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Understanding the ripple effects of underachieving boys
Submitted by anthony on Fri, 2010-11-12 16:21
Article here. Excerpt:
'In American schools, boys are underachieving and girls are excelling. This gender gap in academic achievement is evident as early as kindergarten. The longer students are in school, the wider the gap becomes.
Boys are more likely than girls to earn poor grades, be held back a grade, have a learning disability, form a negative attitude toward school, drop out or get suspended or expelled.
The education gender gap is affecting colleges, the workforce, the marriage rate and the fatherlessness rate in America.
...
This shift means that women will increasingly get the highly paid jobs while men will experience a drop in earnings. This is already happening. Men in their 30's are the first generation to earn significantly less than their fathers' generation did at the same age. As jobs that require little education increasingly shrink, more and more men will become unemployed.
As the gap continues to grow, fewer college-educated women are able to find college-educated men to marry. Many of these women are choosing not to marry at all rather than marry non-college-educated men who are likely to earn significantly less than they do.
...
The National Center for Fathering found that 72 percent of Americans think that fatherlessness is the most significant social problem facing our nation. America is the world's leader in fatherless families.'
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Comments
@ NWOslave
@ NWOslave
Actually estimates for boys and girls IQ score has either been that they have the same average or that boys are slightly higher (which I've heard kicks in at about 16).
Obviously that doesn't change any of your point which I completely agree with. I would bring up IQ scores to squelch any "boys are inferior" crap but not to show discrimination towards boys in IQ tests.
I'm not sure about the research but I have a good idea that standardized tests have a female bias to it, even the math is very verbal. I also remember my friend being in high school and he would usually get the physics problems right but because he didn't formulate the steps "correctly" he lost alot of points. Something is amiss when the person with the rights answer gets less points than the person with the wrong answer (who can't work the formulations) gets more points for basically following the rules. The organition is empty if you don't understand how to get the answer so it should never be more rewarded than a correct answer.
Where is NWOslave's post?
Where is NWOslave's post?
In the comment section of
In the comment section of the article. I just didn't want to sidetrack the comments there so I posted it here.
I vas only folloving orders!
My brilliant son once had his fractions work marked wrong because he reduced with the greater factor first rather than the smaller as his (female) teacher insisted. She didn't understand math, but she was very good at recipes!
The girls, whether they understood the concepts or not, all followed her instructions with ovine obedience, getting the questions "right."
This is why the "grades" don't match ability, turning young boys off school early.
a few ideas
Lol, what accent is that?
There is a significant problem in school which is putting emphasis on following instructions/rules when it should be about thinking and intelligence. Its odd how feminists talk about empowering females when alot of the success of Feminism and praise of women in academics (in the form of grades) seems to have to do with following rules and following the herd. Its should be called empowering the female heard.
Anyways, I think boys would be much more engaged if academics didn't emphasize "diligence over intelligence" as others have said. Not only do I think we should stop giving grades based on who did more work or who followed the arbitrary instructions but that we should encourage thinking (not memorization alone), application, and more creativity/exploration. Not only would you be creating more productive individuals but I think students themselves would be better off (more engaged, confident, and capable). To give some examples (im mostly considering the high school level) of what I mean if you have a philosophy class don't ask the students to memorize dates and names or the history of it. Make sure the students actually understand the philosophies. If you want to get more advanced see if the students can make a particular philosophy relevant to some problem they already know of. Let students answer a problem in their own way to encourage their on thinking/philosophy. In science labs (and because its HS their not advanced) don't just have students follow directions/recreate results have them come up with a creative solution to some problem such as launching an egg encased in something you make and not let the egg break. Encourage students to ask question in science that build on what they already know. Pick a theme and allow students to write a report ralating to that from a book or story they choose. The only problem is that teachers might actually have to teach students if they did this kind of stuff.
To be honest I really only know that high schools aren't engaging in that they don't encourage enough thinking and comming up with ideas but I don't know how to create that environment.