Boys in School
There’s quite a lot being written lately on how boys are suddenly doing much worse than girls in school.
I’m not a teacher or a psychologist to analyse the differences in the way boys and girls learn, but I’ve paid close attention to the sociology of the male-female dichotomy. I’ve had to. I hated school, I wasn’t popular, and being an outsider was never exactly fun... but it did teach me to observe, and be critical, of things that otherwise just seemed to be taken for granted. (I’m speaking here of course about Australia, but the problems here seem to extend to most western democracies right now).
I’m convinced that a lot of this male academic collapse is social, not just a technical issue of teaching methods -- although that certainly plays a very large part, possibly the larger part, I’m not sure. But a lot of boys define masculinity as whatever is not feminine. Once upon a time, education itself was masculine, as were all the best jobs, so hard study was socially accepted as masculine -- no problem there, for boys at least. Now, however, girls are doing well, there are fewer and fewer male teachers, and education is perceived as increasingly ‘feminine’. Adolescent boys (the ones I remember) will do just about anything to convince themselves and others of their masculinity. That means embracing everything that isn’t feminine. If girls are good at school, then boys have to be bad. And so they are.
This is a simplistic analysis, I know, but when dealing with large groups, generalisations are inevitable, and indeed necessary, to some extent. What to do about this dichotomous thinking? It comes naturally to all human beings, sadly, this black-and-white thought structure, that if it’s not one thing, it must be the other. (Sugar and spice and all-things-nice versus... slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails). You can’t reform human psychology, and it’s probably not a good idea to try.
The problem, I think, is that women have intruded onto what was previously ‘male only ‘ territory, and now men are left with nothing that is ‘exclusively masculine’... save contact sports and bad behaviour. Physicality, in other words, as opposed to intellect. Now I hate this conclusion, because I like seeing women getting into all the non-traditional roles it was previously assumed they either weren’t good at or had no interest in. I hate that the social conservative types who regret women ever left the kitchen might have a point on this. But they might.
My concern is that by devising a separate strategy exclusively for educating boys, you only end up exacerbating the gender dichotomy. Can boys and girls ever agree to ‘share’ education, as an equally feminine and masculine concept? I don’t know. This is primate-brain logic we’re talking about, compromise isn’t one of its more visible traits.
Next point; How do I reckon social factors are as large as technical factors in explaining boys’ decline? Well one, because boys never used to be bad at school, it only coincided with girls’ rise -- so scientifically speaking, that’s the only variable... save maybe the increasingly rare male teachers. And two, because the fact that girls are suddenly doing better than boys at stuff everyone used to say (and some still do say) that girls are biologically inferior at (mathematics and science) seems to indicate that those biological-determinate arguments were very silly in the first place.
Girls were never naturally worse at maths and science, and when those who agree with me tried to explain why you had to take all the social factors into consideration when considering girls’ worse performances in the classroom, the biological-determinists snorted, and called all such arguments ‘politically correct sophistry’. But the only conclusive evidence they had to demonstrate that girls were worse than boys at maths was that the test scores, at that time, showed that it was so.
Well times have changed, and in many classrooms in America or Australia today, you can find maths and science classes where the girls’ grades are superior. So where are the biological-determinists claiming that therefore, girls are biologically superior at maths and science, because their test scores prove it? Well today, they’re all arguing that the social and cultural factors have to be taken into account when analysing these results. Crazy.
The formation of a separate gender identity is so natural, it’s considered a right of passage. How many men reading this had really good female friends in high-school? Not just girl friends, but real buddies with whom you’d hang out on weekends, and tell all your most personal thoughts to? A few, maybe, but not many. I certainly didn’t, and I’m one of the few who might have actually liked to. And how many women can say the same of male friends at the same age? The need to establish a separate gender identity is tribal and primitive, and it dominates adolescent thinking. If girls go one way, boys must go the other... even if that road takes them off the edge of a cliff.
If I go off into la-la land for a moment, I might wish for more gender-neutral emphasis in primary schools, more co-ed uniforms (I’ve read some fascinating things about girls becoming more extroverted and boys and girls mixing far more in play groups where a single, co-ed uniform was introduced), more co-ed sports, etc. Yeah yeah, social engineering and all that... hey, all society is engineered, none of it’s natural -- if our culture were naturally determined by our genes, then there’d be no cultural diversity on Earth (as most human races are almost genetically identical) and all human beings would have the same values. Society is what we make it. You’re engaged in social engineering every time you tell your kids how to behave. They’re engaged in it every time they turn on the TV. If it were not so, we’d never have to have all these debates about what values we’re teaching our kids... because values are flexible, and are constantly shifting.
If girls and boys had more in common, from earlier ages, some of this dichotomous boy/girl stuff might not develop as radically. Boys and girls will always be different, and viva la difference... but difference need not dictate exclusivity, any more than black kids need only hang out with black kids, and white kids with white. Still happens, of course, but it shouldn’t. But you’ve gotta engineer it to make it stop.
