<p>I’m a student, but I’ve read this thread from the beginning and figured I’d share my perspective.</p>
<p>Honestly, I can’t help taking offense at the suggestion that girls are “obedient” and overachieve only because they are able to “sit quietly” and “do whatever they’re told”–which is somehow equated to a lack of creativity or true intelligence.</p>
<p>I’m a quiet girl, but only in the sense that I don’t speak unless I have something worth saying. I take notes in class partly because it helps me catalogue information that I’ll need for essays, partly because the physical act of writing keeps me awake and paying attention (a masculine trait–oh no!). I don’t care for memorization and rarely study for tests; I’m the girl who gets a 100% on the essay portion of a history test, but loses points because she can’t remember Hitler’s birthplace.
That’s me–almost literally. 
I learned to read when I was three, and started school at five (I’m a November baby). When I was eight I asked for Barbies for my birthday, granted, but also for a miniature anatomy model (with removable organs!) and a microscope. I taught myself to create websites in HTML and CSS when I was twelve–I wrote my own code, and condescended people who used FrontPage (I must’ve been insufferable). In middle school my teachers praised my creativity, then reprimanded me for not following instructions.</p>
<p>I’m sure I can’t be the only one.</p>
<p>I guess I just don’t understand why taking notes and paying attention in class are construed to represent a conformist mind and a meek, submissive character. I can’t speak for other students, but for me it’s always been a question of respect. (That’s respect for teachers as individuals, not as authority figures. If I can’t respect a teacher as a person I have been known to turn into a “disciplinary problem”–the sarcastic smart-alecky kind. But I digress.) My teachers, for the most part, are sensible people with interesting things to say, and sitting still and listening to them–raising my hand if I’ve something to say–just seems like common courtesy, which to me has nothing to do with obedience for the sake of being “good” (something I am vehemently opposed to). If that makes me a mindless automatron, um, I guess I’m fine with that.</p>
<p>Okay, I’ll step off my soapbox and address some of the earlier posts… sorry if my quotes are wrongly attributed; this thread is too long for me to track down all the instances of who said what.
Is this unusual? I thought all schools had some form of recess, but I guess not. Mine has the following schedule:</p>
<p>08:15-08:25 - Homeroom
08:30-09:30 - Period 1
09:35-10:35 - Period 2
10:35-10:55 - Morning break
10:55-12:00 - Period 3
12:00-12:35 - Lunch
12:35-13:40 - Period 4
13:45-14:50 - Period 5
*14:55-15:45 - Period 6<a href=“only%20for%20juniors%20and%20seniors”>/i</a></p>
<p>11th/12th graders also have an assortment of “free periods” (up to 3 in one day, but usually 0-2). It’s a sensible system, I think.</p>
<p>Re: girly books. I go to an international, secular private school and don’t know what the norm is elsewhere, but the books I’ve read in class the past few years aren’t particularly “girly”. Just to check that I wasn’t overlooking anything, I wrote out the ones I could remember, chronologically from 7th grade onwards:</p>
<p>To Kill a Mockingbird
Macbeth
Lord of the Flies
Twelfth Night
The House on Mango Street
Of Mice and Men
My Antonia
Henry IV, Part I
Oedipus Rex
Inherit the Wind
Hamlet
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
A Doll’s House
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea
Medea
Poetry by Robert Frost</p>
<p>Mango Street is the only one I’d call truly feminine (a series of vignettes told from the POV of a young girl growing up in a poor, primarily Hispanic neighborhood).
That is absolutely adorable. :)</p>
<p>Sorry about the long, aimless post… I guess I’m mostly appalled at some of the stories in this thread. My school seems to be doing a pretty good job of catering to both boys and girls, and I had no idea that it was such a problem. It’s thought-provoking.</p>
<p>FWIW, I have an even split of male (chemistry, English, math) and female (biology, French, history) teachers. My journalism class is team-taught by a male and a female teacher. The teacher who assigned the most ludicrous “artsy” projects–“Act out a scene from Play X”; “Make a poster representing Character Y’s emotions throughout Book Z”–was my 10th grade English teacher…a man. (My grades took a nosedive that year, as did my ability to write [I’m still recovering from that one].) </p>
<p>And all of this proves…what? Nothing much, I’m afraid.</p>
<p>/sorry about the long, aimlessly rambling post… just a student’s perspective.</p>