Why Girls Do Better At School 690
An anonymous reader writes "A new study explains why girls do better at school, even when their scores on standardized tests remain low. Researchers from University of Georgia and Columbia University say the variation in school grades between boys and girls may be because girls have a better attitude toward learning than boys. One of the study's lead authors, Christopher Cornwell, said, 'The skill that matters the most in regards to how teachers graded their students is what we refer to as "approaches toward learning." You can think of "approaches to learning" as a rough measure of what a child's attitude toward school is: It includes six items that rate the child's attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization. I think that anybody who's a parent of boys and girls can tell you that girls are more of all of that.' Cornwell went on about what effect this has had now that education has become more pervasive: 'We seem to have gotten to a point in the popular consciousness where people are recognizing the story in these data: Men are falling behind relative to women. Economists have looked at this from a number of different angles, but it's in educational assessments that you make your mark for the labor market. Men's rate of college going has slowed in recent years whereas women's has not, but if you roll the story back far enough, to the 60s and 70s, women were going to college in much fewer numbers. It's at a point now where you've got women earning upward of 60 percent of the bachelors' degrees awarded every year.'"
Going to get modded down as sexist for this, but.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Girls in general are natural rule-followers. They do well in school because they follow the rules, work harder, pay attention more, etc. Teachers also cut them a lot more slack, especially when they lay on the charm or waterworks.
But boys are still smarter.
And I'd much rather be smarter in the end. Following the rules, paying attention in class, and kissing your teachers' asses can only carry you so far without real intelligence to back it up. And most of the A-student girls I went to school with were dumb as cold shit compared to me on my laziest B-student day. If you need someone to get the grade, fine--go to the girl. But if you need someone to get you to the moon--your best bet is still the guy.
Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, as I'm sure many of you politically-correct pansies will be falling over yourselves to point out.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:2, Insightful)
"You tread heavily, but you speak the truth."
School targets girls (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
I should probably read TFA, but this is Slashdot. So, uhh, if girls do worse on standardized tests, how do we conclude they do better at school?
Let me guess. This is all going to come down to some kind of thing where when the girls underperform, we change the school, and when the boys underperform, we change the boys.
To try to keep a rant short, let's see why boys do so poorly. Could it have anything to do with rampant gender discrimination at the primary level and being forcefed feminist nonsense and guilt-tripping at the secondary level?
Jeebus. I remember many times when we did projects in class in elementary that the girls were given more options for what they could do than boys. Why? Well, everyone knows girls are more responsible than boys. One year even it was a school-wide policy that during indoor recess, the girls had the option to go to the gym to play basketball or volleyball, but the boys had to stay in their classroom.
Hell, I even remember one teacher I had who once decided to punish all the boys because of a few in the back who were acting up. Why? Well, we had it coming. I challenged the teacher about how it was fair to punish me when I hadn't done anything wrong, and I'll never forget the response. "You're just as well-behaved as a girl, but it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the boys if I let you off." Holy shit.
How about if we just get rid of gender stereotyping and discrimination? How about if we stop imprinting girls with math phobia? How about if we stop treating boys like they're already rapists and thugs?
Or is that just asking too damned much?
Why Girls Do Better At School (Score:1, Insightful)
There actually have been a number of studies done that state the way that the male and female mind learn effectively are quite different. The female mind tends to learn extremely well in a more social interaction of sitting around listening and exchanging information. They will actually bond better in relaxed social situations, and learn effectively in that sort of environment which in a lot of ways is very similar to a classroom environment.
Males, on the other hand, are more apt to retain information and forge bonds if activity is involved. This activity may be related or unrelated to the subject being learned. I know myself as a male, I learn more effectively if I am actually doing something related to the subject. Lab was great in school... Sitting there listening to Ben Stein was more difficult...
Re:Differing learning styles (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that through much of history men have married women with lower levels of educational attainment and income, and been able to be happy in those relationships without considering their wives "low-lives", I'm not sure why the reverse would be impossible.
Feminization of US schools (Score:5, Insightful)
Before even clicking on the link, I knew this was an American study. Schools in the US, especially elementary schools, are massively dominated by women. Boys do generally have more difficulty sitting still for long periods, and need to use up their physical energy. This used to be handled by recess periods and sports. They could run around, play games, be competitive, get a bit tired - and be ready the next period of sitting still.
This is no longer allowed. Competitive sports are out, even pretty tame things like tag or dodgeball. Playgrounds have to be ultra-safe, which means utterly boring. Because virtually all teachers and administrators in elementary schools are women, there is very little understanding of boys' needs. They are expected to behave like perfect little...girls.
Is it any wonder they do poorly in school?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Differing learning styles (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Differing learning styles (Score:4, Insightful)
It's because feminism has completely failed to address this part of the gender double-standard. They wanted equality, but on their own terms without any risk of role reversal. In the end, it's an Orwellian thing where all genders are equal but some genders and more equal than other genders.
Sexist? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I should start support groups, activist organizations, and demand equality?
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
At what point is writing an inflammatory post with nothing to back it up (his post is nothing more than "boys are smarter because I say so") trolling?
