Breaking Gender Bias in Education: Insights from Jason Ablin’s Interview

Basin, thank you so much for being here with me today and being here to talk about your book and just to have a really— I'm excited to have this conversation with you because this is not one that we've had before here, and I think that discussing gender and education it can be, it can seem like a really broad topic. So I am really, really excited to, to talk with you about this today. But before we jump into it, I would love if you, in your own words, could give just a little background about yourself and how you got into this work specifically.

That is great, Heather. And I, a lot of gratitude for being here today and having this conversation. And I have been in education for over 35 years, a teacher, a department chair, an administrator, administrator, a head of school, you know, principal. I've gone through really all of it. I had some specific training and was able to do a sabbatical year in cognitive neuroscience down at USC with Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, who's one of the top researchers in the country really in terms of this topic and education in general. And it's To try to pinpoint one area or one time when this kind of light bulb went off about gender and education, it would be tough. It wouldn't be easy because it's been a long narrative. I will tell you one story, which you probably read in the book, which is about me as an early teacher when I was 28 years old. I see you're already laughing. Right. It was one of these moments where, you know, a young male with a lot of kind of masculinity construction got taken down quite a notch by 4 graduate students who came to watch me teach inside of my classrooms. And I was in a school with a unique structure with a girls' campus and a boys' campus very close to each other. So we taught on both campuses, the faculty. I was head of the English department and I would teach the girls in the morning and then go to the boys in the afternoon to teach. So it was a perfect kind of area for research for these postdocs who are coming to look at gender and education. Sure. And of course, I was quite high on myself at the time as an educator. I thought I was the best thing that had ever happened to the school. And I said, sure, they can come watch me teach. They're going to learn so much about how to do this right, you know. And by the end of this process, when they had come visited me 20 times in each class, they basically said to me, Jason, you know, we'd love to share with you the data if you want to see it. And I was 28 years old at the time. And I said, of course. And I sat down and it was one of the most grueling 2.5 to 3 hours I'd ever had of kind of professional feedback about what I was doing in these classrooms. And so much of it had to do with the lens that I had regarding gender that I didn't know that I had, right? That I didn't know. It was all implicit within the background of how I functioned. And to just give you an example, I had a girls' class, which I perceived to be highly engaged. And what the research was telling me was that what I had was a class of about 35 to 40% who are highly engaged and about 60% who are being really obedient and passive. And for me, that was some kind of an indication that they are actually engaged. And of course, you know, that's part of this gap of my understanding at the time. About the way that women are taught, especially in schools, that obedience is a form of educational value, right? Jumping through the hoops, not asserting themselves. And then, of course, this gets very much translated later on in life for them in their professional lives and in all sorts of areas, in their personal lives, which has been told to me numerous times by adults and parents who identify as women. And then, um, you know, at the boys' side, I found myself being at times overly assertive, overly aggressive, not necessarily really getting to know the boys, misinterpreting their misbehavior, and also constructing for them a very, very negative connotation about what does it mean to be a man. Right, in this environment, because with them I was being a lot more aggressive. I was being a lot more assertive with them. And what the lessons really told me was that I needed to spend more time getting to know these kids and figuring out ways to get them involved, which went above and beyond the gender question. By becoming more aware of this, what I understood was the way we're going to make kids more successful in school is by really getting to know them much better. And that also means eliminating some of our own biases that we happen to have when we walk into classrooms. And then I was off and running. I was on this long journey to discover more and more about this. And then around #MeToo was the time I said, I need to sit down and start writing about this. And writing, and in 2018, I sat down to actually write the book. I'd been writing a blog for a while. And the book emerged 4 and a half years later. So that's the, you know, the log cabin story on what happened.

I mean, it is amazing. And I'm so glad you shared that because there are several pieces of that that I think are really, really important that, you know, translate in education, but translate, I mean, also into just human interaction and the way that we, we talk to each other, and we don't even realize some of the things that we're doing, right?

From—

and I'm wondering if this lines up. I'm just going to, like, say a few things, and you can tell me. The tone of our voice, our body language, the words that we choose to use.

100%.

I think it is absolutely fascinating. And as I was reading your book, I was thinking to myself, I mean, it made me kind of do reflection like along the way. And I think that's one of the things that I loved about it was thinking, oh gosh, like this is such an automatic thing, but why is it automatic?

