By Alok Ganguly
Managing Editor
In the 2015-2016 school year, a new science course will be offered at Westford Academy titled Women in Engineering. This class is available only to female students in grades 10-12.
This class proves to be an awful representation of Westford Academy as a whole. Westford Public Schools states that they will not discriminate on the basis of a variety of factors including race, religion, and sex, and this class is the antithesis of that statement. Boys and girls are taught in the same classroom for every other class, so there is no reason that they should not be for Engineering.
The class treats girls as though they are incapable of competing with male students, and removing them from a classroom will leave girls ill-prepared to work with a variety of people. The “real world” that students are being prepared for is comprised by people from different areas of the world, different cultures, and of the opposite gender, and this class is depriving students of experience working with this melting pot of individuals.
It is understandable where the idea for the class came from. It can be uncomfortable for someone to enter a class that is completely filled with members of the opposite gender, but making an entirely new class is not the solution.
Instead, steps should be taken in the scheduling process so that at least two students of each gender are in each class. If there is enough demand to have a girls only engineering class, then there are certainly enough students to have at least two girls in each class period. This small change would eliminate the argument for this class entirely, and if a simple change can solve the issue, then why has it not been implemented?
There is also a double standard to this argument. There are no classes at WA (apart from Women in Engineering) that are closed off to students based on gender, but this would not occur if a male student was in the same situation. There are several classes at WA that stereotypically contain more of one gender than another, but to create a class that manufactures an artificial gender division completely unlikely to occur in the workplace is counterproductive.
All students at WA, regardless of their gender, do not deserve this kind of treatment. Students are well past the age where boys and girls are segregated in order to keep things “fair” for everyone, and students do not need to be treated as though they need additional help to gain the education they want.
Regardless, the Women in Engineering class is happening next year, but there needs to be some clarity over how it is run. If students are being given a curriculum that is in any way different from the “regular” engineering program, there is a huge issue. Students deserve the same treatment and same education no matter what gender they are, and that needs to be kept in mind if trends are set by this division.
Overall, the Women in Engineering class is an insult to students. While there are valid reasons as to why the class originiated, there are certainly easy ways to eliminate the need for a class such as this. If this class is setting a new standard for how WA treats education, then it is only a matter of time before the student body is entirely separated by gender.