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                                    Women’s problems in Georgian society

  Georgia, is a country where women are given the status of a goddess.  Especially, mother has a huge role in every men’s heart. A lot of Georgian famous poets write about mothers and their values in the world. There does not exist drinking-bout where toast masters and other men will not stand up and say toasts of women, wife, house keepers and mothers. After all of this, they drink one or more glasses wine.  Georgian women are perfect for Georgian men. Georgian men think that Georgian women have a unique beauty, though they like Slovak and Russian girls.  Women are source of a new life. There are a lot of words, where “mother” is basic part of Georgian words in the language. For example: mother tongue ( დედაენა), the earth ( definition is mother ground, დედამიწა)  and so forth.

  Unfortunately, reality is radically different in our society.  I can bravely say that women have a lot of problems in our country. I will start from women’s childhood. There are framework if how must grow up baby girl. Parents think that girl and boy do not have equal terms. In this case, if boy has a freedom that means that they can do what they want, girl cannot live similarly. There are the famous sentence- you are a girl and you must … there are a lot of version how will I finish it; you must study better, you must be sophisticate, you must do house works, you must stay at home and your promised bride will find you, you are mirror of our family, you must eat accurately, you must come at home early, you must be virgin and etc. When you are a girl, almost everyone try to control your life; not only your parents but also your brothers, friends of brother, neighbors and so forth. Everyone try to control you. They want to know everything. If you are a boy, you do not have a problem.  No one try to control you. If a boy has a lot of sexual partner, it just means that he is cool. Almost every boy is proud of this fact and they attract more and more girls. They do not need a high education and accurately manners. They just know how flirt with girls. There are a huge number of boys who have psychological problems. They have a lot of complex and low self-appraisal; they try to cover it with bulling other girls. Georgian men are proud and sometimes they do not want relationship with girl who is more successful. Because of this fact, they try to bulling women; generally boys have a better experience of relationships. Boy start bulling like this, you are short, you have a long nose, you have short hands or what do you know? You do not have an enough knowledge or where do you live? Are you from village? Do you live in suburb?..  This type of man try to oppress woman and try to kill woman’s self-confidence. The man start toxic relationship with his partner. After all of this, he is proud and he thinks that he is better. Unfortunately, a large number of good girls are victims of this kind of relationships. The problem comes from childhood. There does not have mean how much perfect you are; girls always are under the critic. Parents, teachers or society want to be better and better. Parents a lot of observations give to baby girls and they forget to encourage own children. Because of this fact, from childhood woman have serious problems of self-confidence and when they grow up they become easily vulnerable.

   I want to notice religion role in the above mentioned problems. Orthodoxy has a huge influence in our community.  Christian religion tells us that the man is a head of everything. The woman must not have sexual partners before marriage, she must get marriage just once and etc. Women must have more sense of patient. She must be honest…

  Also, I think that women’s role in family is a caustic issue. ( I will say about It and lastly I will say solution.

Introduction

• History of Foster Care in the US (English Poor Laws)
• Brief history about “Orphan Trains”
• System built on the neglect of youth 

Caring for a child that is not your own is’t something new. In some societies people care for children collectively. The United States has a history with fostering children that isn’t the best. In the 19th century the United States adopted England’s Poor Laws. 

BODY 1

• Childhood experience with foster care 
• Survival, Conforming, Servitude (power imbalance)

For most of my childhood I have experienced the Foster Care system in New York. Starting in 2013, that was the day I was introduced to the system. Woken up on a hot day in July, I was told to put my clothes on and get ready. Not knowing that life had something waiting for me, the experience of a lifetime. My introduction to foster care was not the best but I doubt anyone’s introduction is. I was a scared and confused child, and the supervisors thought it would be best not to explain the situation because I was a child. I was scared because I had knowledge of foster care based on my cousin’s experience. She compared being in foster care to being a slave and I did not want that faith. Worker tried to reassure me that it would be alright once we were in the group home but I was only worried about staying with my siblings. (continue)

One foster home that I’ve experienced was horrible but I felt as though I had to endure the abuse or we’d be sent to another home where things would get worse or stay in a group home until I age out. There was the additional stress of protecting my younger siblings, I often portrayed a parental role for them. In the home my guardian was being physically abused by her then husband. Initially, it was shocking to experience but as time progressed it became easier to respond and come to her aid. It felt like we, my brother and I, were her line of defense from the demonic man and we did not bat an eye because we knew our situation. Eventually, the abuse started to shift, he would focus his attention onto me and often direct his frustration at me. He often called me slurs, followed me around the house and even went as far as locking me out the house on numerous occasions. It continued with financial abuse, he would take the money my guardian gets for caring for us and splur it on himself. For months I lived like this, with the idea it was my responsibility to care for my siblings and do what is necessary so they don’t have to experience this. 