Right? Correct.

Right.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think we have a lot invested in terms of as adults, the identities that we create, particularly around sexuality and gender, and they've been embedded in us for a very long time. And so to recognize that, what I try to tell the teachers, that's right, it's called implicit bias for a reason. It's not something that you're necessarily aware of. And at the same time, one of the dangers of it, particularly as educators, kids spend so much of their time in schools, right? 6, 8, 10 hours a day. So much of acculturation and culture and what they get is from being around adults like us, being around the educators.

Right.

So we have to be really aware of how we relate to gender. It's one of the first places I go when I do faculty workshops and I do work with faculties in schools. I ask them, tell me your gender story. Tell us what— how you experience gender. When did you first become aware of gender as an idea? And I get incredible stories from faculty. Incredible. Everybody's got a story. Everybody.

Of course. Of course. Um, and I would imagine the— depending on how old they are, makes the story— I mean, I would imagine generationally those stories are quite fascinating. Oh, wow.

Oh, wow. Yeah, absolutely.

Yes, yes. Oh my goodness, I love that. And I love— you know, I think one of the things that I always say in what I do is the whole— and it's so simple, you know, it simplifies everything, or it's simplistic— is the name it to tame it, right? So in speaking, I typically use it speaking of fear, talking about fear. But in this case, this is, it works too because once you bring something like this, become aware of it, then you begin to see it in your behaviors and your actions and you could, that's how you could begin to shift, right? That's where the shifts begin is becoming really just aware. It's your awareness.

Yeah.

Is that what you teach when you are working with educators?

Absolutely. I mean, it's the place you have to begin because unfortunately, you know, I thought my book when I was originally writing it might be a little bit controversial. Now we end up in 2023 and it feels like we're in the middle of a fire around this issue. So one of the things I have to communicate to the teachers right away is that the reason we're doing this is to make kids more successful in school. That gets lost sometimes in all of the politics and the polarization around gender as an issue that I think my book is really committed to figuring out ways for faculty to feel like they're helping students with what they're supposed to be teaching them. And we do that through a gender lens. And then all of a sudden the guards come down a little bit.

Yes, well, they do, because— and I will say that it was not— I did not once feel like I was reading a book with a political agenda at all.

And so good to hear, right?

I'm sure, and like you, I do pay attention quite a bit to politics, and I am very tapped into them. And I thought I might— I mean, to be honest, because how we're talking about gender, it is— it's one of the top 5 things that you— that are, like you said, on fire right now, right?

Yeah.

And, um, and you and I are paying attention to it for many, many reasons. So I, I was, to me, I was like, oh wow, like this is like fully an educational, engaging educational book. It's not a, you should think this because of this like thing over here that I felt like I was being a little bit hoodwinked, you know, or, or like, right.

That's right.

Questionable, or, you know, where sometimes you're like, that just doesn't feel right. That is not how this felt. So I really appreciate how you, how you wrote this, which is a gift. So thank you. And I appreciate also that you brought in one of the things that you and I were talking about before, and I really, really want to talk about it is because this was such an aha thing for me. The whole idea of math and literacy, or math and English, or however you want to talk about it. I mean, who out there listening to this says math, math is for men, right? I mean, I guess we all think that to a certain degree on some subconscious level. I've always thought, I, well, I'm, I'm not good at math. I'm just not good at math, right? Why am I not good at math?

Right, exactly.

Who decided at what point, well, she's a girl, she's a good reader, gosh, look how fast she can read, we're going to make her a reader, right? We're going to make her good at English.

