I have spent the past three years working in a high school. In many ways, it’s been an eye-opening experience. As to this issue, one factor may be overall maturity.
There is usually a world of difference in the maturity level of a 15 year old girl vs a 15 year old boy. And it takes a higher maturity level to be able to think beyond next week and take your future (and your grades) seriously. In my opinion, more girls than boys are clued into this.
It also takes a higher maturity level to be interested in student government or other positions within the high school society that require extra work for what is primarily an intellectual reward. Some of those positions look good on college applicatons too…but if you are only thinking about the boobs on the girl next to you or where to get the latest ICP t-shirt, you aren’t concerned about your college application.
Wouldn’t that support the higher average for girls but higher standard deviation for boys?
I really think this is mostly peer pressure. If you’re a smart boy, you’re a nerd (even if you’re not the smartest boy). If you’re a smart girl, you’re just a smart girl, unless you’re the smartest girl.
How do we fix it? I really don’t know. Geek chic is on the rise (based purely on observations of my own, without any actual cites), so maybe this is a problem that society is already correcting. If it’s popular to be smart, the peer pressure will be removed (or at least moved to a more positive direction).
I don’t dissagree, but I do want to ask, how much does this really affect success in life? Do you really feel that focusing on grades (which is not always the same as actually learning anything) or school government somehow = going to do better in life?
Getting into college isn’t the chore it used to be. With all the loans and grants and such, so long as you don’t absolutly suck grade-wise, you can get into school somewhere. Or even go to Communitly College and transfer to a University.
Sghoul, as I tell the young people I come in contact with…
Life is a game. The earlier you learn the rules and the better you play, the more successful you will be. And the longer you rail against this unavoidable truth, the more doomed you are to mediocrity and poverty.
The way to win the game is to stand out from the crowd. In high school that means better grades. Better grades mean better schools. Better schools mean better contacts and better jobs.
Many more people are capable of better grades in high school…they just don’t possess the maturity that would give them the foresight to realize that thier actions at 16 will have consequences when they are 36. Those that do realize this are playing the game earlier and better.
That’s an interesting line, but do you have anything to back it up? I have a femail friend who had straight A’s in school, Class treasurer, went on to get her doctorate in English Lit. Currently she is a glorified TA. Her husband, was a HS slacker, and currently make twice what she makes with an MIS degree.
Sure they may be working hard in school and gaining experience in school government (and what not), but if what you say about less males are “competing” in that area, then girls are only learning it one sided. Later, boys will be in the mix, and I think we can agree that men and women have differing approaches to things like that.
Unless I see an actual study to show this, it’s just some words that sound like they work.
I don’t have a study to cite other than my own common sense. My distilled position is that maturity equals success. In general, girls mature faster and are therefore more successful as a result. Men and women do in fact have different approaches. A lot of males don’t grow up until they are nearly 25 years old. If you look at the freshman dropout rate at any college, my guess is that males will outnumber the females because the males can’t get past the siren call of beer and boobs instead of concentrating on classes. Females in general are calmer and tend to see academics as a higher priority. We can trade examples about specific individuals all day long, but in the end it won’t prove or disprove anything.
I’m getting some pretty dirty looks in some of my classes for asking questions. It’s as though they resent me for daring to speak out and for not wanting to fade into the wall.
I should point out that I got straight As last semester, and should end up with at least 3 As this semester.
More power to them.
I would love to marry a rich successful woman. Then I could have the big house and SUV I’ve always wanted, stay home and raise the kids, go shopping and go to the gym or watch sports while they’re in school.
Then when I’ve decided I’ve had enough I can get a divorce and take half of everything. After all, staying home with the kids and supporting my wife prevented me from having a career of my own. And I have gotten pretty used to this lifestyle.
Grammar school was slightly less boring than watching paint dry. I don’t remember a single book that I was given to read by the Holy Airhead nuns.
I started reading SCI-FI on my own in 4th grade. I was sometimes reading 2 or 3 books a week. I would research stuff I read in the SF books. I could have 3 encyclopedia open on my bed while I read one SF book trying to undrstand what the author was writing about.
THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Heinlein has economics and politics and ballistics.
The schools are BORING for boys. Hook them on SCI-FI.
Watch BABYLON 5 to get an idea what decent SF is about.
