In the Company of Educated Women vs The Boy Problem

In the Company of Educated Women vs The Boy Problem

Introduction

The education issues vary based on how is addressing them. The second issue is that they vary based on the perspective from which they are being addressed. This is based on the understanding that perspective from which the education issues are addressed vary based on the issue of gender as well as how the people look at the issues. There are several similarities and differences when it comes to how the two aspects are looked at. The book “In the Company of Educated Women” was written by Barbara Miller, the book highlights the history of women in the education landscape in America. It especially details the challenges that women gave faced when pursuing higher education, seeing that in colonial America, education was designed for men. The book “The Boy Problem” was written by Julia Grant. It aims at analyzing the challenges that educators face in the education of boys. It took a time range and perspective in which the analysis was done on boys located in Urban America from the year 1870-1970.

Similarities

The two are victimized in one way or the other though the victimized in different ways. For the boy education, Julia Grant indicated that they were being viewed as being a troublesome gender; hence many opted not to focus so much on their education for fear of these boys causing trouble. At the same time, it is almost the same case for girls, as highlighted by Barbara Miller. Miller states that even though the women were interested in learning, but they were victimized because they were not fit to be educated. This is the reason even though many were interested and very intelligent, not so many were given a chance to study all because of their gender. In other words, the issue of gender played a key role in influencing the manner in people handled issues to do with education.

There were funding and structural challenges that affected how these two genders were accessed education. Julia Grant’s text, it is clear that the boys were many, but the resources were limited in that the schools, as well as the classes, were indeed less among other challenges. For the text by Barbara Miller, it is clear that the women were indeed few and the quality of education for elementary learning. Still, at the higher education level, there was a funding problem. Those that managed to go to school such as Barbara Miller mostly did it through scholarships which were skewed and not forthcoming.

Both of the two books have the main theme of education, but the difference is in the subject matter and the purpose for which they were written. One of the similarities between the two books is that they are all based on historical times, with the book by Julia Grant giving analysis based on the period between 1870 and 1970. In the first book by Barbara Miller, the main subject is women and the various challenges they have faced in acquiring higher education. Women were previously only allowed to acquire basic education; as higher education was not available to them as it was for men. The subject in the second book by Julia Grant are boys, and especially those who faced and posed a challenge to the education system. The boys were those from poor backgrounds, boys of colour, and immigrants (Grant, 2014).

Key Arguments from The Texts

The Barbara Miller argument is anchored on the need to promote the education of the women gender, and her focus was mainly about the girl education and some of the challenges that they go through. Still, it is devoid of mentioning much about the challenges the boys or the male students go through. This means the argument presented is indeed circumspect of the challenges facing the male student. On the contrary, the text by Julie Grant is indeed very detailed about the structural challenges facing the education sector only that she picked on the context of the male gender when it came to the students as opposed to focusing on the female students. The issues addressed affects both genders since they are broad and structural.

The Barbara Miller highlights the role of the society in influencing and pushing for the education of the women and this is brought out when the idea of feminism that was there in the 20^th century advocated for women education. This is key to note since the education of the women is advocated for by the society at the expense of anything else. On the other hand, Julie Grant’s text highlights, the facts that society believes that the male gender is troublesome; hence there is less pressure and effort to advocate for the education of the male gender. In other words, while on one end the female gender advocates for the individuals to push forward and have better education, the society does not highly rate the need for the male gender to have an education due to the presumed temperament as well as perceptions that the society has about the boy child.

The other key difference among the books is that in the book ‘In the Company of Educated Women,’ the author aims at giving the historical view of the way women have strived to improve their place in society. This is aimed at creating a better view of the importance of women’s education and also to act as a source of inspiration to other women so that they can seek to improve. It helps to show that women have equal rights when it comes to pursuing higher education, and they should, therefore, not be faced with any impediments that will prevent them from doing so (Solomon, 1985). Julia Roberts, on the other hand, gives an important guideline and analysis of the challenges that boys are facing in acquiring basic education. Boys of colour, immigrants, and those from poor backgrounds face a lot of internal challenges such as cultural conflicts, poverty, and the need to provide that education becomes secondary to them.

Other differences are that Barbara mainly focuses on the myopic view of girl education in the context of gender. It was necessary to ensure that the people were able to understand some of the challenges other than funding that was making it hard for the girls not to get a quality education. The view of limiting the analysis to systemic issues such as funding only is indeed devoid of facts and therefore not a true representation of the girl child education was like back then and the holistic number of challenges they were subjected to.  On the other hand, Julie looked at it from the perspective of other key thematic issues that affect education. Some of these keys included the issue of racism, the issue of culture as well as social and economic background. This is a broad perspective in which things were looked at. At the same time, it is clear that this formed the basis of ensuring that things worked out for the students since if they key inherent factors were not addressed then the possibility of things working out were indeed limited.

Conclusion

The two texts are rich and well detailed in terms of the angles they looked at the education issues. It is evident that whereas the two talks about gender issues, the approach used by the two is indeed varied and limited. It is key to note that there is a need for a better way of handling education that will ensure a holistic view. There is a need to talk about racism and its impact on the quality of education. There is also a need to address culture and its implication on education as well as the background of the students and how that impacts their learning. Limiting the education challenges to funding is indeed insincere and should be widened up to address other key issues instead of being so limited as it was the case in Barbara’s text. For the above analysis, if it was about selecting a more placed and detailed piece of literature on education, then the text by Julie Grant will be the most effective text to select.

References

Grant, J. (2014). The boy problem: Educating boys in urban America, 1870-1970. JHU Press.

Solomon, B. M. (1985). In the company of educated women: A history of women and higher education in America. Yale University Press.