How does this tie into the Orphan Trains ? (create good transition)

• Orphan Trains in the 1800’s states with big  cities would advertise homeless children and ask people to take them into their homes 
• Many children were sent to farms and different places in the south 
• Places neglected children and used them as indentured servants (US actually has history with creating laws specifically making children indentured servants find it)

Similar to the experience of the children, a part of the 1800’s “Orphan Trains” I felt since I am in a home it is my duty to have myself at service for my guardian. Whether that meant doing a simple chore such as cleaning the bathroom or defending her from an abusive man, the task should get done, it’s the right thing to do since I live with her. No task was too big and with each one I endured more trauma. Eventually, it felt like I was unable to say no or express how I truly felt, I had spent so long suppressing myself I had forgotten how to be myself. Then it hit me this is what my cousin meant by being in foster care is like being a slave. This was survival, this was my introduction to the cycle of surviving the system of foster care. (Continue)

The United States has a history of assimilating people in their society. First, with the start of the first nations people, or indigonous people. It was either assimilated or were saluted and the United States started to become clever with the ways in which they erased these people. One way the United States enacted terror on Native people was the Trail of Tears in the 1800’s. (continue)

Some may compare foster care to displacement. Being stripped from your community and bounced around the state until they can find a “suitable home” enduring trauma along the way and expected to be thankful.

Pedagogy Problems

Introduction:

Qué vale la pena?

Daniel Morales-Doyle poses this question in his study on curriculum, and offers the translation, “What is worthwhile?”. According to Doyle, asking Qué vale la pena as an expression emphasizes the further sidelining of marginalized communities at the hands of hegemonic curriculum. [1] The battle over what is worthy of teaching and learning is one that has always existed.

In this paper I seek to explore facets of curriculum that uphold hegemonic curriculum content, and, therefore, can be understood as a struggle for power and control over the narrative of human history, and the ability to influence how future generations grow to see the world and interact with it in ways that uphold dominant oppressive structures. This being a Gender and Womens Studies class, and with this being such a broad issue, this paper will primarily focus on the erasure of women and the intersectionality of erasure from Social Studies curriculum.  

Pt 1: Social Studies – Erasure of Women is the Norm:

I recall noticing the absence of women in history and social studies textbooks in grade school. It was around when we learned about Harriet Tubman and Joan of Arc, and I realized they seemed to be the only women in my history book that weren’t mentioned as merely a supporting character to a more notable man. Pages and pages of accounts of men, stories of their experiences and upbringings and motivations were the foundation of history, and women were relegated to supporting roles, or tokenized. Where were all the women?

Turns out I was picking up on a hard truth. According to a study performed by the National Women’s History Alliance in 2019, only three percent of educational materials contained information relevant to the contributions of women measured against total contributions referenced. In their study, 53% of these references to women included domestic roles of women, while only 20% included the women’s suffrage movement. A paltry 2% contained women in the workforce or depicted accomplishments for the sake of accomplishments. Moreover, when women are included in history books, they are often portrayed in stereotypical gendered roles, and most often, are only mentioned in relation to their husbands, and most represented are those from conservative circles [4].

Some might argue this is in large part due to the very oppression of women, that for so long women were barred from academia and the workforce, but this would be a copout. A lack of equal military, political and academic achievement should not be reason enough to exclude 50% of the human population from history. It does however, offer a relevant opportunity to provide context for this oppression and to illuminate the lived experiences of women through, and their resistance to, that oppression.

Minimizing women’s roles in history contributes to the very culture that continues to diminish the labor traditionally associated with “women’s work”. By omitting descriptions of this labor from our history books we confirm that we do not value this work, which is absolutely fundamental and foundational to the survival and progression of humanity. But history is written from a male perspective that places value on politics and war.