So, yeah, and Heather, again, this is part of that constructed experience of school, which gets inherited from generation to generation, and that's the complexity of it, that Heather does not see herself as a math person, and there's no reason for Heather not to see herself as a math person. There's absolutely no biological or genetic evidence at all, none, that it's like one of these great mythologies that we have about men and women. And What I found a lot is that when I'm in schools and I'm speaking to parents and I'm trying to explain to them how the translation of what goes on, and when I'm speaking to teachers as well, it's very hard because there's a lot of dissonance there. A lot of, a lot of parents have ingrained this concept of themselves. So the mothers will immediately defer all sorts of all sorts of decisions and support and help because they imagine themselves a certain way. And then they continue— we continue with the same gender stereotypes. With teachers, it can be, it can be quite challenging because teachers often are not necessarily self-selecting into the field where they could have selected into places like engineering and computer science and even medicine. They often have selected into education because math was quote unquote, not their thing. So I'll go into schools and these can be very woke environments, right? Places that see themselves as very progressive. And I will walk into their classrooms. And as you know, I mentioned this in the book as well, I'll walk around the classrooms and 80% of the material in the classroom that's on the wall that's represented is English literacy skills, English language acquisition skills, projects. There's always some art projects, maybe a little bit of history. And then there's what I call the ubiquitous number line that runs across the top of the room, right? Okay. And the teachers think, oh, I, I've covered math. I've put math up, right? I put the number line up. I'll see it in the first grade class. I'll see it in a second grade class. I'll see it in a third grade class. Doesn't matter what year, the number line is up. Right? And I try to, I try to explain to the teachers that, that this kind of constructed representation is sending volumes of messages to the girls in the classroom and the boys in the classroom and what they should be associating with and how they associate with it. And that is very cognitive. Right. That is very cognitive, how they translate that experience based on who's presenting it to them.

Right.

And identity. So this happens, this begins at a very young age. This begins as early as kindergarten with how it's taught, the way it's, yeah, the way it's represented and everything like that. Yeah. It's really incredible.

I mean, absolutely fascinating. And You know, as you were saying that, I'm thinking, well, this is why women in STEM is such a, you know, an extraordinary thing, right? That we're really trying to push. I have my older daughter is in STEM. She's at University of Michigan in engineering. And I've always been amazed by her brain because I'm like, as a person who has always said, I'm not good at math, Right? Like, I literally fit into your, like, little mold here because I'm like, I am not good at math. I am good at English and writing and reading. Those are my traits, right? And my daughter is math, science. She's also very good at writing too. I mean, she's one of those kids. She's just brilliant. You know, that means, like, she is that, and I'm always like, yes, like, she can do math and that's cool. It shouldn't be that way, right?

It shouldn't be that way. Right. So it's an ironic thing because you and me are in the same boat. I had the same experience in school, ironically. Right. I had the same experience as a boy feeling, as a young man, feeling like I was not capable in mathematics. And that creates a whole other set of dilemmas. For boys in school where they feel left out of the narrative among other boys in, in the school. They are questioning identity. They are wondering what this means. It is very stressful and can create a lot of anxiety among young boys when they find themselves in that position. And again, it is kind of one of the things that we look at when we look at the data, which is a little bit shocking, is We've constantly imagined that boys are just doing much better in math than girls are in school. But in fact, PISA scores for the last 40 years have shown us that boys occupy the bottom 26% of math learners in the United States. But they get left out of the picture also because of gender bias.

Right.

Because we almost don't see them. It's almost like a shadow group that doesn't get acknowledged. Because we're just so locked into these narratives of boys being good at mathematics. And so we never address their needs.

Right. Well, it's the whole idea of that's what we're comfortable with, right? And you address that as well here, is really, you know, going right at, right away, the things that we're not comfortable with, right? So what is uncomfortable? Let's talk about that. And that's where we have to shift. And that works well for both of us, right? What we're both doing. Yeah, what makes you uncomfortable? That's what we're talking about. So, um, you know, I— that is— I find this just so completely fascinating and also something that we are fully capable of turning around right now, that you figured this out, now that, you know, you've, you've written about it, and this is something that's being studied. This is something that, holy cow, this can shift education in such an extraordinary way. Wow.

I think so. I think it's really, obviously, I think it's one of the core ways in which we can really address sort of impediments to learning, which have been around for a very, very long time. You know, I'm going to go back to your daughter with STEM, for instance. This is a great example. And I get questions about STEM all the time. I'm going to be speaking at the National Science Teachers Conference on women in STEM and girls in STEM and what can we do, right? What's going on? And one of the big things I put out there right away is we don't need pink robots. Okay. We don't, that's like, you know, we don't need pink robots and we don't need kids coding about fashion design. That's not going to get more girls involved in STEM. And I find that argument incredibly insulting to someone like your daughter who has such a passion and an interest in something like engineering and possibly robotics. And there was some great teacher who inspired her and got her really feeling great about this. And she just took off, right? She just took off. And we, you know, the studies have shown us very clearly that when girls, young girls have strong female models who are, you know, successful in the field and can speak to them about their passions in this area, and they have the role models, and these are consistent role models, that they're much more likely to engage in STEM and mathematics and all of these different areas. And we just need to find them and put them in front of the girls.

