We will ask two central questions throughout this course: 1. What difference does gender make? 2. For which women does it make a difference? Which women?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of understanding the impact of gender on individuals and highlights the need to explore the differences it creates.
Estelle Freedman probes the significance of gender in shaping experiences and identities. By posing these two fundamental questions, she urges students to critically analyze how gender influences various aspects of life and specifically which women's lives are affected differently, prompting discussions about equity, representation, and the social constructs surrounding gender.
In practice
In a lecture on gender studies, a professor might use this quote to frame the discussion about women's experiences.
The normal curve is a distribution most appropriate to chance and random activity. Education is a purposeful activity and we seek to have students learn what we would teach. Therefore, if we are effective, the distribution of grades will be anything but a normal curve. In fact, a normal curve is evidence of our failure to teach.
In fact, black students with college degrees are twice as likely to be unemployed as white students with college degrees. So, to say there there is not an issue for black Americans and Latinos in terms of the opportunity that college is supposed to create would be wrong.
It was play rather than work which enabled man to evolve his higher faculties - everything we mean by the word 'culture'.
How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?
It is the power of words and books - explaining and dramatizing great ideas and articulating high ideals - that is the greatest weapon in the missionary's arsenal.
Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter.
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