None_provided Essays (1628 words) - Gender, Childhood, Behavior

None_provided Essays (1628 words) - Gender, Childhood, Behavior None_provided It is difficult for a child to grow up without experiencing some form of gender bias or stereotyping. When in school, many of their ideas and beliefs are reinforced by their friends, teachers, and other adults. For example, when teachers ask their students to form two lines, there is usually one line for boys and the other for girls. When children play, they avoid playing with the opposite sex because they prefer the company of their own kind. The result is a self-imposed segregation between boys and girls. Research has been done on this phenomenon. Many sociologists have been trying to explain gender roles and differences. Some say sex differences are biologically determined and some believe they are socially constructed. Children behave accordingly to their gender roles as early as two or three years old. From preschool on up to middle-school, children live in two separate worlds girls and boys. Inside the classroom, children often chose to sit with others of the same sex. This sep aration is also seen outside of the classroom boys played with other boys and girls with other girls. Barrie Thorne who wrote, Girls and Boys Together...But Mostly Apart: Gender Arrangements in Elementary Schools, states that the separate worlds exist as a result of deliberate activity (p. 140). Boys and girls have separate tables where they sit in the lunchroom. If a boy were to sit on one of the girls' tables, he would be laughed at or called a girl by other boys. Thorne explains that teachers and aides use gender as a basis for sorting children and organizing activities. They have math and spelling contests where boys compete with girls and sometimes children are lined up separately when walking down the halls. Other studies have distinguished between aspects of stereotypes by separately asking about what is typical in girls and boys versus what would be ideal. For example, Rothbart and Maccoby (1966) assessed parents' opinions about differences that actually exist between boys a nd girls and differences that should exist. Similarly, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) were interested in comparing parents' beliefs about sex differences in young children with how desirable certain characteristics are for girls and boys. They reported that the characteristics perceived as being typical of boys and girls were quite different. Typical boy behaviors were being noisy, rough, active, competitive, defying punishment, and enjoying mechanical objects. Typical girl behaviors were helpful, neat and clean, quiet, well-mannered, crying, and being easily frightened. In contrast, parents reported that it was important for both boys and girls to be neat and clean, helpful, to take care of themselves, not to cry, to be competitive, and to be thoughtful and considerate. These results lead Maccoby and Jacklin to speculate that parents may be trying to socialize children of both sexes toward the same goals. In my field research, I observed children in an elementary school in order to und erstand how gender roles are formed, especially at an early age. I went to Hollingworth Elementary School in West Covina, California. This is the school I went to during my years in elementary. The school is only a ten-minute walk from my house in Los Angeles. The children I was most interested in studying were from the ages of six through eight first and second graders. I took on the view from a distant position, being a complete observer. I went to the school during their lunch hour, observing the children during their recess time. I only had a notebook and pen in order to write down what I observed. I situated myself on one o the planters located to the side of the blacktop, near the handball courts. Before starting my observation, I went to the principal's office to inform them of my research project. They were very accommodating and told me I was able to observe the children from a distance. I did not spend five hours in one day observing the children. Instead, I went to the sc hool during the week and observed them about an hour each time. The role I took on as a complete observer did not pose any problems. A few children looked and stared at me, probably wondering what I was doing

Changing Font Properties in VB.NET

Changing Font Properties in VB.NET Bold is read-only in VB.NET. This article tells you how to change that. In VB6, it was dead easy to change a font to bold. You simply coded something like Label1.FontBold, but in VB.NET, the Bold property of the Font object for a Label is read-only. So how do you change it? Changing Font Properties in VB.NET With Windows Forms Heres the basic code pattern for Windows Forms. Private Sub BoldCheckbox_CheckedChanged( _ByVal sender As System.Object, _ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _Handles BoldCheckbox.CheckedChangedIf BoldCheckbox.CheckState CheckState.Checked ThenTextToBeBold.Font _New Font(TextToBeBold.Font, FontStyle.Bold)ElseTextToBeBold.Font _New Font(TextToBeBold.Font, FontStyle.Regular)End IfEnd Sub Theres a lot more than Label1.FontBold, thats for sure. In .NET, fonts are immutable. That means once they are created they cannot be updated. VB.NET gives you more control than you get with VB6 over what your program is doing, but the cost is that you have to write the code to get that control. VB6 will internally drop one GDI font resource and create a new one. With VB.NET, you have to do it yourself. You can make things a little more global by adding a global declaration at the top of your form: Private fBold As New Font(Arial, FontStyle.Bold)Private fNormal As New Font(Arial, FontStyle.Regular) Then you can code: TextToBeBold.Font fBold Note that the global declaration now specifies the font family, Arial, rather than simply using the existing font family of one specific control. Using WPF What about WPF? WPF is a graphical subsystem you can use with the .NET Framework to build applications where the user interface is based on an XML language called XAML and the code is separate from the design and is based on a .NET language like Visual Basic.  In WPF, Microsoft changed the process yet again. Heres the way you do the same thing in WPF. Private Sub BoldCheckbox_Checked( _ByVal sender As System.Object, _ByVal e As System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs) _Handles BoldCheckbox.CheckedIf BoldCheckbox.IsChecked True ThenTextToBeBold.FontWeight FontWeights.BoldElseTextToBeBold.FontWeight FontWeights.NormalEnd IfEnd Sub The changes are: The CheckBox event is Checked instead of CheckedChangedThe CheckBox property is IsChecked instead of CheckStateThe property value is a Boolean True/False instead of the Enum CheckState. (Windows Forms offers a True/False Checked property in addition to CheckState, but WPF doesnt have both.)FontWeight is a dependency property of the Label instead of FontStyle being the property of the Font object.FontWeights is a NotInheritable class and Bold is a Static value in that class Whew!!  Do you think Microsoft  actually tried to make it more confusing?