The cheeky response is "why not!" and though we stand by it, here are some more reasons why.

Shannon Mills, a teacher at Parry Sound High School in Parry Sound, ON, designed and developed an innovative Women’s Studies course under the province’s Interdisciplinary Studies curriculum and taught it to a group of lucky high school students in the 2005/2006 school year. In this excerpt from an article she wrote for the OSSTF Update, Mills reflects on the progress of the course and her students’ reactions.

A Room of One’s Own: Women’s Studies in High Schools
By Shannon Mills

A semester of ‘surfing the Third Wave’ of feminism alongside a diverse mix of adolescents—some timidly dipping their toes in the water, others eager to dive full force into the most challenging breakers—has served to strengthen my personal belief that a women’s studies course is essential for today’s teens. At a time when young women are bombarded with pornographic messages gone mainstream, in a society where raunch culture is cited as “the new feminism,”in a decade when even prominent feminists recognize that the women’s movement is experiencing a dangerous backlash, it is more important than ever to provide students with a curriculum which equips them with a sense of integrity, entitlement, and empowerment. (. . .)

I know all too well the frustration of attempting to establish a balanced gender perspective in the classroom, having revised my senior-level history course repeatedly over the last five years. It disappoints me to realize that the high school curriculum continues to reflect what one of my professors aptly termed the “add-women-and-stir methodology.” Women’s issues are still relegated to the sidebars of textbooks; women’s concerns continue to be presented as tangential topics within the bulk of the core curriculum. In my classroom, despite my best efforts, Michelangelo still eclipses Gentileschi, Napoleon continues to trump Wollstonecraft.

An entire semester devoted to the study of issues affecting women historically, politically, and globally gives teachers the rare chance to dig deeply into topics which the traditional curriculum only grazes. The design and delivery of a women’s studies course for high school students has been both an exhausting and exhilarating opportunity for me. To hear my students reaffirm the belief that it should have an important place in high school leaves me hopeful that other teachers will join The Miss G__ project in its quest to make women’s studies a reality in the Ontario curriculum.

(Originally published in the OSSTF Update Vol. 33 No. 7, February 15, 2006.)

The following is an account from a student who took Ms. Mills’ course last semester in which she reflects on the course.

I would recommend the women's studies course to other students because I found that the course opened my eyes about what important events women had roles in, during history, that is not usually mentioned in our ordinary History textbooks. It also focuses on issues that are present in our society in the present, that not everyone notices at the first glance. Women's studies allowed us to learn about the influence of women in history, as well as let us know that the world is no longer a male dominated place. Women have rights, and they earned them.

The course allowed us to have fun, but serious events and discussions in class, and we were able to address women that made a difference. I had many great times in the course. I would have to say that some of my favourite times in that class were the discussions, presentations/projects where we could dress up, learning about media influence, the white ribbon campaign and the final exam, where we were able to create a dinner party.

My perspective of feminism has strengthened since taking the course, and I notice many more events and things that that I would not have before taking the course. People now see me in the hall and ask how the course was, and what we were planning to do next for the course. They seem to want to know what is going to happen to the course, since I have been so involved in advertising it. I have become a 'feminist'.

The course has definitely changed my life outside of school. I especially notice it in advertisements and television. I was never really one to analyze commercials and certain advertisements but since the course, I have to say that I drive my family crazy sometimes when certain commercials appear on television. It has also influenced me in school, because I feel more involved, less shy, and I also analyze things that happen in the school with couples. In my school work, I have been doing many projects about strong women, and what the world would be like if it was female dominated, like it was male dominated quite recently.

Please tell these people that it would be a bonus to allow other schools, teachers and students the opportunity to take the course, and offer it in Ontario. I think that many people will benefit from taking this course in many ways, and I will do whatever I can, to make this dream, a reality.

– Paulette

More Great Reasons Why

7. "because I can't understand my history if I don't know hers"

11. "because I learn what it means to be a woman from Seventeen magazine"

12. because anorexia, bulemia and other eating disorders are becoming increasingly prevalent in teenage girls and boys, related in part to the mass of restrictive and negative body image messages with which this age group is bombarded on a daily basis

13. because, despite how far women have come in the educational and professional spheres, in January 2005, Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested that "innate ability" may be the reason women are severely under-represented in the upper levels of science and engineering.

14. because young boys and men are never really provided with a safe space to analyze and discuss "masculinity" and the standards and strictures it imposes on their lives

15. because the government cannot fully address the reasons why many boys and young men are now having difficulty in traditional curriculums without addressing the construction of gender and its implications

16. because, on average, for every nine men holding executive positions on the boards of the largest public companies in North America, there is only one woman

17. because our experience in high school workshops has shown us that high school aged women and men want a space in which they can talk about gender and sexuality

18. because starting at a very young age, our society teaches girls to be afraid to walk alone at night or to travel alone, but does not pair this with teaching both boys and girls about the ways in which different cultural understandings of the role of women in society and of gender can lead to the violence and abuse girls are taught to fear

19. because studies and experience show that students do better in school when they are exposed to successful role models of their own gender, and while the current curriculum exposes students to the stories of many 'great men', it does not adequately provide students with the stories of the many (equally great) women

20. because the current curriculum has no way of examining the complex ways in which sexism, racism, heterosexism and other forms of discrimination are intimately related and linked

21. for the unnamed Miss G___

Your turn: why do we need Women's & Gender Studies in high schools? (be sure to tell your MPP, too!)