That's right. That's exactly right.

Goodness.

I mean, what a game changer. What a game changer. I mean, my daughter, despite, she had a very strong male science teacher who was, I mean, incredibly inspirational and Science Olympiad and on all of that. Saw in her, you know, and just, um, but the, the power that a female teacher would have for a young girl would be just— yeah, wow, um, absolutely amazing. There's one more thing that I wanted to touch on really quickly before we, before we wrap up. Um, you talked, and I wonder if we can kind of talk about this in a nutshell here. We'll leave this as the, the, the, um, the carrot for everyone so you can read more. But I thought this was really interesting because you talked about, um, this in with relation to mental health. And, um, and you just talked about it just a little bit before, but I wanted to kind of circle back to it because I think that's a really, really powerful and important point that people, we, we really do not realize. So could you talk about that just a little bit before we wrap up?

Absolutely. I am very passionate about this, not just because I want to make school more successful for students, but I also want them to feel safe inside of schools. And unfortunately, we do a lot of things. I am a big believer that we've got it a little backwards. In other words, that I think that we think we're in this new age where kids are really thinking about themselves differently about gender right now. And I think actually kids have been thinking about themselves differently with gender for a very long time. And what's happened is, is that our understandings of the kind of gender experimentation that they're doing at a very young age is we haven't caught up to it. And we haven't been observant of it for a number of reasons. Part of it is that gender blindness, right? We're not seeing what's going on with them. But kids are experimenting with gender all the time, right? And, you know, it's the adults, unfortunately, who tend to have the— either parents or teachers at times, in terms of how they describe them or how they're working with them— put them into a gender box, you know. And as kids get older, And that experimentation starts turning into really what I find to be foundational aspects of who they are from a gender perspective, whether they consider themselves cisgender or whether they consider— they see themselves as gay or non-binary or whatever it is, which now we have a language for, which I think is incredibly helpful. Um, I, I, I think what happens is is that it makes the adults in the building very nervous. And we have— the adults have not really figured out how to navigate this well, mainly because we're also triangulated with families and what families are doing and what children are doing. You know, sometimes school can be the place where kids come and they, as Brené Brown says, they come in and they you know, hang up their anxieties like they hang up their backpack, right? Because school's a really safe place for them, right? And they feel that way. But sometimes school can also be a traumatizing environment, which I talk about in the book. Yeah. And, uh, it's— it's— I think it's really our job more than anything else to make kids feel as if they are not going to, A, be put into some kind of gender box. That's one thing. And then really lay the cultural foundations so that whoever walks through our door in any way that they're experimenting feels accepted and loved and cared about, and that there's going to be adults who really embrace them for really who they are. And I think that that's the work that we need to do right now in our schools. It's a very— I don't know what your son's experience was in school, And you probably have a lot of stories about that. But when I speak to kids, I've had 6 kids in 35 years in education. I've had 6 kids who I know of who have transitioned. And I stay in touch with about 3 of them. And they've talked to me about what their experiences have been like at school. And what, what, what they went through. And they, they knew about their transitioning process, some of them since they were 6 or 7 years old. Yeah. So, you know, we find ourselves in contentious times, but I think there's also an opportunity to make schools really loving and caring and kind places where kids can, you know, come in and really feel like they have safe spaces. To exist and learn and grow.

Yeah, agreed, agreed. Oh my goodness. Well, I think that's a beautiful place for us to end for today. I am so delighted that you have been here, that you've taken time. I want to give the name of your book again for everyone. I'm actually going to hold it up for everyone to see.

I'm going to do that too. That you're going to do that.

The Gender Equation in Schools: How to Create Equity and Fairness for All Students. I will have the link for how you can get this book in the show notes and in all social media. And I just highly encourage you to read this book because it really is a game changer and, um, and a mind opener. Uh, so it, it aligns a lot more with work that we are doing than you may realize. So I love that. I love that. So Jason, is there anything else that you would like to share or to end with before we say goodbye?

I just love the partnership. I love the collaboration and the conversations, and I just super appreciate being asked to be on the show. And thank you so much. Thank you so much.

You are so welcome.