Very good point, sghoul. I chose to pursue a subject I love–history–rather than one that offers a high-paying career. Furthermore, I chose to go into museum work, rather than getting my PhD, in large part because the years a young professor has to spend paying dues, becoming established, and hopefully securing a long-term position coincide with the prime years for starting a family. My current job is challenging and satisfying, but the pay is terrible. So, yeah, as a girl, I kicked butt in school, but it hasn’t exactly paid off in worldly success.
Ever think that maybe girls are just better at disguising that boredom? Or that girls might enjoy SF just as much as the boys?
This did not seem to be the case when/where I was a student. Male nerds were distinguishable more by their poor athletic ability and fashion sense than their grades, and many popular boys did well in their classes.
Again, when/where I was a student, if you were a smart girl either you could keep it a secret or you could be an outcast. It was okay to make decent grades, but none of the popular girls were known for being smart and many were known for the opposite. Luckily I was able to transfer to a different, more progressive high school. However, I still remember the surprise I felt when I saw one of my former classmates, M, listed in the newspaper as graduating in the top 1% of her class from my old school. I’d been in classes with M in both middle and high school, and to all appearances she was dumb as a post. I mean she was flamboyantly stupid both in and out of class. Very popular, though. I realize now the whole “dumb act” was just that, an act. She must have been very bright indeed to keep it up for so long without it actually hurting her academic performance.
The only other top 1% student I knew from that school was a boy, J, I’d also had classes with in middle and high school. J was also popular but unlike M quite openly a good student. Indeed, he was rather aggressive about that fact. In middle school I was bullied by him for some time simply because I was better than him at English and could often provide the correct answers in class when he couldn’t. If I’d been more interested in popularity I’d probably have done the same as M and intentionally given incorrect answers.
Another case of armchair statistics taking its toll. My viewpoint on statistics like that would be something more along the lines of either women not being able to enter the job market for whatever reason, or more likely (don’t take this as sexist) bored women whose kids can feed themselves something more complex than cookies deciding to do something productive with their time. I know, my mother has run her own photography company as a one-woman business for 15 years now.
I’d just like to chime in my support for the age-old maturity theory. On the other hand, in my high school, only 2 of the top 20 were young women, but instead of being biased against, they were actually highly respected.
My first serious relationship was with a brilliant young woman whose test scores put me to shame, and she now has two degrees… a genius in every right… but she has always worked clerical and editorial positions. I don’t know why, exactly.
/I’d be happier marrying a smarter woman and taking care of the kiddies and going to the store to buy milk at 6:20 AM… any takers?
If that survey properly took into account two kids at my HS (I’m still there), I think those two alone would convince the surveyors that the data is interesting but worthless.
First, there is Rachael, from AP Bio Senior Year. I wouldn’t insult a rock by comparing the two. She walked into class one day, ecstatic about a brilliant idea she’d just had that could revolutionize the field of medicine. After about five minutes of details, she said, and I quote verbatim, “So if you get AIDS, couldn’t you just get Lukemia to balance it out?”
This same woman also refused to drink tap water for two years because one Social Studies teacher convinced her that there’s something in it that would make the drinker gay. This same teacher had an exchange with her after he got his hair cut in which she left not-quite-convinced, but ready to believe that his hair “shrunk.” In Bio, we managed to convince the teacher to dedicate a day to letting her teach so that we could get quotes for a book of mind-numbingly stupid things she said by the end of the year while looking like we were legitimately taking notes. That day’s planned for early may, and so far we’re up to nine pages of stupid things she’s said (only about half a page of which is the teacher snapping at her.)
Yet she gets 4.0 because she memorizes answers straight from the book, puts everything in a clear-plastic cover, and takes classes where the teachers care less than she does. In spite of her abysmal standardized test scores, she’s getting a full ride to Princeton next year, where she will be majoring in business.
Contrast this to my friend Ben. He slacks, but there is no doubt in the mind of anyone who knows him that he is the best in the school at math and science, except MAYBE the AP Physics teacher. No-one who knows him would hesitate to call him a genius, and almost no-one thinks any other student is even comparable to him. The sole exception to this is himself, who is somehow convinced that I’m the best math student in the school (not a clue how). The only class he’s ever studied for is European History, where he gets perfect on all tests (where a 12/25 is the average, with only 10 or 12 people who the teacher thinks are geniuses taking it per year) and does no other work.