It’s not a total solution of course, but I’m not hearing very much recognition of the role of gender identity in all this at all, when I listen to experts voicing their solutions. Because the boys, I think, are basically just suffering from a bad case of ‘girl germs’.
I’m not a teacher or a psychologist to analyse the differences in the way boys and girls learn, but I’ve paid close attention to the sociology of the male-female dichotomy. I’ve had to. I hated school, I wasn’t popular, and being an outsider was never exactly fun... but it did teach me to observe, and be critical, of things that otherwise just seemed to be taken for granted. (I’m speaking here of course about Australia, but the problems here seem to extend to most western democracies right now).
I’m convinced that a lot of this male academic collapse is social, not just a technical issue of teaching methods -- although that certainly plays a very large part, possibly the larger part, I’m not sure. But a lot of boys define masculinity as whatever is not feminine. Once upon a time, education itself was masculine, as were all the best jobs, so hard study was socially accepted as masculine -- no problem there, for boys at least. Now, however, girls are doing well, there are fewer and fewer male teachers, and education is perceived as increasingly ‘feminine’. Adolescent boys (the ones I remember) will do just about anything to convince themselves and others of their masculinity. That means embracing everything that isn’t feminine. If girls are good at school, then boys have to be bad. And so they are.
This is a simplistic analysis, I know, but when dealing with large groups, generalisations are inevitable, and indeed necessary, to some extent. What to do about this dichotomous thinking? It comes naturally to all human beings, sadly, this black-and-white thought structure, that if it’s not one thing, it must be the other. (Sugar and spice and all-things-nice versus... slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails). You can’t reform human psychology, and it’s probably not a good idea to try.
The problem, I think, is that women have intruded onto what was previously ‘male only ‘ territory, and now men are left with nothing that is ‘exclusively masculine’... save contact sports and bad behaviour. Physicality, in other words, as opposed to intellect. Now I hate this conclusion, because I like seeing women getting into all the non-traditional roles it was previously assumed they either weren’t good at or had no interest in. I hate that the social conservative types who regret women ever left the kitchen might have a point on this. But they might.
My concern is that by devising a separate strategy exclusively for educating boys, you only end up exacerbating the gender dichotomy. Can boys and girls ever agree to ‘share’ education, as an equally feminine and masculine concept? I don’t know. This is primate-brain logic we’re talking about, compromise isn’t one of its more visible traits.
Next point; How do I reckon social factors are as large as technical factors in explaining boys’ decline? Well one, because boys never used to be bad at school, it only coincided with girls’ rise -- so scientifically speaking, that’s the only variable... save maybe the increasingly rare male teachers. And two, because the fact that girls are suddenly doing better than boys at stuff everyone used to say (and some still do say) that girls are biologically inferior at (mathematics and science) seems to indicate that those biological-determinate arguments were very silly in the first place.
Girls were never naturally worse at maths and science, and when those who agree with me tried to explain why you had to take all the social factors into consideration when considering girls’ worse performances in the classroom, the biological-determinists snorted, and called all such arguments ‘politically correct sophistry’. But the only conclusive evidence they had to demonstrate that girls were worse than boys at maths was that the test scores, at that time, showed that it was so.
Well times have changed, and in many classrooms in America or Australia today, you can find maths and science classes where the girls’ grades are superior. So where are the biological-determinists claiming that therefore, girls are biologically superior at maths and science, because their test scores prove it? Well today, they’re all arguing that the social and cultural factors have to be taken into account when analysing these results. Crazy.
The formation of a separate gender identity is so natural, it’s considered a right of passage. How many men reading this had really good female friends in high-school? Not just girl friends, but real buddies with whom you’d hang out on weekends, and tell all your most personal thoughts to? A few, maybe, but not many. I certainly didn’t, and I’m one of the few who might have actually liked to. And how many women can say the same of male friends at the same age? The need to establish a separate gender identity is tribal and primitive, and it dominates adolescent thinking. If girls go one way, boys must go the other... even if that road takes them off the edge of a cliff.
If I go off into la-la land for a moment, I might wish for more gender-neutral emphasis in primary schools, more co-ed uniforms (I’ve read some fascinating things about girls becoming more extroverted and boys and girls mixing far more in play groups where a single, co-ed uniform was introduced), more co-ed sports, etc. Yeah yeah, social engineering and all that... hey, all society is engineered, none of it’s natural -- if our culture were naturally determined by our genes, then there’d be no cultural diversity on Earth (as most human races are almost genetically identical) and all human beings would have the same values. Society is what we make it. You’re engaged in social engineering every time you tell your kids how to behave. They’re engaged in it every time they turn on the TV. If it were not so, we’d never have to have all these debates about what values we’re teaching our kids... because values are flexible, and are constantly shifting.
If girls and boys had more in common, from earlier ages, some of this dichotomous boy/girl stuff might not develop as radically. Boys and girls will always be different, and viva la difference... but difference need not dictate exclusivity, any more than black kids need only hang out with black kids, and white kids with white. Still happens, of course, but it shouldn’t. But you’ve gotta engineer it to make it stop.
