and the armed forces. A school system uses state guidelines and applies them to the local population (Borich, 1992). Then the instructor takes the state and school district suggestions, examining them for specific resources that address a particular issue (such as gender and achievement). Do these materials offer help in determining definite units of study and daily lesson plans? Are there illustrations of the tangible accomplishments of outstanding women, for example, Nadine Gordimer, the South African wonlan who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, or the psychologist Eleanor Gibson, who won a National Medal of Science in 1992? Illustrations such as these are easily woven into a curriculum and can only produce positive results. An educator who wants to teach specific contributions of women in history can collect stories, books, videotapes, and I ilim that illustrate and support this objective as well as the larger goal of increasing regard tor the role of women in general. The teacher can also ask leading women of the community to come to the classroom to explain the nature of their work. This is a sure and simple way to raise the self-esteem of the girls in the class. Banks (1993a) offered a helpful framework for including gender material (as well as cultural and ciasscontent) in a curriculum. He has idelif ied four levels of integration, the first of which is the
contributions approach

This typically is the initial step used by teachers and

school systems and involves using heroic figures as curricular illustrations (for example, Rosa Parks, whose refusal to move to the back of the bus triggered the overt activities of the American civil rights movement). The curriculum remains the same except for the inclusion of the heroic figures.

The second level is the additive approach Here various themes and perspectives are added to the curriculum without changing its overall structure. Something new is brought to the curriculum, such as material about pioneer women or a book such as The Color Purple. The third level of integration is the transformational approach in which the goals, structure, and perspectives of the curriculum are changed. Banks (1993a, p. 203) gave the example of studying the American Revolution: The perspectives of the revolutionaries, the loyalists, women, African Americans, Native Americans, and the British all need to be considered. At the fourth and final level, the social action approach, students make decisions and take actions that incorporate the changes of the transformational level. The goal is to encourage" students to undertake social criticism and social change by teaching them decision-making skills: At this level, questions similar to the following can guide your efforts to introduce positive gender concepts in the classroom: Why are women discriminated against? What causes this discrimination? Does it occur in the classroom? What can be done about it? At this point we should also consider the possibility of test bias.