2nd Class, Room 6 have just finished a novel
by Anne Fine called ‘Bill’s New Frock’.
In it, the main character, Bill wakes up one morning
to find that he has changed into a girl overnight.
The story is interesting in that Bill observes
how boys can be treated differently to girls.
Following on from reading ‘Bill’s New Frock’
2nd Class, Room 6 did an interesting exercise
about the jobs that men and women do.
First they listened to the following story:
‘One fine Monday morning,
a parent and child were walking to school.
Suddenly there was a screech of brakes
and an enormous thud.
A car and a motorcycle had collided.
The driver of the car got out
and went to see if the motorcyclist was OK.
Two guards came and an ambulance.
The ambulance driver drove quickly
and brought the motorcyclist to hospital.
The doctor and nurses did their jobs well
and the motorcyclist made a speedy recovery.
The children were asked to draw a picture from the story.
Then they were asked whether
the people in the story were male or female.
Though it is probably of note that there were
sixteen boys and twelve girls in the class that day,
the results were interesting.
Considered by the children to be:
| Character in story | Male | Female |
| Child | 8 | 20 |
| Parent | 7 | 21 |
| Car driver | 21 | 7 |
| Motorcyclist | 26 | 2 |
| Guards | 26 | 2 |
| Ambulance Driver | 27 | 1 |
| Doctor | 25 | 3 |
| Nurse | 0 | 28 |
When the class talked about this afterwards,
they agreed that they had met female doctors,
and guards and male nurses.
Teacher sees a little change since she first
did this survey with an all girls class
twenty years ago. On that occasion the data
looked like this:
| Character in story | Male | Female |
| Child | 0 | 30 |
| Parent | 0 | 30 |
| Car driver | 24 | 6 |
| Motorcyclist | 29 | 1 |
| Guards | 29 | 1 |
| Ambulance Driver | 29 | 1 |
| Doctor | 29 | 1 |
| Nurse | 0 | 30 |
She wonders what the survey would look like
in twenty years time.
