Educators have a role in challenging gender norms

THE classroom should never be reduced to four walls and a timetable.

- MICHELLE WILLIAMS

It ought to be a mirror of the society we dream of, a place where leadership is nurtured, respect is nonnegotiable values are lived rather than recited. To stand before a class in 2025 is to carry a quiet awareness that a child’s day may have begun with burdens we cannot always see. The teacher's task is not to soften standards, but to humanise them.

Despite the gains of the past three decades, with modern learning spaces, freer expression technology that connects rather than confines, we are confronted by an unsettling truth: many young men still struggle to regard their female peers as equals. Programmes aimed at the “boy child” abound, yet we must ask whether they are shifting entrenched attitudes or merely scratching the surface. Too many young women continue to encounter discrimination, intimidation, or casual dismissal of their worth. In the most tragic instances, this imbalance escalates into violence.