Patriarchy while teaching

When men like my grandfather and a relative would become teachers it would be a nightmare for girls. Both had been raised to believe that girls are pea-brained, especially when it came to comprehending math and science. Assuming that those of the female gender were idiots beyond redemption, they would scream at them while teaching. This would demoralize the students. My grandfather would throw away my mother’s math exercise books while teaching her. He would set up apparatus to conduct science experiments for my uncle. When mother would want a peek, he’d shoo her away like an animal snapping, “As if a stupid person like you can understand. Stop eavesdropping. Study Sanskrit instead.”

Mother wasn’t sent to school till high school. Though I understood math and science better than my mother as I after all was sent to school, grandpa would scold me nevertheless while teaching me, though less sternly. I was quite good at understanding science.

One day, a relative said that my mother and her daughters wouldn’t earn property as we didn’t understand science. You could own ancestral property though if you were a male who didn’t understand science. He said that studying Arts wasn’t of any practical benefit to the world. He said, “You may enjoy reading a poem but a doctor saves lives and an engineer builds bridges. Girls and women aren’t capable of doing what scientists, engineers and doctors can do. Just name the chapter in Physics that you are studying now, I’ll ask you three questions, you won’t be able to answer even one. If you don’t have a career in science, you are useless and cannot help your family.” He mocked me since I was in Class 4, that I’d be a dud at science. When I could answer all his questions, he was infuriated.

#patriarchy, #teaching, #misogyny, #science, #student, #physics, #inheritance, #laboratory, #girls, #women

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/sketch-cute-child-funny-3047721/: Picture courtesy: Pixabay: Image by pencil parker from Pixabay

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