#pshce

[thatpollguy]

Do you (or did you) enjoy PSHE (Personal, Social, Health, and Economic Education) class - or your country's equivalent - in high school?

It's my favourite class

I like it

It's okay I guess

I dislike it

It's my least favourite class

I've never done this class before

Voting ended onDec 12, 2025

[ugh-life-is-too-hard]

Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!

[polk-a-dop]

Another day of school is over. I only had two hours of art then one our if PSHCE (physical, social, mental health education(don't know why it's shortened to PSHCE but it is)) and finally one hour of computing. In art I did some art then I had a music lesson half way through so I went to that. I'm currently learning about Georgia O'Keeffe in art. In my music lesson my teacher said if I can learn the music I can have a solo during the summer concert at my school. :( not good, posts about me being scared about it will be coming in about June. My friend BH forgot about my memory stick, yes. So me, BH and JD put our earphones in and actually did some work this lesson. But by the end we arranged to get a train to Liverpool, dont know when it will happen, with some of our other friends. In PSHCE, usually a lesson that can put me to sleep, we learnt about drugs and the effect of drugs. One of the only things that got me through the class today was that there was a news story about some one that was in a car accident, no one was injured, but the person that caused in the accident had a lot of drugs in the trunk of there car and had to go to prison. Now I'm off to watch today's GMM, get my Pjs on (yes, I know its only 3pm where I am but Im cold) check I have no homework for tomorrow and re read Hard Time (thank you PSHCE -_-)

[pointsofpedagogy]

Guest Post: Incorporating Gender Equality Classes Into the Curriculum

We have here our second guest post; this time from Politics student,Anna Sanders. Though not a teacher herself, she assures me that she went to school a handful of times, and has prepared for us a piece on that oft-neglected topic in pedagogy: gender politics. There’ll be more posts from my own notepad any day now.

 I’ve long been a proponent of incorporating gender equality classes into the curriculum. As a self-proclaimed feminist killjoy, I never hesitate to voice my opinion that sexism still covertly prevails in multi-faceted forms and has become normalised within our every day lives. Stereotyping gender roles, embedded in the depths of our culture, largely perpetuates sexist attitudes and upholds rather dated ideas that women and men should behave in certain ways. At school, my female peers and I were often subjected to the ever-so profound comeback of ‘get back in the kitchen’, which we learned to accept as normal because we were never taught that sexism was wrong. I’m sure we can all partly thank media outlets such as The Sun for demonstrating every reason why we still need feminism. Ladies: if we ever forget our self-worth, we can simply turn to Page Three as a reminder (or alternatively, check out The Sun’s disparaging article ‘the Best of Breastminster’, where if you’re after an all-time classic of tasteless misogyny I guarantee this will be right up your street).

A study by Ambady et al. (2001) suggests that we develop these damaging gender stereotypes from a young age, which stick with us for the rest of our lives. The study found children as young as six developed the belief that boys are better than girls at mathematics, which pertains to a form of cognitive bias. Additionally, they found that “performance is malleable to situational and psychological cues”. Therefore, if we’re told we are better at something from a young age, it could be that we’re more likely to advance in it. Is it then any wonder why 15% of the STEM workforce in the UK is female?

Since we learn our beliefs and values early on in life, perhaps one of the most fundamental methods to erode sexist thinking is through ‘the most powerful weapon to change the world’ – education. Hyde et al. (1990) found that children’s gender identity undergoes significant transformations as they approach adolescence, so there seems no better time to incorporate values of equality through a formal curriculum than at secondary school. One idea could be to incorporate gender equality classes within the PSHE programme in order to raise awareness of existing sociological disparities across society. Within these classes talks of women in leadership could be beneficial, or another option could be to develop initiatives for female students to continue education and career trajectories in areas where women are poorly represented, such as STEM subjects. It’s been suggested that some sort of content review is needed of this subject already. Hell, I’m in my twenties, I have no idea how to get a mortgage, but fortunately I have been taught not to sniff Pritt Sticks.

Anna is based in London and has a blog of her own, all about being a feminist killjoy. Check out her other astute observations over at http://theparitydebate.blogspot.co.uk/

[aslipl]

Fatgina

My 10 year old brother just said to our mum and I that when he was in class and a teacher said ‘men have a penis and a woman has…?’ And my brother replied ‘fatgina’ by accident and the rest of the class laughed…

… I can’t believe he said that. I can’t stop laughing omgg like why did he even volunteer to answer the question in the first place

my mum is completely stunned that her nerdy son could do something like that ahahaha

apparently my brother was trying to be the class clown, but he didn’t get into any trouble.

[1willburntheheartoutofyou]

There is this PSHCE day at my school on Wednesday that everyone in my year has to do and it's like an assault course and running and stuff. It turns I don't have to do it because my form has to do it during period 1 and I have the orthodontics so I won't be in. I've never been this happy about having terrible teeth.