Barres wrote the following commentary in Nature in 2006: https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/does-gender-matter-by-ben-a-barres-10602856
“Fortnite and Barstool Sports blog came up a lot. Boys refuse to read for leisure. Disengaged, just “floating,” aren’t focused on future or career”
Funny. S is playing Fortnite in other room. Reading for leisure. Not so much. Took a Fortnite break to eat and study some Joseph Conrad novel for socratic discussion tomorrow in English.
Dunno, generalizations are SO dangerous. My S was reading before he started preschool and ever since. We didn’t teach him. My nephew and great nephew were reading at age 4 and 5. Our D and niece didn’t start reading until ages 6-7. The girls and our S still love reading and are avid readers at late 20s, early 30s.
Yes, it would be great if everyone loved reading and math and could do it well. I’m not sure anyone knows how to make this happen.
At my son’s middle school there was a much anticipated field trip. Inclusion could only be achieved by adhering to some behavioral standards. What a surprise, all the boys failed to qualify for the trip and all the girls were good to go. Granted this was ten years ago; I wonder if anything has changed.
^ Well then the boys need to learn to behave or accept the fact that they won’t be going on the field trip.
My D must have attended an ES on another planet. She was bored silly in math, but for 2 years every time I asked that she be tested to accelerate I was given a run around (in retrospect, I should have escalated it to the district administration). The handful of kids chosen to be moved up in math were with one exception all boys. When they finally tested every student in math what do you know? D was in the 99th percentile in math (as were some other girls). Oops! The school very quickly started accelerating these girls. The bright side was that from then on they began evaluating all of the students in math ability.
In another instance, each teacher was allowed to choose 4 student who were good writers for a specialized writing program. D was/is an excellent writer but her teacher chose 2 girls (not her) and 2 boys. When I questions the selection I was told it had to be “fair” to the boys.
S attended the same ES and was always given challenging work. I was repeatedly told how academically talented he is, the only feedback I got on my D was that she was “fine” and behaved well.
Based on my experiences I have a difficult time with the concept of elementary schools “favoring” girls.
It does seem many American parents have lower expectations for their sons’ behavior, and make more excuses for them, than they do for their daughters’. In other countries, and in some ethnic subcultures here, that social double standard doesn’t exist, and boys seem well able to adapt to the rigors of an even more structured academic curriculum.
Our oldest son was in gifted/magnet programs that were project-based. By his sophomore year of high school he was burned out and stopped turning in a lot of the work. He did well in math and a few other classes, but in English and Science classes he was lucky that he passed (he told us that if the county had done away with final exams earlier he probably wouldn’t have graduated). He tested very well, and was a NMSF. He only passed 3 classes in college, and has a hard time seeing himself going back. Our younger son hasn’t liked school very much either, but unlike his older brother he never liked it. Both had friends who did very well in school, but it didn’t rub off. If they were motivated, they made A’s. When they weren’t, they were often in danger of failing (although neither actually failed a high school class for the semester/year). Our sons’ experiences, combined with my own and my observations of students in the schools where I’ve worked make me think that there are some kids who aren’t going to like school no matter what. It becomes a necessary evil for students like us.
Actually, @romanigypsyeyes, I will push back on your assertion that it doesn’t come down to biological differences. Firstly, we know that there are biological differences because there are differences in hormonal composition between men and women. And we know that changes in testosterone can lead to changes in behavior in the same person(nice Andrew Sullivan article here: http://nymag .com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/sullivan-metoo-must-choose-between-reality-and-ideology.html).
Given that, I think the onus is on you to show that, despite the fact that we know that hormones have a big effect on behavior changes* and despite the fact that it really isn’t debatable that men and women generally have large differences in hormonal composition (at least when young), that biology really doesn’t affect behavior or adaptiveness to social changes. Note that boys and girls adapted to adolescence differently when that phase was invented by adults.
*Sandra Tsing Loh with a funny article about how changes in estrogen changes behavior in the same person: https://www.theatlantic .com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-■■■■■-is-back/308642/
She wrote a ton of those.
Many students never liked school, now or in all of history. Attendance and effort often had to be enforced through harsh physical means, particularly for boys.
First off, girls are way more mature than boys in their mid teen years. So, I would expect them to have better focus in the high school years. And, better grades as a result.
Next, allow me to stir the hornet’s nest …
So much of school has shifted from logic and reasoning to feeling and emotions … which tends to favor women
Too much focus on subjects like diversity and inclusion or sustainability as opposed to the real sciences and calculus and classical literature. American history has morphed into some dystopic Howard Zinn horror show that tells kids that our nation is mean and unfair.
For the record, I think that there is no difference in IQ between men and women … but based on my experiences, women will do better at the verbal side of the SAT and men will do better on the math side. And, the current educational track is leaning towards the verbal side, where even science has been brought down to the emotional side.
@DeanWormer I never saw a class in diversity and inclusion or sustainability up until and throughout high school, nor were these topics discussed at length in the classroom, and I’m a college freshman. I also never took any math or science course that had anything at all to do with emotions and feelings. Has this just been implemented recently in some schools?
As for your characterization of American history… yes that’s pretty accurate haha. That probably accounts for why I’ve had people say to me, in response to my defense of 1st and 2nd amendments, that the constitution isn’t good because it was created based on slavery and bigotry.
Isn’t it true that more teenage girls commit suicide while more middle aged (white) non-college-educated men kill themselves?
49 ironically the SAT was changed from 2400 to 1600 and thus making the SAT math worth 50% instead of 33%. It seems to be a bias against girls with this change. Art Sawyer from Compass Educstion Group wrote about this bias. Was this change made to benefit boys?
@soontobecolleger I would argue that topics like diversity and inclusion or sustainability are woven in to the curriculum.
Let’s put it this way, I went to a snobby LAC (one that makes the CC list of top liberal arts colleges) and they have invented majors since I graduated in the late 80’s. They invented ones like women and gender studies and environmental sciences and black studies etc.
As for high school, I have seen my kid’s textbooks (excellent large public high school NY burbs) and many of them are a lot different than the ones I had three decades ago. Not the math ones or most of the science … but the others, you bet.
Environmental sciences as a major is up for criticism now?
How completely strange that the subject of diversity/inclusion/sustainability is, first, discussed as a single topic on this thread and second, presented as an explanation for the apparent gender gap in educational outcomes. Seriously, people! Environmental science is science! Sustainability is also science! And do you really think that boys somehow react fundamentally differently to the incorporation of “diversity” in history, for example? What does diversity even mean in this context? If mentioning one or two contributions made by females in the course of human history turns off boys, my goodness, what to say!
Majors like Gender and Women Studies and Black Studies are just as rigorous as any other History/Sociology- type major. They are often interdisciplinary, require students learn analytical thinking skills and how to write, and most important, do not have any connection to diverging educational outcomes by gender! Any student not interested in those majors has a simple choice - do not major in one of them. The mere presence of interdisciplinary majors has virtually no impact on the quality of chemistry or biology courses.
On the comment: " …even science has been brought down to the emotional side." – What can that possibly mean?!! Seriously! Science is not science anymore? Woe is me, poor boys!
This whole thread got off topic. The original poster discussed diverging educational outcomes by gender. Others commented that this has been an issue of much research for many years, but there are no easy answers and even the broad social implications are complex.
Some posters very casually blame parents - somehow, we hold our sons to different academic standards or permit more unacceptable social behavior from boys. But this is typical - when in doubt, blame bad parenting. I guess it is easier than considering that even with focus and effort, each child is an individual and we as parents cannot totally control our children’s destinies.