<p>Wisteria:</p>
<p>Alas, that is how it's been seen at our hs. The math team dies practically every year. My S tried hard to recruit more members, but the likely suspects were already in the science team. </p>
<p>Anyway, we're getting a bit away from the main topic, but I appreciate Dadguy's insights into the differences between female and male math graduates.</p>
<p>What the data fails to mention is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Women make up the majority of people in the world and the U.S.</li>
<li>While women are doing better on average, men make up the majority of the pool on both ends (i.e. smart/dumb, successful/unsuccessful)</li>
</ol>
<p>
[quote]
Women make up the majority of people in the world and the U.S.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The relevant statistics should not include all women (women live longer than men, but 80 year old women do not take the SAT) nor all the world (there is a serious gender imbalance in China, and it's not in women's favor).<br>
The statistics that count in the context of this discussion are the number of males and females in the relevant age groups. The 2000 census broke the age groups into 15-19 and 20-24. In both groups men have a slight numerical advantage:
15-19: 10.391M (men)'; 9,828 (women)
20-24: 9.687M (men); 9.276 (women)
<a href="http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_QTP1&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U%5B/url%5D">http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_QTP1&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U</a></p>
<p>Given that men outnumber women in the relevant age cohort, it is interesting to recall the data provided by Wisteria in post #35 about male and female test takers and the interpretation of these data.</p>
<p>
[quote]
According to the website below, 677,000 women took the test in 2000, scoring a median of 1001 in M+V.</p>
<p>In the same year, 583,000 men took the test, scoring a median of 1040 in M+V.</p>
[/quote]
</a></p>
<p>i agree that women on average are slightly smarter than men but the smartest ones are still men and this goes for almost every field from medical research to fashion.</p>
<p>The thread is not about whether men are smarter than women, but about the so-called boys crisis. Presumably, the smartest men are not the ones who are in crisis. And the question is if there is a crisis, what are its causes.</p>
<p>yay for muliebrity!!! haha who doesnt love women? ;)</p>
<p>As a girl with horrible handwriting (who has actually had to read aloud several in-class essays to teachers because they couldn't read them) I think it's b ull s hit to say that girls do better on essays because of handwriting. I have never had a grade adversley effected because of my handwriting, so I don't know why a boy would. Also, now a days almost all papers (unless they are in-class) are typed, so handwriting would have nothing to do with that.</p>
<p>"I have never had a grade adversley effected because of my handwriting, so I don't know why a boy would."</p>
<p>I have hideous handwriting myself, and I have had numerous grades marked down due to my bad handwriting, not purely because of the handwriting, but because my "n" looked like an "m", and things like that. Mostly in English classes and such.</p>
<p>Not nearly enough to make an impact on the GPA, but a point here or there on quarter grades and such.</p>
<p>So much crap gets thrown together in a lot of these discussions!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Harvard honors -- almost certainly explained by grading differences in humanities vs. sciences, which have been well-documented everywhere. Hardly a "boy crisis". (Interestingly, my subjective feel based on anecdotal evidence from my kids and their friends is that girls are migrating toward math/science at an increasing rate. Certainly, a greater percentage now than 20 years ago. These things take several generations to change.)</p></li>
<li><p>Brown/MIT admissions data -- colleges with larger humanities reputations or historical women's colleges are going to draw more female applicants (and get a higher yield from women), and vice versa. All of them want to maintain rough gender balance. So that is going to produce disparities in admissions data like the ones cited. Again -- hardly a boy crisis.</p></li>
<li><p>If there is a "boy crisis", where are the boys? There are some fields where 17-25 year-old boys are over-represented: the military, prisons, professional and semi-professional sports (not just "major leagues", and certainly including D1 football), high-paying apprenticeship-trained blue-collar jobs (like building trades and mining), Mormon missions, crime. Some of those are OK, some not. I suspect, when you boil it down, that crime and prison have a lot to do with the boy-crisis gross numbers. That's an area of legitimate concern, but it doesn't have a whole lot to do with who is getting into Brown or graduating with honors at Harvard. Or handwriting.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>"I believe that lifestyle choices determine the wage gap mentioned in the media. The media promotes the idea of unequal wages becauses it grabs people's attention. When people use this argument to make the case that boys in this country don't need any help, it seems disingenuous to me."</p>
<p>I agree. Also, men tend to be more willing to take the most dangerous jobs that will of course pay well. And stay-at-home-moms like me can't expect to jump back into the workforce and not take a hit in both paycheck & prestige level. We have a few Mr. Moms in town and every single one made that choice because the wife was in a better earnings/advancement position.</p>
<p>In the population, there are more women than men. The reason that the CIA factbook reports more high school aged boys than girls is due to the largely male illegal immigration in schools. The statistics fail to recognize the illegal immigration among men. Without that, there are more women than men high school aged.</p>
<p>P.S. Ivies seem to like felony convictions on some people. There is a convicted felon who got into Brown with less than mediocre numbers.</p>
<p>Graduating with honors at Harvard is tantamount to shooting a fish in a barrel and is not the meaningful. They are plagued by grade inflation.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Given that men outnumber women in the relevant age cohort, it is interesting to recall the data provided by Wisteria in post #35 about male and female test takers and the interpretation of these data.
