One-up-manship and put-downs

[ailbhe]

My sister went to her boyfriend's graduation ceremony recently. His parents couldn't make it, but she could, so she dressed up a bit and clapped really hard and so on. Afterwards they all hung around a bit for photos and cigarettes.

Some girls from his class started talking to them. I won't go into details, but among the things they said were - "So, what are you doing then?"

"Childcare" my sister said. "Oh wow," they scoffed, "that must be really easy, playing with kids all day."

"Oh, yes. We do that twice a week. The rest of the time we're in college. We do 14 subjects," she said. I'd have hit them, myself, but my sister just talked.

"Hahaha, like what, nursery rhymes?"

---

Now, these are art students doing a two-year course. My sister is doing a degree in Early Years Childcare, which covers such lightweight topics as psychology and law. Yes, they do a bit of art, music, drama, and so on. Yes, they learn to interact with kids. But kids aren't easy, and learning to deal with up to 20 of them at a time can't be easy either.

Apparently she gets this kind of crap all the time. People assume that Childcare is something you learn in an 8-week evening class course, or that it's so easy learning it is a waste of time. And she doesn't want to say "A degree in Childcare" as that's a bit uppity-sounding.

It all just made me a bit angry.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Thank you. My degree is in child development (I have the two-year associates degree with certificate, and quit college just short of the 4-year bachelor's degree) and can attest to its difficulty.

Unfortunately, some parts of the US are so short on early childhood teachers that they've "dumbed down" the curriculum to make it easier for folks to get certificates, which doesn't garner respect for the rest of us.

[ailbhe]

Actually, this was in Ireland. And the course is brand new; it hasn't been dumbed down. I strongly suspect that it's related to "Sewing is easy because women do it" and "Teaching isn't a real job because" and...

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I knew it was in Ireland, which is why I specified US. ;)

But I suspect you're exactly right. I think that teaching is seen as a sort of supplementary job that doesn't need respect (or decent salaries) because women do it,