<p>For an entirely different view, when asked, D’s school implied that NHS had nothing to do with them. Its a marketing scam to sell you stuff. The owners buy the PSAT data from college board and do direct mail campaigns. We threw the envelope away. </p>
<p>When D saw in a local students’ job application that she was a NHS member, D assume the kid not too bright for having fallen for a marketing scam.</p>
<p>I guess some school to participate - but respect for the designation is not universal.</p>
<p>The solicitations you get in the mail: “Congratulations…We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for this or that organization” usually followed by “send us a check for $60” or some such… are marketing schemes. I love the ones that include “Achievement” Certificates. These companies buy lists as toadstool mentioned. We get bombarded by them. Also, summer-travel educational trips that you somehow “qualify” for – which obviously can be fun, albeit expensive…but do nothing to enhance a college app.</p>
<p>These are absolutely not to be confused with the NHS at high school.</p>
<p>Just a point on the datum that 13 of 16 (or whatever) were male. I’ll bet that if you looked at the top 5% at those same schools, the picture would be very different. I think that the bell curve of academic ability/achievement is different for boys and girls. Why, I don’t know.</p>
<p>Hunt, you’ve got it backwards. 13/16 were FEmale. I suspect if you looked at the top 5% of whatever it was, the percentage would be more male than that, because, well, it would almost have to be.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you look at, say, the U.S. Senate, or the Fortune 500 CEOs . . . .</p>
<p>We live in a university town. As measured by grades and in-school honors, a substantially higher percentage of boys who have at least one parent from another country with the university–and not just those from Asia–are among the top performers than are sons of U.S.-born university professionals. So, it’s not just gender, but culture and individual personality that play into the outcomes, because I can name exceptions to the generalization I just made above. </p>
<p>As for NHS in our school, the sponsors and administration have made it into a big, selective deal with a selection process that is a mystery. In D’s class the end result was 21 girls and 4 boys inducted out of 80+ supposedly qualified students who actually went through the hoops of applying. I would have thought some of the boys who applied and were not selected would have been shoo-ins, while some little-known students who don’t have school leadership–but maybe do something in the community–were selected. In some ways I’m happy the unseen ones aren’t totally overlooked, but why so few slots? It creates lots of bad feelings every year.</p>
<p>It would have been a terrible mistake to give into the widely accepted belief that girls just aren’t wired to be good at math and science. It was not in their nature. </p>
<p>Now we hear the exact same arguement being used against boys, even by those who truly want to help boys. Boys/men just cannot be expected to learn to value and strive for those skills and subjects considered the traditional strengths of girls/women.</p>
<p>I get it. I really do. Men’s work has always had value, traits considered more common in men are more honorable. Keeping the home fires buring is respectable, charging into battle is heroic. So it’s much easier to grasp why a girl would want to be like a boy. But when women’s strengths have always been seen as not quite as good as boys, why would people encourage their boys to master those skills? You can see that in the assumption that boys/men CAN do girls/women’s “work” but they either chose not to or are prevented by testosterone. </p>
<p>If there was any doubt about this, I think this sums up it up beautifully,</p>
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<p>It’s not a genetic “boy thing” if it’s not true across cultures. </p>
<p>Also, the bastions of boys clubs in American are shrinking. I want my son to be successful in 30 years, not just now. In reading the writing on the wall, we made a deliberate effort to not let him off the hook anymore than we would a daughter. </p>
<p>It’s great that “well, girls are just not naturally good at math and science” is no longer considered okay to promote. Now we need to take that crucial next step and stop saying it’s okay to say, "Well, boys are just not good at those thing, so what can we do?’ </p>
<p>We can raise the standards, that’s what we can do!</p>
I still disagree. I think acknowledging differences in learning and development is important. If Johnny can’t make a polished Powerpoint at 10, but can do so at 11, what is the appropriate standard? If Jane can make a polished Powerpoint at 10 while Johnny can’t match her, should Johnny be pushed to achieve that standard? As long as they end up in the same place by the end of high school, why shouldn’t there be some flexibility? I guess I don’t see the harm in acknowledging and working with differences.</p>
<p>Males are wired to be competitive (hunter) and females are wired to be cooperative (gather). So I wonder in this context if the school/NHS/group requirements which lean toward cooperative behavior are biasing the selection process to the exclusion of the competitive males. (Ever wonder why boys like video games so much? Many video games are based on winning at something, killing something, overcoming the competition (online games/sports games/1st person shooters/strategy games), etc. So they are fulfilling the deep-seated need to be the best competitor, the winner, the vanquisher and the killer/provider.)</p>
<p>I absolutely do not support boys starting school a year later; my own son was ready to go. I support any child who is behind socially in starting school a year later. </p>
<p>I really wish you were fine with admitting that boys who are ready and that girls who are not ready are just as much normal boys and girls as the ones you are trying to cram into your narrow mold of “boy” and “girl.” </p>
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<p>Yes, I have my reasons. I am the parent of a boy and a partner of a man! </p>
<p>Boys and men are just as capable as girls and women. Whether it’s complaints about teachers who mark off for organization being unfair because boys are just “naturally disorgaznied” or adults who claim that men just simply cannot caretake their own children as well as mother, these things make me angry. </p>
<p>I do not appreciate a society that is continually trying to lower the bar for my son or teaching him that women’s success can only take place at the expense of mens. </p>