I’m sure his GPA doesn’t break 3.0, and I’d be surprised if it was higher than 2.5. He doesn’t care enough to keep track of it. He’s going to Ohio State (from living in Columbus, OH), not even the Honors college, and he is planning to transfer schools as a fifth-year senior because you then keep the credits but lose the grade records. I’m not sure whether I’m impressed by how clever he is and hoping the transfer school will accept, or just offended that a genius like that is planning to damn-near-fail.
In pre-college schools, grades and brainpower have only a the most indirect of relationships. I can’t comment on college, not being experienced there yet, but unless there’s a change in intellectual levels that can’t be described by any terms short of divine intervention, I’m going to sit back and calmly doubt this study means anything.
Can I take it as tactless? I mean, what, the SAH parents aren’t doing anything productive? Perhaps you should rethink your attitudes about what the stay-at-homes are doing. Just a suggestion.*
I think it’s an interesting and important issue, myself. I am another who wonders if society hasn’t gotten too disapproving of characteristically ‘boy’ traits like energy, rambunctiousness, and so on–are we too willing to punish kids for needing to run around and get into stuff?
I hope that we’re starting to apply all the stuff we’ve learned about how children learn, different learning styles, and so on in the classroom. I am both very worried (in general) and somewhat hopeful (in certain spots) about education; we are starting to have many more programs with different styles so that kids can go where they fit best–and at the same time things are getting more desperate in other places.
But I tells ya, if they ever get rid of recess in my town, we’re homeschooling.
*Tell you what, next time I’m in Berkeley I can explain it to you thoroughly, maybe even politely, perhaps at La Burrita. 'Cause they’re still the best burritos ever.
lol, OK, OK, ya got me there. Like I said, I would be happy to be a SAH parent myself some day. I am thankful that my mother stayed at home, and I don’t want to leave my kids without someone. On the other hand, my mother also ran her own company. I guess she is a restless person, but once we were able to feed ourselves (y’know, when we were around 17 ;-), she immediately went to do stuff.
My hypothesis is that more mothers stay at home than fathers, and that those mothers are more likely to start a small business with their spare time once the kiddies start fending for themselves.
I never meant to knock SAH parents, I respect the profession a great deal
That’s a deal. I lived on La Burrita for a few years. Try the combo plate, mix it all together. Mmm.
Sghoul/Evil One - Did you guys actually look at the Businessweek link I posted back in post #10 in this thread? Plenty of statistics there for both og you to play with.
I agree that there should be more male elementary and middle school teachers. Likewise, there should be more women in positions of authority and administration in higher levels of education.
What good are those grades if in the long run women still struggle with self-esteem issues the higher up the educational ladder they go?
Twenty years ago a study of early reading books from fourteen publishers found that male figures outnumbered females 5 to 2. In fantasy stories, the ratio is 4 to 1. Does anyone know of a change or a more recent study?
Source: “If Only We Had Learned Differently: The Impact of Formal Schooling,” Linda T. Sanford and Mary Ellen Donovan, Women and Self-Esteem, New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984, pp.177-196.
Sixteen years ago, a cross-study between schools in the U.S. and Great Britain showed that boys were 5 times more likely to receive a teacher’s attention and 8 to 12 times more likely to speak up in class. (I can find the source if need be.)
Just whenin the past week, I saw statistics on television about what women are earning in comparison to men. Even though it is illegal to discriminate in the U.S., women still earn 75% of what men doing the same job are paid. And the discrimination seems to go from menial tasks right on up through such professions as surgeon. They did mention that the problem seems to be in the private sector where pay does not have to be made public.
I do not remember which of the news programs provided this information, but I suppose it would be supported by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
So I am of the opinion that there are several areas that need work simultanteously.
Total nonsense. The last information that I had, the highest recorded I.Q. in the United States belonged to a woman. But that is neither here nor there. Such generalities as you have stated are B.S.
All the young Matisses and Pollacks of the world?
Anecdotal evidence of two people outweighs more comprehensive research? Now, now…
BTW, Harvard University now practices affirmative action for males in its admissions program. 70% of its best qualified applicants are female, but they choose to keep the ration of female to male at 50-50.