It’s not a total solution of course, but I’m not hearing very much recognition of the role of gender identity in all this at all, when I listen to experts voicing their solutions. Because the boys, I think, are basically just suffering from a bad case of ‘girl germs’.
4 Comments:
>>> But the only conclusive evidence they had to demonstrate that girls were worse than boys at maths was that the test scores, at that time, showed that it was so. <<<
Well, to be very un-PC but completely accurate, if you pay any attention to the history of Math and Science, at the high-end of abstract progress, approximately, oh, 99.8% of the progress-making leaders and great thinkers have been (and still are, as best I can tell) men.
If you look closer you see that, yeah there are women scientists in the more experimental and observational fields, and those fields of science that are relatively light on abstract math (ie, biology, chemistry, astronomy, geology). But men utterly and completely own the high reaches of math and theoretical physics.
(Madam Curie was great and all and she brought home two Nobel prizes. But she was basically doing chemistry experiments. I've actually never heard of any woman being involved in the quantum physics revolution, or of the current supersymmetry type of efforts).
Now that's a very curious thing.
This near-100% ratio just can't result from social norms and pressures, IMHO.
In every other field I can think of, there are always SOME women who rise above society's norms to become exceptional.
The recent farcical episode involving Harvard President Lawrence Summers brought to light that this pretty much seems to be the case (he got in trouble for positing a cause for the undisputed reality that males still cling to a frustrating and embarassing dominance in math & abstract sciences). For some reason, males are better than females at high-end math and abstract science.
That being the obvious case, it's only natural to conclude that not-fully-grown humans might display the same pattern. And I very strongly suspect they do, really. But the level of math taught to school kids is not the high abstract end of math or quantum physics. It's just not that hard; mastering teenage math is just a question of diligence and competent teaching, unless you're really a rock And last I heard, it remains an embarrassment to ETS and other test-makers that boys still dominante the far right end of the bell curve in math (regardless of how the mean scores may compare).
About school grades: don't know about your experiece Joel, but I think nothing's more common than some eager prim & proper schoolgirl who gets along with her teachers and does her homework and gets straight-A's ... but she's not really a very intelligent person.
She's the one who goes on to major in Education or Marketing, while the brooding weird antisocial guy in the corner winds up winning a Fields medal 20 year later -- of which, BTW, there has been about 45 winners, none of them with tits, far as I know.
And Fields medal caliber Math is done by young people in their 20s -- so all those modern girls who were getting good grades in school in just the past 10 or 12 years should have already been making their mark, if there are any marks to be made by them. We'll see.
I'd be happy to be shown wrong by the way. I dig smart chicks. Especailly ones with the librarian look and the Lisa Loeb glasses. Mmmmm
There's clearly something going on at the extreme high-end of mathematics... but that's such a small segment of the population it's not really what I'm talking about. Most of everyone, male or female, can't do that kind of maths. I only meant to say that broad generalisations across entire genders are silly... and you can't take the tiny percentage of males who win the Fields Medal as indicative of male performance on-average. They certainly say nothing of my own mathematics -- my maths suck, and always have. But my language skills have always been way above average... which according to the usual clichés is a female profile.
It would be interesting to imagine this discussion in, say the year 1850. Men dominated medicine, law, politics, science, engineering, military, etc, etc. Women showed no aptitude for any of it, as far as anyone could see (they were not, of course, looking very hard). And the empirical evidence, of course, was wrong. But then, perhaps that's not a fair argument, because that largely happened as women were disallowed from universities.
So how about those fields that don't require university educations? How many great female painters spring to mind? Composers? There's a few novelists, for sure, but compared to the number of men? More empirical evidence that women don't have aptitude here, either. The problem is, if empirical evidence is based only upon observable data, then empirical evidence isn't empirical at all, because what is observable from one generation to the next is always changing.
Well I'm a guy, and I've always had more interest in math than actual aptitude. I have read that on standardized tests and IQ tests re: math, it's the men who have fat tails (as opposed to women, heh-heh). That is, men occupy both the extreme smart AND extreme dumb ends of the normal distribution curve.
I've also read that, like in math, men dominate the genius end of symphonic composing. Seems to agree with my passing familiarity of classical music, but I'm not so knowledgeable about modern trends there.
The novels are an interesting question. I don't doubt that women may on average have better verbal skills, but the greatest novelists? I'm frankly biased here, relating better to men's experiences, so I prefer their novels. I probably don't give female novelists much of a chance, except for JK the billionaire. But even Harry Potter series has a few annoying traits that I suspect a man woudn't have repeated.
Hi Mark
Well many of the most annoying things I've ever read have been written by men, and some of the best by women, so I can't help you there! As an SF author, I've found some of CJ Cherryh's mid-career work just inspirational. That's Carolyn Janice Cherryh.
I still recall fondly the story about a 12-year-old boy who absolutely refused to believe, when told, that his favorite author Andre Norton was a woman. It took a captioned photograph to bring him around. Whether he immediately stopped liking her work or not, I don't know...
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