<p>It’s no improvement to me that instead of looking at girls and thinking they do not have nature to do something, that we are now looking at boys and thinking we are doing them a favor by making excuses for their lack in adapting to changes in society and the education required.</p>
So am I, and I do not appreciate that society is continually setting an arbitrary bar for my son and telling him that he’s not good enough because he doesn’t meet some silly standards that actually ARE feminized.</p>
<p>I think setting arbitrary standards and ignoring natural differences does great harm to small boys who are just as precious, dear and fragile as little girls.</p>
<p>Ah, yes, man as natural born killer. Now there is a sterotype that has greatly benefit young boys and teens. </p>
<p>So when girls compete to be the top in their class, that’s proof they are not naturally competitive. And when they win the Presidency of a club, that’s also proof they are not naturally competitive. </p>
<p>But when a boy wants to win a video game, that’s proof that he is not competitive but that he’s actually meeting a frustrated need to kill something.</p>
<p>To quote the great cinematic achievement Zoolander, “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.” </p>
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<p>And if we switch Jane and Johnny, that blows your whole theory. But if we don’t stop to check the genders of the students involved and instead promote that all students are capable and should be encourages to strive beyond their natural abilities, we have a win-win solution.</p>
<p>What is it about gender bias that is so comforting to people?</p>
<p>Can you give a few concrete examples of this? I don’t understand what standards you are seeing as silly because they are feminized. Are there non-silly, non-feminized version of these standards? </p>
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<p>Setting arbitray standards about what is allegedly “natural” for boys and girls does a great deal of harm to the boys and girls who don’t fall into those sterotypes we’ve come to mistakenly believe are genetically encoded.</p>
<p>All children deserve to be seen and valued as human beings. Neither parents nor society does children any favors by viewing them through lens that are predisposed to identifying and nuturing behaviors views as being positive to their sex and not encouraging the ones that are assumed to be only positive for the other sex.</p>
<p>I really wish there was a way of not knowing a child’s gender until they were at least three. Then we could see and value them for who they really are under the sea of pink and blue.</p>
<p>You really can’t tolerate any disagreement, can you PMK?</p>
<p>I was actually referring to a specific example in my child’s actual class. The results actually were that the girls published very nice presentations. The boys’s presentations, on the whole, were less polished but plenty informative. But since neatness and creativity were criteria, the boys all got zinged. Which is ludicrous in my view because beyond legibility, I don’t think the other should count. </p>
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Here’s my issue in a nutshell: striving is great, encouragement is great, support is great. But penalties are not good and that’s what boys face right now. I say again: if they all end up at their best places when they are ready to graduate, I have a major problem with judging each individual’s pace.</p>
Feel free to speak for yourself, but I can assure you that I know who my children really are and all three are all over the map in terms of gender stereotypes. My middle child (girl) fits almost all of the stereotypes of alpha males and I love that about her. My son is the gentle, nurturing child and I love that about him and take full advantage of the kisses and cuddles he still bestows on me. I love them for exactly who they are and none fits into a box set by anyone else. I want them to be the best they can be for themselves and if D2 isn’t warm and collaborative, that’s fine with me and if S isn’t colorful and neat, that’s ok too.</p>
<p>My son’s presentation was an uproariously funny perspective of the college tour from the small sibling in the back seat. I had to sit down and hold my head when I read it because the observations were so witty. But it wasn’t colorful and pretty and polished as some others that were less well written. But of course he was marked down. I don’t think that particular standard is valuable and I have no interest in helping him aspire to meet it.</p>
<p>Not to buck a trend, but I went to our hs’s NHS ceremony and I would say the gender division was equal if not biased toward males.</p>
<p>And :eek: many of the guys were athletes, including my football/lacrosse playing son!! </p>
<p>I know, it’s crazy ;)</p>
<p>Oh, and 2 out of the 3 editors of the school paper are boys too (although you may discount my son because he’s a sports editor, and it figures because he’s an athlete - - so that is infinitely inferior than features editor).</p>
<p>Good for you for giving them that freedom and lucky them for having parents who let htme be who they are!</p>
<p>So, then why the push for things like all boys starting school a year later? You have a girl that smashes the sterotypes, couldn’t you just as easily have a boy like that?</p>
<p>And what are the standards you feel have been feminized into being silly and are held against boys/men?</p>
There will always be room for individual kids to go earlier or later, but what I’d like is to remove the stigma of being older because I really do think that at age 5 a number is just too arbitrary. Maybe a set of readiness standards that includes things other than coloring in the lines or being neat and compliant for both sexes. I just happen to really think that many (and possibly) most boys would have more success by being a little older than the girls in their class. We know that nature blesses us with more boys than girls for a reason, so why the refusal to see that they are different and learn differently? I don’t like boys being stigmatized and medicated for being normal and not achieving milestones at the same rate as girls do. I have a huge, huge problem with that and think we should embrace a much larger range of normal.</p>
<p>ag54, Outlier-er! You have no relevance here, go away!</p>
<p>I think that’s terrific about yor hs’s NHS. While the largest activies represented were theater and music, we also had a lot of athletes, which I was really happy to see. </p>
<p>The more I think about the situation here, the more it strikes me that boys down here are shortchanged in terms of the culture being somewhat of an “either/or” one. There is still far too much of an expectation that great football players, for example, need not be great scholars. Or that scholars are only rarely athletic. The girls are all over the place, but the boys we’ve not set free yet.</p>