ABSTRACT
During the 1980s an educational discourse developed which sought to enhance girls' post-school options by altering their relationship to 'non-traditional' school subjects. When given a choice, girls are to be encouraged both to select such subjects and to make 'non-traditional' choices within such subject groupings, such as physical rather than biological sciences, higher-level rather than lower-level mathematics. Teachers and others are to develop educational means by which girls will achieve greater success in or a stronger identification with such subjects when they are part of the compulsory school curriculum. Further, girls are to become empowered through the reconstruction of the processes and contents of the curriculum. Mathematics, science and technology, as fields of knowledge, exert a major impact on such conditions, and hence girls' participation in reconstructed 'non-traditional' subjects is important—not as an end in itself, however, but in order that girls and women may be more actively and critically involved in shaping the future in humane and life-enhancing ways.
