ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that teachers view and treat boys and girls unequally and thus contribute towards a hierarchical system of gender divisions in the classroom. A special procedure was used to investigate the possiblity that teachers would be more sensitive to similarities between pupils of the same sex, than to characteristics which girls and boys may have in common. Teachers were asked a series of questions to elicit the names of pupils to whom they were most attached, for whom they were most concerned, and those whom they would most readily reject. If male teachers are particularly attuned to dissimilarity between the sexes, this orientation may, in turn, be translated into actions which have the effect of further polarising girls and boys in classes which they teach. The girl who is mentioned as speaking out early is instantly 'fixed' by her teacher; she has, among the girls, a sort of rarity value.