If it's just an "opinion" then there's nothing to argue against, because he's quoted no actual facts.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't seem terribly smart to me to destroy your own future because you don't follow the rules and don't work harder.
This is not a fair statement to make about children. Kids do not have the ability to look that far into the future. Girls aren't better students because they are thinking about their future careers, they are better students because of either biological differences and/or society norms that make them more obedient.
The best students are the ones whose parents do a good job of instilling values which will help them later in life. Almost any kid left to their own devices is just going to want to play.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? GP's post is almost entirely blatant, over-the-top sexism. Replace female and male with a couple of different races and maybe it will be easier for you to see.
Re:School targets girls (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine anything less useful for high-performing students than group work in math class. It does nothing more than create a pool of free tutors to help the teacher.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
To this day I am extremely biter about the outcome. I had to take extra courses and summer classes to get myself back into the AP tracks in high school. I went on to graduate with honors in mathematics and received a PhD in Computer Science. I imagine the girls who struggled with 6th grade mathematics material aren't still in technical fields but hey, they were the ones who "worked hard" and accepted the system so they got accelerated.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no.
He posted the application of Occam's Razor to to situation described in TFA. Instead of grasping at straws and coming up with insanely convoluted reasons why girls "look" better but perform worse in school, he bluntly stated the most straightforward explanation.
That doesn't make his explanation correct, but class grades describe performance viewed through the social filter of the professor; test scores have no such filter.
Or... Girls socialize better. Film at 11.
An Experiment (Score:2, Insightful)
Asians in general are natural rule-followers. They do well in school because they follow the rules, work harder, pay attention more, etc. Teachers also cut them a lot more slack, especially when they lay on the charm or waterworks.
But whites are still smarter.
And I'd much rather be smarter in the end. Following the rules, paying attention in class, and kissing your teachers' asses can only carry you so far without real intelligence to back it up. And most of the A-student Asians I went to school with were dumb as cold shit compared to me, the caucasian, on my laziest B-student day. If you need someone to get the grade, fine--go to the Asian. But if you need someone to get you to the moon--your best bet is still a white person.
Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, as I'm sure many of you politically-correct pansies will be falling over yourselves to point out.
Will this get modded to +5 like the parent post? Why or why not?
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Girls in general are natural rule-followers.
I submit my co-workers as a counterexample. Anything but rule followers. Nearly every woman I have worked with wants to do things her way and her way only, standards be damned.
That being said, the problem here is gender discrimination.
What do we do with this study?
The narrative here is that since girls are getting more college degrees that they're somehow better. Why do they earn less? Why do they do more poorly at standardized testing?
It could be that percent of degrees being awarded to women is a bad metric. I'd suspect it's simply because higher learning is simply more accessible to women. Let's skip over the gender-specific scholarships, because frankly they're probably not significant. How many women end up clashing swords with their families over trivial matters? How many parents try to push their daughters out to the streets instead of letting them stay at home while they finish a degree?
There's a whole lot of crap that's being missed by this troll story.
But boys are still smarter.
No, no, a thousand times NO. You cannot judge somebody by the contents of their pants. Ok?
That is the big fucking elephant in the room that gets missed every time here. We want gender equality, right? We want career women, right? What about house-husbands? Oops, can't have that, sounds too much like homosexuality and weakness.
Women are never going to be equal until we get rid of gender stereotypes. And I mean really equal, as in being required to sign up for selective service, as in protecting boys' genitals from mutilation as well as girls' genitals. And that will never happen as long as we continue to judge, categorize, and discriminate against our children by their body parts.
Socialization starts in the cradle. Are boys and girls different? Yes. I couldn't be transgendered if male and female brains were biologically the same. What that doesn't mean is that we can take women who have been told from day one that their biggest achievement in life will be having children and compare them to men who have been told from day one that if they don't get a real job it's the gutter for them.
The way forward in my view is to find some middle ground. Of course, I'd be happy just extending that same threat of "in the gutter" to girls and taking away benefits for getting pregnant (welfare, subsidized housing, medicaid etc). Of course put in the exemptions for rape, etc.
Either that or let's just give up on this whole idea of gender equality if we can't move past the men are expendable meme vs. protect women so they can get pregnant, fuck all who pays for the pregnancy and child care.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
questioning feminism and state sponsored discrimination is not hatred.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
You're using the fact that women didn't receive the same education as men until.... well, the 1970s in the US as an excuse to continue in your misogyny. Not to mention that until about the 1920s, women's jobs were housewives, house maids and possibly cooks. After that, it expanded to secretary.
So yeah, you're not really doing well in your argument.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
So in short, you were a lazy fuck and got left behind, and they worked hard and got ahead? Wow, I'm shocked by that outcome. I'm sure once you join the workforce, you'll find that's totally not the case, and that people will reward you for your innate ability to pull B-level work with no effort.
Totally.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Men have a broader distribution than women in just about everything. If this is also the case for smarts, that would give the same observation. It would also mean more men are at the bottom of society, which is the case.
