Product Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
The classic account of the hurdles facing adolescent girls in America--now reissued with a new Foreword, to coincide with the award-winning author's new book on women and identity.
Inspired by a study by the American Association of University Women that showed girls' self-esteem plummeting as they reach adolescence, Peggy Orenstein spent months observing, interviewing, and getting know dozens of girls both insi... More >>
Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
As if being a boy in middle school wasn’t already hard enough to survive, now we have a book by an author who wants to make it harder. Barf.
Rating: 1 / 5
I agree with those earlier reviewers who pointed out how harshly this book treats junior-high-school boys.
Rating: 1 / 5
If you’re female and looking for scapegoats to blame for any educational difficulties you may have had growing up, this is the book for you.
However, if you are sincerely looking for ways to help your daughters or students avoid the kind of angst you went through in junior high school and high school (as we all did), then you will find your time better spent elsewhere.
This is a political book, not a report of objective research.
Rating: 1 / 5
She shows how some girls do suffer drops in self esteem in Jr.High, however she thinks the solution is to make damm sure boys suffer greater drops in self esteem. She holds up as role models educators who go out of theie way to be harsh to boys. She seems to think that the fact that boys get punished and repromanded more often than girls is showing favoritism to boys (ie they are getting more attention). She thinks it is great that there is a class where boys have to act out womens roles and write essays for NOW. It never crosses her mind that adolesence could be a difficult time for both boys and girls. Far to much boy bashing but does offer some useful insites into what adolesent girls are thinking.
Rating: 2 / 5
I agree with Susan’s review. This book employs a familiar and effective–but flawed–journalistic technique to build its case. Vivid interviews with individuals of one gender at two schools are coupled with broad-brush generalizations about all girl students and all boy students at all schools. The reader is encouraged to assume that the girls suffer greater anxiety in middle school, because only girls are interviewed. A book that only reported interviews with these girls’ male classmates could have built up an equally powerful picture of anxious, underachieving boys at the same schools. This is not quality reporting. Let the reader beware.
Rating: 1 / 5