[/quote]
I think you're implying there that men outnumber women in that age range in the US population, yet still more women take the SAT than men. I believe it's been shown that as more of a specific population begins to take the SAT, average scores tend to be lower which would seem to support that theory. </p>
<p>However, given that the SAT data has been around for 30 years though, and the score differences have persisted that entire time, it's questionable to think that this situation, where men outnumber women in the age group and yet more women continuously take the SAT test, has existed every single year since then. </p>
<p>And once again, if you break it down by individual states, you will find that even in states where women are roughly equal to men in that age range or where women actually outnumber men, the score difference still exists. You also don't see any sort of the variance you would expect in the average SAT scores in these cases. You would expect to see it widely increase or decrease in the extreme cases, yet it remains fairly steady.</p>
<p>I try to respect other people's opinions, but I find marite's suggestion absolutely horrifying - some people have personalities that are not suited at ALL for military service. I'm one of them, and I don't think there should be drafts for social reasons. (I've heard from people in countries where they have a draft without any alternative civil service, and they know people who suffer from extreme depression after being discharged.)</p>
<p>Anyway, I don't know what to think of studies like this, because I plan to work hard in college and not party all the time and I'm male. It's always important not to generalize all males when talking about this, which is why suggestions like reinstating gender-segregrated public schools are bad too.</p>
<p>Mi-Lie:</p>
<p>You need to cultivate a sense of humor.</p>
<p>marite, smart men may be in crisis, depending on your expectations. </p>
<p>My sons would both qualify as 'smart' boys. Not, perhaps, in the same rarified decile as your gifted son, but in the top deciles of math and language by any standard. They are not in crisis because we choose not to see them as such. </p>
<p>If we expected them to put in hours of hours of homework, to acquiesce to authority and to comply with more 'female' expectations of behavior--we might be in a bit of a panic. Certainly, if we expected them to achieve alongside girls in their primary and secondary schools, the past fifteen years of teacher conferences would have been a nightmare!</p>
<p>As it is, we're not that surprised by a myriad of detentions and fatigues. Even a trip or two to the local police station hasn't been out of our realm of probabilities. We expect a strong interest in sports and horseplay. We try to counterbalance the strong interest in computers with programming challenges--but the interest does not surprise us. We're not surprised that they try to get all their homework done at school. We're not surprised by their nearly illegible handwriting, (though their typing speed is a bit of a surprise). </p>
<p>For all of that typical behavior, they have managed to nurture--with our support-- a love of reading, history, art, music and travel. Both will read humanities subjects as undergraduates.</p>
<p>In the balance, I am not the least bit worried about their prospects. Will they ever perform at the highest highest levels in academia? Yet to be seen. </p>
<p>Do they need to perform at the highest highest levels of academia? Questionable. </p>
<p>Either way, will they outearn the majority of their female counterparts? Undoubtably.</p>
<p>Cheers, I think you present an important value. It seems to me that boys, in general, have been treated with the expectation by American society that they will be "bad". It's an inverse of the halo effect. I believe that typical boy behavior is punished and typical girl behavior is rewarded. Note: I acknowledge that not all boys behave in this typical "boy" fashion and not all girls behave in a stereotypical "girl" fashion. So no flames, please! </p>
<p>But people should think -- how many times do you see a group of boys in a mall, and instinctively assume they are up to no good? I saw differences in gender behavior as a substitute and computer teacher, and I think the fact that I only have boys enabled me to be more understanding. But I can remember at least a couple of occasions when my boys were treated as if they were trouble. </p>
<p>Once, in a tourist location, I was in a gift shop with my two pre-teenage boys, but it was not clear to an observer that we were together. I noticed the proprietor really watching my kids, as if expecting them to break or steal something. When I made it clear that they were with me, that sense disappeared. And once, at a private club, my kids were swimming in an indoor pool -- again, they were 10 or 12. There was patio furniture in the pool, which was there when we arrived. I was reading a book, so it wasn't obvious that they were with me. A lifeguard proceeded to give them a hard time, accusing them of putting the furniture in the pool -- it seemed obvious to me that it was because they were boys of a certain age. My kids are both quiet and well behaved so it seems that their gender was what made people suspicious.</p>
<p>The discussion on these related threads is too hung up on the word "crisis." It's a loaded word, debatable by how one defines a crisis, which depends on one's perspective. It's a headline word, used by Newsweek on the cover of its Jan. 30 issue to grab attention from the newstand. The on-line story about the same issue was titled, "The Trouble with Boys."</p>
<p>So to ask the question this way --- is there a boy crisis? --- is like crafting a survey question to get the answers one wants. Even those who are concerned about the gender gap may not believe it fullly rises to the occasion of "crisis" for the majority of boys. Why not ask the question this way: is the steadily widening gap in educational achievement between American males and females a problem worthy of concern, attention, study, and action? Is the issue important? People will answer differently, I believe, if you take the "c" word out of the question.</p>
