The feminisation of education or are boys getting dumber?

Post Reply New Topic

It's a vast generalization obviously, but on average, it seems to me like women are smarter than men but not as curious or interested in being creative. I really do wish more women were in the arts and stuff though, since I love art by women.

I just want to reply to this point. Look, the reason why less men are enrolling for university programs is because they already discriminated against at the school level. When less women enrolled for university in the '60's and '70's, the universities were not explicitly discriminating against women either. Now I find it odd that back then it was due to girls being discriminated against in school but now that the tables have turned and the same thing is happening with boys, everyones happy.

Here are some links for you:

http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Feminism/dp/0684849569

http://card.wordpress.com/2006/07/21/schools-sexist-towards-boys/

trouble is that you don't really know that it is the reason why. those links are theories, nothing substantial (and Sommers is not exactly reputable in the scholarly community). it could easily be the changing nature of parenting over the last 30 years and the rise of of technological and media distractions that is causing a disparity.

further, i don't think it is necessarily a problem.

do you think more women should become computer scientists, physicists, and engineers? there is a shortage of women in those areas and if you want to start pushing gender equity than we need it to be across the board. females continue to score lower in mathematics on the SATs in comparison to men... so this must be an issue, if male underrepresentation in other areas is a problem. if the education system is going to be overhauled because of boys underperforming, then perhaps it should be overhauled for the girls as well so that we can see more female scientists.

the whole thing starts to get absurd. if feminism is the problem for boys in school, then who are you going to blame for the continuation of inequality for women in other areas? feminism didn't cause that.

Yes, of course. Especially computer science, because that's my field.

I don't think a statistical difference alone is enough to measure equity here. It's entirely possible that, statistically speaking, women are less likely to be good with computers. We don't need the ratios to be exactly representative, we just need to make sure things are fair, so that people who can hack it are allowed to.


Why do we need to find someone to blame? Why not just fix problems?

(one of the links Jono posted blamed feminism. i think it is silly to throw around blame, but it was a response to what he posted).

about education, i think it's just best to offer as many different styles of learning opportunities as possible in a classroom, and allow students a wide selection of possibilities. getting students reflecting on their own learning styles and taking control of their own learning within certain parameters can assist them with assuming responsibility for their progress. everyone benefits with more choices available. so in a sense i agree that it's good to introduce many types of opportunities in the classroom.

my way of teaching had each student on an individualised program, which required massive planning behind the scenes but much less presentation/talking at the class. also students helped plan their learning and had significant say as to how their learning would occur, so they could be as hands-on as they wanted. subject areas were integrated into each other, which allowed physical education to reinforce the core subjects, for example. they could work alone or in groups, whatever worked for them. we even used video game-style learning tools. they didn't have to sit still and study for _X_ number of minutes - it was very open-ended and flexible.

honestly though.... it didn't revolutionise things... keeping in mind that both girls and boys had massive gains in their core subjects (especially reading and mathematics), on the other hand about one third of the boys could not be arsed to put in the effort that the majority of the girls put in. one problem is that i only taught them a couple of years at maximum, and my methods would have worked better over several years.

and part of the problem is most likely that there is something bigger going on than just the classrooms themselves. self-responsibility and critical thinking are things that we try to teach in the classroom, but if the home environment and greater society do not expect the same things from students, then those kids who are NOT intrinsically motivated will fall through the cracks. i personally believe there are other problems too (too many for me to list), for example that there just isn't the same social emphasis on maintaining good character and focusing on hard work and dedication over a lifetime. we want it all and we want it now. this is not the attitude of 50 years or 100 years ago.

Quite frankly I could care less what the "scholarly community" claims about Ms. Sommers, particularly since what she is saying is true.

no... what she writes about are her own subjective conclusions based on statistics. just because you agree with it doesn't make it true.

The problem with your statement is that Jono actually provided at least one good example that corroborates what Ms. Sommers stated. Further, have you ever watched her get interviewed or read her book, I haven't read her book yet but I have seen her get interviewed. Since I'm guessing you haven't done either, I'm going to guess you're just taking at face value what a bunch of authority figures told you.

what authority figures? i do trust scholarly sources - i don't trust sensational authors. this is a good policy when debating and trying to assert that something is "true". otherwise it's just throwing opinions around and thinking they are right simply because someone somewhere wrote a book about it. it's not productive, and not credible.

