School Boys

[astra_nomer]

So, apparently, a student at a New England high school is claiming gender discrimination. The interesting thing is, the student is a boy. A white, middle-class male, suing for discrimination.

Certainly it's true that more women are entering college these days than men. But shouldn't we be saying, "You Go Girl!" instead of "ZOMG!! Save the boys!!!"

I cannot believe that education has changed so dramatically in this country over the last 10 or even 20 years that it's suddenly become biased toward girls. The educational system in this country was originally just for white males. Just 40 years ago, Harvard University did not allow women in some of its libraries. At the same time, the majority of elementary school teachers over the last century or more have been women, and while I won't rant about that issue now, it didn't seem to have hurt the legions of boys who were educated by them and went on to become successful men within the patriarchy.

Yes, it's true that boys have more behavioral issues than girls, and that will affect their educational opportunities. But is this really more of an issue today than in the past? Has boyhood really changed that much?

I recall being one of just a handful of girls in my high school science and math classes. I recall that when my calculus teacher handed out M&Ms to highest achievers in her class, that my candy was sometimes stolen when I turned my back, and at least one student complained that the girls always got the awards, even though we were vastly outnumbered by the boys.

Now I'm the mother of two boys myself. But I expect them to exert self-discipline in school. I expect them to do their best with their studies. I will help find opportunities within the educational system for them to get ahead. I will not tolerate them making excuses for themselves by saying they were discriminated against. If I've managed to succeed against the odds, they can too.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Yes, boys get diagnosed with AD(H)D radically more often than girls do. I think, though I cannot remember or cite statistics to this effect, that boys are actually more prone to it than girls are. I definitely remember from somewhere that boys are more prone to the ADHD version and girls to the AD-notH-D version, so boys are much more likely to be diagnosed (on the one hand possibly stigmatizing them, but on the other hand making boys more likely than girls to get help they need).

I've heard that about boys but I think individual variations swamp it. Certainly the boys I teach vary enormously in how much they want to raise their hand, and sometimes it has nothing to do with how energetic they are in the halls (even the really hyper ones can be subdued in class if they don't understand). When I was teaching coed SAT prep, girls participated a lot more -- again, because I think they tend to be more conformist, authority-oriented, and desirous to please.

Really I think you can find examples to support almost any gender-based hypothesis in education, which is why Very Large Studies are important, but they're pretty rare; the quality of most educational research is execrable.

[desireearmfeldt]

I could rant about why it's hard to do decent educational research, but I don't have the energy. :) :)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in hearing the rant someday when you do.

[desireearmfeldt]

I mean, I'm not actually an expert, but from my little corner of the universe, the short form is a) it's logistically difficult and resource-intensive, and b) it's therefore hard to get the amount of funding that would pay for a Big Research Study.

And c) it's hard to figure out how to really do *good* social science type research, I think. But I also have the impression some people do know what they're doing and have techniques that work at least somewhat. But then you come down to the fundamental choice between things that are true/accurate, and things that are easily summarizable. I presume hard science has this problem as well, but there's lots more things in hard science where you can isolate some one little thing and poke at it and say "yup, that's how it works." Can't so much do that when you're studying human behavior, or if you can, it's not clear how much you've actually learned, because you've decontextualized it so much.

Also, I think for a lot of these things people want research to tell them the One Right Answer, and there probably isn't one.

[desireearmfeldt]

Er, so on point a), in order to collect and analyze data from a great big statistically significant sample, the data's going to have to be simple to the point of near-meaninglessness, because otherwise you'll never have the time and manpower to process it.

Also, there's no lab. Any time you want to do research, you need to find districts/schools/teachers to sign onto it, get various sorts of permissions, and get them to take time out of their ridiculously busy work lives to deal with you. This makes it really hard to get enough sites for your research, let alone geograpically/demographically/etc distributed the way you'd like.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

Same here!