The physics department at King’s College London offers a module called ‘Gender Action’. Students studying this module go into schools and nurseries to work on projects related to the elimination of gender stereotypes. The course is run in association with a charity, also called Gender Action, who explain on their website that the problem with phrases such as ‘boys will be boys’ is that they imply ‘a person’s biological sex is fixed.’ A study which is required reading for one week of the course explains how ‘the most propitious means for dismantling patriarchal language’ is to modify discourse ‘to consider sexual difference as contiguous, rather than hierarchical.’ Anecdotally, the course is disproportionately popular with non-binary students. The Institute of Physics is one of the founding partners of Gender Action.
Gender Action is one example of a growing trend to embed a particular idea of ‘social justice’ in our education system, even in science.
Statistical literacy is a prerequisite for understanding society
In my own subject area of mathematics, there is a growing body of literature on ‘critical mathematics pedagogy.’
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