Pt 2: Intersecting Erasure: A Whitewashed Curriculum:

“Seeing the Chicana in light of her history, I seek an exoneration, a seeing through the fictions of white supremacy, a seeing of ourselves in our true guises and not the false racial personality that has been given to us” – Gloria Anzaldua, La Frontera

Intersecting with the erasure of women in history is the erasure of all non-dominant groups, so much so that it’s hard to mention one without mentioning others, even if you could write a lengthy individual thesis on the systematic erasure of each separate group.

Even in attempts at writing inclusivity into modern textbooks, the mark is missed because those powerful groups who dictate what is taught, how it is taught, and how that knowledge is assessed are typically controlled by members of the dominant culture. This cycle, even under the best of intentions, leaves groups with comparatively less power and voice to continue to be left out of the history books. Those with such hegemonic, dominant-group identities are often unable to see the mechanisms upholding their own privilege, whereas those groups who experience oppression or invisibility would be in a far better position to contribute a more comprehensive view of history and social studies as it is shaped into curriculum. As it stands, much US curriculum is legitimized by existing faulty education, so the very act of seeing the need for this shift of mindset in curriculum writing is obfuscated [4].   

In fact, most of the recent inclusion of traditionally underrepresented groups are presented within standards that award and make heroes of those individuals that assimilate to white culture. The Black activists featured are those whose actions have been sanitized to make them “more palatable” to white teachers and students. Many stories that include Native Americans seem progressive on their face but speak mostly to the resistance and reaction to white expansion, and very little has to do with independent representation of their culture and who the people are independent of an overarching white narrative. [6]

Conclusion: A Perspective on Progressive Change:

Because curriculum is controlled by state and local governments, it is imperative to unite educators, historians and activists in school districts across the country, particularly those from traditionally marginalized groups, to demand textbook reforms that more accurately represent our past through more than one dominant perspective.

In some states, notably Texas and Florida, the organized right exerts enormous sway in textbook selection, ensuring that topics such as global warming and evolution are downplayed in science texts and issues such as racism, sexism and imperialism remain [7].

References:

[1] “Students as Curriculum Critics: Standpoints with Respect to Relevance, Goals, and Science.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 55.5 (2018): 749–773. Web.

[2] Zeidler, D.L. STEM education: A deficit framework for the twenty first century? A sociocultural sociocentric response. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 11, 11–26 (2016). https://doi-org.bmcc.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.1007/s11422-014-9578-z

[4] Rayle, Crystal, “Herstory: An Analysis of the Representation of Women in Middle Grades U.S. History Textbooks” (2020). Student Research Submissions. 374. https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/374

[5] http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/

[6] Situating the Georgia Performance Standards in the Social Studies Debate: An Improvement for Social Studies Classrooms or Continuing the Whitewash

Final Project Self Evaluation

So far its clear that I need to do more to focus my thesis and develop my closing statements, the “manifesto” part. As it stands, a lot of what I have is based on readings of research papers on curriculum and pedagogy. I don’t feel like it has a lot of my own writing style showing through the patchwork of ideas at times. I have the facts that will back up my manifesto and hope to build on that to figure out a strong conclusion.

 I still managed to fall into the trap you warned me of, even though it was at the front of my mind. On this one, I realized initially I’d focused a lot on STEM curriculum and impacts it has on upholding homogenic culture for underrepresented groups, and the intersectionality there, but that was becoming its own whole thing that was getting into learning types and all sorts of stuff that could be its own paper, lol. I had to refocus/remove a lot of that portion because it was a little disjointed, and while I love the STEM section it didn’t feel so relevant to the GWS final.

It does seem like just about everything has some greegree of intersectionality, and these problems are deeply connected, so it’s easy to bounce around a bit, but hopefully after taking that part out I have more of a flow going. It’s been a struggle sometimes knowing how to effectively search for the right studies, honestly, at times I can’t tell if this is because I am using the wrong terms in my searches or because research is so imbalanced. I have really been enjoying getting into focusing on the fields of study that inspired me back to school, and specifically, through the perspectives we have been sharing in class.