Gender Implies a Difference But How Much Has That Changed

Archetypal man and archetypal woman have melted across the modern sexes. As women gained equal rights and power, men had to relinquish power and change in order to accommodate. Susan Faludi’s work “The Naked Citadel” studies an interesting case of Male separation from women in the museum-like Citadel ROTC based college. Male seclusion gives insight to gender differences in education that fall in line with Tannen’s essay “Roots of Debate in Education and the Hopes of Dialog”. The Citadel is noted for its hazing and violence. A college devoted to training military recruits draws large connection between aggressive behavior stems and the effect of war on society. Many would expect the cadets to be hardened examples of masculinity especially sheltered by the absence of feminine roles. Yet the changes in gender out side The Citadel have had an effect internally. From these external forces these prime examples of men are altering how masculinity is expressed in the male gender. The Citadel is preservation to archaic beliefs but the hyper forms of “male bonding” are not turning out the soldiers or the businessmen the school is operating to produce. With the removal of the male tradition The Citadel will lose it progress in discovery of how masculinity has changed but will focus on the school work that will achieve the mission statement of producing businessmen and soldiers.

In modern society men and women have achieved equal standing or at least in the classroom environment. However, gender plays an important role in education. Some of these differences are emotional connections other differences are based on stereotypes. “Men tended to speak more than women in their classes—which is not to say that individual women did not speak more than individual men” (Tannen 681). These differences are connected to upbringing and in general boys roughhouse and are told to go play outside and girls are docile and play house. In the classroom boys receive more attention because teachers try to “control such physical exuberance” (Tannen 682). When this extra attention is made extreme too the point of separation, The Citadel is one of the few remaining embodiments of male isolation. While conducting an interview of The Citadel, Faludi converses with the dean about the Cadet system and their education but found little superiority in The Citadel’s curriculum. “He didn’t talk about academics or educational goals. He just talked about cadets’ training” (Faludi 191). This is humorous because “gentleman soldiers are an anachronism and a graduate with gentleman’s C’s may find himself busing tables at Wendy’s” (Faludi 185). It is interesting that an all male learning environment in modern society has missed the intent of education. At the origins of education in the monastery, all male environments were commonplace. “Many monks had actually been soldiers before before becoming monks. Not only were obedience and strict military-like discipline required, but monks saw themselves as serving ‘in God’s knighthood,’ warriors in battle against evil” (Tannen 678). The astray education at The Citadel is evidence that changes in society and gender roles are uprooting the all male environment and diminishing the effectiveness of their educational system.