IME many of the bright girls ( my D and others) were frequently overlooked while the bright boys ( my S and others) were not.
Actually, it’s unclear whether that’s actually the case. The links you gave are strong on anecdotal evidence of that claim, and the outputs are certainly clear, but what’s unclear is whether the sorts of things the anecdotal evidence offers actually lead to the outputs.
You have clearly never lived in any of the school districts I’ve lived in over the past couple decades.
My daughter is a middle school special ed teacher in a NYC public school. She calls on boys much more than girls. Actually, she exclusively calls on boys because both of the classes she teachers are comprised of only boys. Boys are very over represented in special education classes in many areas. Nationally, I think the figure is 67% of special education students are boys, and more than four times as likely to be classified as hyperactive. Boys don’t get to college from special education classes in many places. Since my daughter teaches seventh grade, she moves heaven and earth to get as many kids as possible moved to general ed so they can go on to high school on track to receive a diploma and possibly go to college if possible someday. Many of her boys are classified special education because of behavioral issues that start very early, not always because of a lack of ability.
" colleges campuses are often hostile to males" Really? I must be an idiot for worrying that one of those males experiencing such hostility will rape one of my daughters.
And I worry that a woman will accuse my doofy, gentle, sometimes-oblivious son of something that he didn’t do and ruin his life. Or make a profit on it by carrying around a mattress, or that my gentle, sometimes-oblivious boy will run across a girl like Jackie who will have an agenda with nothing to do with him at all and ruin his life for reasons of her own.
Dudes, can we please not turn this into a sexual assault thread? This was turning into an interesting conversation—that’s an important topic, but it’s big and overwhelming enough that it should probably be spun off onto its own thread.
@OHMomof2 Thanks for that link! Boston University admits 37% Female and 32% male. With an enrolled Female to Male ration of 60% Female to 40% male, I’m assuming that the girls who apply are (possibly) more qualified than the boys, they don’t use gender in decisions, and a lot more girls apply to the school the boys (58% of applicants are Female).
OK, well putting aside the many assaults that males are committing on campus, can you identify what about college campuses is hostile to males? I see the widespread obsession with football–an activity not open to women–as also rather unwelcoming to women.
There are two very, very long and contentious threads on that topic, so I will respect post #65 in staying away from that aspect of this thread.
Just curious, does anyone have any thoughts as to why boys are so over-represented in special education? Not as bright as girls? Not as civilized? Too physical?
I know in my own house, my daughters were always ahead of my son at the same age in things like discernment and judgment and perception.
On the flip side, my daughter was admitted to Colorado School of Mines this year for engineering. There may have been a little nudge there, I suspect…
Does the movement at colleges and universities (and other liberal leaning institutions) to recognize gender as fluid and non binary mean that looking at this particular issue strictly as boy versus girl is wrong? That is, when a transgender applicant gets into a school known for loving “quirky” (yes, UChicago) or “creative” or “angular”, then does his/her sex matter?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence
There is a greater spread in male IQ, lower and higher, though this is a controversial claim. There are more males with dyslexia, and perhaps autism, though the autism claim is also contriversial. These might contribute to the number of men in college.
Boys generally learn differently when they are younger and have more trouble sitting still (more rowdy). This is sometimes called a behavior problem and ‘too physical’. I think that’s maybe way they are overrepresented in special ed.
I think the idea that boys can’t sit still is a recent, cultural (US) pattern. I never saw this observation in my early years of teaching. I have not seen it or heard it in East Asia. If it was true, then it would have affected boys’ education through out history, and they have been expected to sit in rows of chairs for centuries. Our classroom design predates girls’ education.
In fourth grade my son was placed in a 4th grade/5th grade independent study class. It was a new class and students were placed based in it based on teachers’ evaluation of who would do best in that environment (no testing or parent lobbying). When visiting the classroom, I noticed that the teacher had posted everyone’s birthday on the wall in a kind of distribution chart. Every single fourth grade boy in the class, and most 5th grade boys had a December or January birthday (November 30 was the grade cutoff for entering kindergarten). Since then I’ve been a firm believer in the theory that the difference in academic performance is largely based on differing maturity rates.
@mamalion - good observation.
Ah, the relative age effect. Most famous for hockey players.
I don’t follow @Otterma . In your example - the boys were all the youngest in the class? Because that is not the case today with the rampant "red shirting’ for sports.
I think, @suzyq7, that the Dec/Jan birthdays in a school with a Nov 30 cutoff would be the older ones.
It is absolutely not rampant everywhere.
@dfbdfb http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_human_resources/v050/50.3.fortin.html
There are many published studies that women outnumber men as college graduates and studies that show a grade disparity between the two genders click on the links in the above paper to see the studies referenced