Gendering and Beyond: Analyzing Children’s Early Year Education and Teaching Methodologies Employed in Rawalpindi/Islamabad’s Private Schools

Abstract

This study aims to explore whether, the teaching methodologies deployed
in private schools in Islamabad are confining children (between the ages
of 3-12 years) to polarized gender identities? This question of children’s
gendering becomes pertinent when we explore the implications of raising
children in gender confined environments. This research will analyze the
mechanisms deployed in private Montessori/Kindergarten and elementary
schools in Islamabad from feminist perspective. For this purpose,
qualitative method research will be used, and we will conduct semistructured interviews with fifteen school teachers of five private schools
based in Islamabad. This particular category of schools has been chosen
because these schools draw their teaching methodology and curriculum
from the American and British systems of education. Based on this
premise these schools claim to be progressive and forward looking in their
scope to education and child development. Moreover, these private
schools are engaged with different international syllabi and techniques to
engage the students of diverse socio-economic class backgrounds. Based
on this premise these schools claim to be progressive and forward looking
in their scope to education and child development. However, given the
lack of attention to social learning in schools this study aims to find out
whether such ‘modernist’ schools are also blinded by the concerns for
raising children in gender discriminatory environments. The paper aims to
establish that if gender binaries are transmitted to children through early
years schooling then what consequences does that instill on the children
from the feminist standpoint. But the question that how and whether
children can be trained in schools to live beyond gendered binaries are
beyond the scope of this paper.