<p>For example, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling, not known to be liberal or histrionic in her statements, said the gender gap has "profound implications for the economy, society, families, and democracy." </p>
<p>An issue that may not be crisis (not yet anyway) but is not mere myth either. My answer to "is there a boy crisis?" would be similar to how Michael Gurian answered Jay Mathews in the Washington Post article about the Education Sector report (also quoted in the NYT article cited by the OP). It was not a piece of balanced reporting IMO, pretty much buying into the no-problem-here stance of the sector's report, but Mathews did make the effort to call Gurian for one opposing viewpoint. Gurian's answer, paraphrased because I no longer have the article, is that it didn't bother him if "crisis" was not the word used to describe the gender gap in achievement, but he added that the study did not consider the range and scope of problems facing boys and was not definitive. Mathews did not explore this with Gurian, having gotten the quote he needed to give the article the appearance (unconvincing IMO) of being fair. </p>
<p>For those at the high-income level, in the corridors of Ivy and top colleges and elite private schools, I would agree there's no crisis in the gender gap. And even if there were a problem for some boys in some schools, their parents have the means and options to switch schools or take whatever steps necessary to get their boys back on track.</p>
<p>For those at the low end of the socio-economic ladder, it's hard to look at the huge gap in achievement for black and Latino students and not see a major problem. Is it a crisis? Can you call something a crisis if it's been the status quo for 20 years or so? Personally, if I lived in those communities, if these were my sons, I would say yes. But for majority America, it is certainly not a crisis as defined by something that is compelling enough to spur political action. (Except maybe in L.A., but the demographics are different here.)</p>
<p>So, looking neither to the very high or the very low, is there a "crisis" in the achievement gap between American boys and girls or is there simply a problem like many others, an issue that creates concern and deserves some attention and additional study to find possible solutions. I would go with the latter. If the numbers of men and women enrolling in college and attaining degrees had stabilized at roughly equal, even though there are more men than women of college age (51.5 percent of 18-24 year olds are male), there wouldn't be as much concern and media attention. But parity was reached in the 1980s for most ethnic groups, including whites, and Asian women surpassed men in the 1990s. The college gender gap continues to grow. It is of concern, IMO, since as someone else pointed out, these men include the future fathers in our country. In an increasingly technological and global economy, can we afford to see our nation's male citizens significantly undereducated? And think of it this way: these men with inadequate educations will one day be part of couples, part of families, that will have much fewer options available to them. At that point, the crisis is likely to be one for the families and individuals involved. </p>
<p>Here is something I would like to see researched: </p>
<pre><code>What words were used to headline and promote the 1992 AAUW report that claimed the education system at the time was shortchanging girls and had to be revamped? Note that in 1992 in CA at least, women were already surging ahead of men in college enrollment among blacks, whites, and Latinos. Discrimination against women in education had been outlawed 20 years earlier, by Title 9 in 1972. Yet the AAUW report set off strident calls for reform in education to help girls achieve and federal and other programs sprung up, billions of dollars were spent, to find new ways to encourage girls and help them excel, especially in math and science. And it worked.
</code></pre>
<p>But given that women were already overtaking men in college and that girls were already seeing gains in tests scores, how much hyperbole went into the 1992 media reports of the "shortchanging" of girls in American schools? And why isn't the the problem with boys in school worth the same attention and investment?</p>
<p>jazzymom, what a thoughtful analysis. I agree that words like "crisis" create an emotional climate in which it is difficult to have a reasonable discussion. As a mom, and one who in earlier years subscribed to a strong feminist viewpoint, I think there is a climate of male-bashing in which it is ok to abandon boys because women were downtrodden for so many years. I agree that that was unfair. But I think it is a dangerous trend to continue to bolster female achievement at the cost of young men's. I just subscribe to an ideal of fair opportunity for everyone, regardless of gender or race. Throwing an entire segment of society to the wolves doesn't bode well for our society at large.</p>
<p>Boy crisis? Ha! </p>
<p>I think it's more like a "missing your mommy" crisis. The guys in the article apparently don't know how to get along in college without their moms making them turn off the xbox and go to bed on time. As long as they're getting by they don't care if the effort isn't their best. They can't take care of themselves. But not all boys are pigs, and girls can be pigs too. </p>
<p>The solution to this so-called crisis doesn't come from society- it comes from the boys themselves. Then society can deal with real gender issues- like salary inequitites for women who get the 4.0 and the three internships.</p>
<p>And when the boys clean up their act, they just might get a DATE.</p>