The feminisation of education or are boys getting dumber?

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I have a clue, my main job right now is teaching programming, thank you very much.

Learning styles exist, but to attribute them to your gender is awfully stupid. I despise building up stuff. I like learning math theorically. You should stop projecting your own weaknesses on all the male sex.

Cute because my senior project involved teaching styles.

People learn better from hands on training, not just visual or auditory stimuli.

Furthermore I seriously suggest you do some research instead of trying to run around claiming that boys are somehow inferior or just plain lazy...

It is so frickin' amusing to see the shoe on the other foot in this thread.

Well, the guys over the French Fries George Walker Bush University must have been impressed.



Which is cool and true. But you claimed that such thing is a boy thing and thus when schools removed those things it was part of a feminazi conspiracy. Cue the obligatory facepalm.


Boys are not inferior. But plenty of boys take their privilege for granted and are lazy at school. It probably doesn't matter that many of those boys seems to have parents that take them getting worse grade than girls as some form of reverse-sexism rather than as reason for them to be grounded so that they work their asses off more.They are not dumber but their laziness has the effect of dropping in grades. Because women do not take their luxury of being able to have an actual education for granted.

Things will stabilize eventually when things go truly equal and they stay as such for a while. Women will also take education for granted and grades will stabilize. Because, as you know, genders should be equal in smartness.


Just in case, what I am doing right now is provide an alternative, more realistic theory to the false dichotomy of "EITHER BOYS ARE GETTING DUMBER OR THERE IS A FEMINAZI ANTIBOY CONSPIRACY IN SCHOOLS". And the whole thing about boys getting lazier due to their privilege and privilege fading away causing their grades to fall is something I have observed personally with things such as race and gender in the past. It is entirely anecdotal but it is far more realistic than the alternatives presented.

I believe we could afford to do a bit more to attract more male teachers but that said... women are doing better and good on them... this would always going to occur at an uneven pace... so us men need to just build a bridge... the situation is hardly out of hand yet.

Both sexes do have different brains but temperament is a much bigger divider than sex.

I defy you to point out another poster in this thread who has used the word "conspiracy" other than yourself.



What privilege? Since all children, regardless of gender, are required by law to get an education, I don't see how boys are more "privileged" than girls. Would you care to explain why girls tend to fall behind in math and science while boys tend to fall behind in literature? That fact alone seems to undermine your theory. At least some of this is attributed some innate differences in boys and girls, which is why the have different learning styles. Of course, how wonderful it is of you to assume that kids who are lagging behind are just being "lazy".

In the following article, take a look at the section entitled "Brain-based differences":

http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/Mar04_gendergap.htm

Aren't men more prone to learning disabilities then woman are? I think that might be cause. On a side note, in my experience yes girls are smarter then men, they are the ones usually getting the higher grades in class then most men. To rebuttal the argument of them not creating a new math, making new empirical discoveries does not make them less intelligent, could make them more intelligent. just saying. Also I have a 6 or 7 year old niece who is better at multiplication addition and division then I am, she is also way more observant. She made the observation that my 2.80 year old nephew could keep track of time change. If that doesn't blow your mind then I don't know what will.

Yes, learning disabilities appear to be more prevalent among boys. I never said either gender was more intelligent than the other one.

If chicks are smarter, maybe it's just that girls generally tend to find it easier to sit still in school than boys do. The near demise of recess and gym class has not helped much for boys.

Or perhaps there are decent paying occupations more friendly to men that do not require academic training? Seen many women plumbers lately? You don't need an academic sort of education for a job like that. But women, for various reasons, tend not to go there. Good paying jobs for women more often seem to require an academic sort of education.

Or perhaps girls in later grades or college realize how much of their future depends on getting an education, so they have more reason to be serious about it?

If we went back to a time, not really all that long ago, when men were expected to grow up, marry, have a family and support it on their own, or there was something "wrong" with them, and they couldn't look to women as partners in providing for the household, I expect mens' intellect would improve, as there would be ample motivation.

