ABSTRACT
In this final section we accomplish three tasks. We present briefly the
main elements of our own considered points of view in terms of the public
arguments you have just read. We outline some activities and questions that
should help you think further about the issues raised so far. Finally, we provide
an annotated bibliography that should provide resources for discussion, reflec-
tion, and your own research. Most teachers obviously find valuable features in
all four of the public arguments we have offered. Indeed, most of us, including
teachers, carry around complex and even contradictory views about children,
about schooling, andmost particularly about gender issues. One of themost dif-
ficult aspects of our thinking about gender, especially, is that much of what we
think and do comes from largely unconscious assumptions about ourselves, our
gender, and what is appropriate for men and women, boys and girls. Yet all of
us-the authors, our respondents, our readers, and teachers everywhere-act
on both conscious and unconscious ideas when we make decisions in class-
rooms, in schools, and in our own lives. We have chosen our cases, their
responses, and our public arguments partly to try to examine and uncover
some of these ideas that we usually assume without thinking what they
might mean to ourselves and others.