My School (Score:2, Insightful)
In grade 8 I pointed this out and got sent to the office for offending the teachers. When I finally got to high school I got to have male teachers, hands down male teachers make better overall teachers because they focus lessons more evenly over genders, female teachers slant towards female only subjects but male teachers don't.
I think this study needs to look at girl vs boy marks vs male / female teachers. I'm willing to bet that the study would find that marks get a better spreed when you have male teachers and girls do better when you have female teachers.
There is one other reason that I think this happens. Boys aren't receptive to women when they are kids, we don't show the same respect and attitude to them because frankly we don't care. If boy are showing a learning attitude to women in elementary school then try to put a male teacher in the same place and see if that helps, if it does then the answer is simple.
In either case I think it's important to look at the gender of the teacher vs student and that will lead to it's own unique result.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
As for learning, do you not understand that regardless of all the similarities between male and female, the biggest difference is that all of our cells, including brain cells, are floating in a chemical soup that is greatly different between the two sexes. If you don't understand the effect of environment on gene expression...
Don't allow the collective stupid belief of sexual equality to stifle any logical thought. Use science, not your pissant societal indoctrination.
Re:Sexist? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it is exactly wrong.
There is no such thing as MALE sexism, or WHITE racism.
Here, these will help, but I warn you: it is gonna hurt reading these. You're gonna get pissy and defensive:
http://sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/male_privilege.pdf [mit.edu]
http://sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/white_privilege_checklist.pdf [mit.edu]
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:4, Insightful)
The way the grading system is setup doesn't favor critical thinking and practical application, it favors memorization and regurgitation, which for many is boring and leads to easy distraction, in-turn leading to poor grades. You can take a lot of those people any give them self study projects and they'll excel, but the school system favors people who are better at taking test and following directions.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead you'd rather mouth the mantra of the pro-masculine individualist agenda as you arrogantly proclaim your superiority over the lesser cattle.
Maybe it's not hatred, maybe it's just prideful self-delusion.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:4, Insightful)
Truth be told, I didn't get A's in languages, it was only last year that I grasped what a syllable was.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
The proof for a systemic, culturally reenforced feminist counterpart to your accusation exists in the law and the growing malaise towards men and boys in western culture these days. A quick overview of public school policy and university politics, television programming and advertisments, pop music, and (recently) video games, makes it quite obvious. Sadly, it is, for the most part, men who are at fault for this, men who've been convinced to feel 'male guilt' who then pass the laws and decree pro female bias in their organizations in attempts to 'prove' just how much of a feminist they are. It it sad they've internalized this insecurity and self-hatred as they assume the guilt because of having a penis. Basically it's stockholm syndrome exacerbated by misapplied notions of chivalry.
There is nothing wrong with an individualist agenda. You support it for girls and women, don't you? All that 'my body my right' (yet somehow his responsibility) and 'I don't need a man' egocentricity isn't individualist?
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:2, Insightful)
Eh, I'm pretty sure there's some embellishment going on there with respect to grades. It's easy to see the many Bs you got and forget about quite a few Cs and Ds, and remember the Cs that the people ahead of you got, but forget about the As they also pulled.
What are you smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're the typical feminist. You whine about how there aren't enough woman lawyers, CEOs, and other white-collar, high paying jobs; but you're not out there picketing because they're aren't enough woman miners, crab boat fishers, and oil rig workers because those are physically hard and aren't glamorous.
What you want isn't equality, you want superiority.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:4, Insightful)
It's one explanation, but it's only one.
My explanation: Women tend to be more even. You get fewer geniuses, but fewer total morons as well. Look at lions - male lions are pretty much 'all or nothing'. They have to risk it all in order to mate and have offsprings. Females just need to gather enough food to feed themselves and their kits. Male lions, when presented with evidence of MULTIPLE male lions in their territory, will still jump in to attack. Female lions, presented with evidence of multiple female lions in the same territory, will go get her sisters.
Re:Differing learning styles (Score:5, Insightful)
You're exactly right - unlike AC's assertion, I don't see any backlash in feminism against role reversal in the home. Hell, gender equality is when we stop calling it "role reversal" and making assumptions on who does what. Who earns the income and who maintains the household should entirely depend on the people involved.
Lastly, I'm certainly not saying that it's impossible for two-income households to spend enough time with their kids, just takes a great deal more effort and it saddens me that it's become the norm.
Re:Going to get modded down as sexist for this, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument might be more convincing if you provided evidence that this cultural backlash against men has actually resulted in a structurally-supported norm of female privilege in each of the arenas you mentioned.
I'm sorry that you've been made to feel "male guilt" (while I'm female, I'm also white and have experienced similar discomfort dealing with my own privilege, so I know well what "white guilt" feels like), but your hurt feelings are not sufficient proof of the systemic subjugation of men (in the video game industry? Seriously?). You seem very concerned that men have to "pass laws and decree pro female bias" but you're overlooking the fact that it's still overwhelmingly men who are in the position to pass those laws to begin with. This harms both men and women--and the guilt isn't a matter of assigning blame, but collectively shouldering the responsibility to make things more fair and equal.
Re:Coed education (Score:3, Insightful)