Merely my own experience of course, but I have not found the male students I've taught lacking in intellect. There does seem to be somewhat less motivation to apply oneself to studies among the male students, though. I haven't found the gap to be that large though, and there seems to be a difference depending on the ages you're working with.

And all this begs the question: smarter *about what*?

I've been in science and technology all of my life, and generally worked in very male occupations. For whatever reason, I have a much harder time finding women who are interested in and can keep up in those subjects than I have finding men who can.

Some of that is surely cultural, but some may not be. Some aspects of the sciences and mathematics seem to appeal more to mental capacities found more often among males. That doesn't mean any particular woman can't be good in those areas. On the individual level, each person has their own unique capacities.

Are they? Or is it that for some reason or another men are more likely to be dianosed?

I ask for a couple of reasons:

1. When it comes to heart attacks, women have them too, but the "usual symptoms" are what men have, so women's heart attacks are often missed. In many areas modern medicine has neglected looking at women and seems to assume that we're the same. That's beginning to shift, but really just barely.

2. When it comes to learning disabilities, I have no clue about what research has been done in the area or what anyone has found out. It does strike me as counterintuitive that learning disabilities tied to neurological or neurochemical effects would be found less among girls, though as I say, I really have no factual basis to make even a half-assed guess.

you prove an awesome point, but aren't trials usually done in mass groups? making this somewhat of an equal statistic? and you could also go into the amount of men vs woman. so let the debate continue

sorry wrong choice of words on that one.

i am a teacher (not currently practicing). i offered a variety of teaching and learning styles in my classroom, as each student is an individual, i.e. Peter is a person, not just an example of the male gender. many times, my students were each on their own individualised program plan so that they could receive support to learn in the manner(s) best suited to them.

on AVERAGE boys and girls may learn differently, but such averages are absolutely useless in a classroom. we do not teach averages, we teach individual pupils. the averages themselves obscure the fact that in terms of gender differences there is a wider spread across a single gender than there is a difference in between genders. there is a lot of overlap between the two genders, and in fact male and female outliers who are non-traditional in their own needs make the compartmentalisation pointless and possibly detrimental if students are streamed according to gender. better to offer lots of options for all of the students.

as to the OP, i question whether any problem actually exists, because boys are continuing to receive higher earnings than women in the same jobs, even with fewer years of education, lower test scores and lower classroom grades. boys and girls may each have struggles in various aspects of school, and face challenges like bullying, low self-esteem, feelings of non-belonging, etc. and these problems are not restricted to boys.

an interesting point is that males may be underrepresented as primary teachers, but they ere overrepresented as head teachers, department heads, principals, school board members, policy makers, and politicians with education portfolios (etc.). we can encourage men to teach the little children to give the boys more role models, but the flip side of that is that girls need to see more female role models in positions of authority.

basically, i don't see what the fuss is about. LKL neatly summarised that the supposed problems in the education system may not exist at all:

I defy you to explain how is "The feminisation of education" not on top of the list of the most utterly stupid conspiracy theories.

You may like to read up the part in which I say "after losing privilege" twice.


EEEEEEEEDIT: I read : http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/ ... dergap.htm

May I ask, isn't it a good thing? Grades are afterall, just grades. If boys are getting instructed in areas that they are weaker, it means that they are actually learning more useful things than girls are. It translates into lower grades, but in the long trend it also translates in boys having less weaknesses as they are forced to develop them. Even assuming if the stuff assumed by the article are true.

LKL has summarized no such thing, who by the way, was actually supporting the opposing view, so you have completely missed the point of her post. If you had actually bothered to read the the articles she linked to, you would know females are currently making up the majority of college and university students (about 57%), highlighting that the problem does exist and giving justification for those colleges to apply a behind-the-scenes affirmative action policy for male students.

Of course, none of this means that women aren't still discriminated against in other areas.

Last edited by Jono on 22 Sep 2011, 5:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.