Jono's other source is an opinion blog. the blog reports on issues of discrimination (perceived or real), and that particular article was a human interst story about a rare complaint that was filed against a school. there is one paragraph that mentions some statistics, but nothing solid about any credible causes of any disparity in achievement results.

I trust "sensational" authors when I stumble across information while doing an unrelated research project that backs up what she is saying. I'm not necessarily saying that it is a deliberate effort to discriminate against boys in most cases. I will say that between the attempts to ban things like tag, and sitting kids at a desk all day, not letting them have time to run around and burn off energy, is not a good learning environment for young children, it is especially not a good learning environment for boys.

I would chalk up part of the problem is that schools are afraid of being sued, and part of it is a laziness on the part of teachers that would rather hand out worksheets than put any effort into making learning fun.



I've actually been discriminated against before by a high school biology teacher (this was way back in my Freshman Year of High School), the instructor gave me a 0 on a test for using a Word Processor that was stated in my I could use (there was absolutely no way I could have cheated because the Word Processor had no memory capability to save things on the Word Processor),

It ended up with me being sent down to the office and the Vice Principle said he was glad I was down there before it escalated further, but I was in the right. He sent me back up with a letter that he addressed to the instructor telling the instructor he was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (which was enacted by President George H.W. Bush) and that he would regrade that test. I didn't know about what else he put in the letter but the instructor told me the next day, that he was joking (riiiighhtt...).

A year or two later that guy ran for public office (I think as a Democrat (surprise, surprise), and I'm glad he was beat.


What that opinion article Jono gave is very plausible.

I think it's worth pointing out at this point that Christina Hoff Sommers is actually a liberal feminist. To say that she is apposed to the equality of men and women is just plain wrong. With regards to the question of the way women and girls are still discriminated against in the Middle East and Africa, yes those problems need to be addressed as well. Feminism is still needed.



I'm not an expert but it doesn't look subjective to me. She just takes people to task over the way statistics are presented. Even when her critics accuse her of "special pleading", her claims are at least backed up actual scientists such as the evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker. Furthermore the "boy crisis" and the issues she talks about in that book have also been spoken about other authors such as Warren Farrell. So, I'm just not seeing where the subjectivity lies.

That blog was never intended to be actual evidence, it was just a story I found and although it's anecdotal, I thought it might corroborate what we are actually talking about.

It's kind of interesting that you mention this because Lawrence Summers was forced to resign as president of Harvard for even mentioning "innate differences" in men and women as a possible factor among several for why there aren't that many women in the science and engineering type fields. No, I don't think the numbers should necessarily be representative. However, if a women chooses to go into those fields, I think she should be respected as much as anyone else if she is able to do the work and is competent in her field. In that respect, I don't at all think that women in science should be discriminated against.

A woman also shouldn't get special privledges either. People should succeed or fail on their merits, gender should play no role in this.

Well, actually there is atleast one proven difference in the genders.

If you went back to your old highschool and researched who are the top ten in math- guess what- the popular stereotype that boys are smarter in math would probably be confirmed because youd likely find that most of that top ten in the school would be boys.

But if you looked at the BOTTOM ten percent in math (or any subject) in that same school youd likely find that the majority of the dumbest kids in math are - guess who- ALSO boys.

The average academic achievement for both genders are about the same but boys goes to the extremes ( have a bigger point spread) and girls cluster closer to the mean.

And this goes other things.

There are more women listed "Who's Who" today than decades ago, but the vast majority of entrees in Who's Who are still men.

But the majority of people on America's most wanted list are also men .

Um, "Who's Who" is just a scam for selling books that contain lists of names.

I was offered to have my name in "Who's Who." Then, they mentioned that they wanted me to pay to buy the book. Then, I hung up on them.

"Who's Who" is nothing but a book that lists the names of gullible people.