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Here's 100 Years of Proof That Girls Are Better Students Than Boys. In all subjects, even math and science.
In 2006, Newsweek magazine declared it, loud, on their cover: America's boys were in crisis. Boys were falling behind their female counterparts in school. They were getting worse grades, lagging on standardized tests, and not attending college in the same numbers as girls. "By almost every benchmark," Peg Tyre, the author of the cover story, wrote, "boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind." And so it began-the end of men, but also an ongoing conversation on how to better boys' performance in the classroom. From the article:
This "boy crisis," however, was based on an assumption: that males had previously been on top. Granted, there was evidence to support that idea. For one, educational institutions for most of modern history have been openly sexist, favoring boys. And traditionally, males had outperformed girls in standardized tests and in math and science. But "by the mid-1990s, girls had reduced the gap in math, and more girls than boys were taking high-school-level biology and chemistry," Tyre wrote.
The assumption that boys had been the better students didn't seem right to (married) researchers Daniel and Susan Voyer of the University of New Brunswick in Canada. "I've been collecting grade data for a long time," Daniel Voyer says in a phone interview. "Typically if you find gender differences, they are in favor of girls - it doesn't matter what it is. So it started to kind of puzzle me." And so the pair set out to test, collecting every study they could find on grades and gender since 1914 and crunching the numbers in a mega-meta analysis, the first of its kind.
While the girls' advantage is largest in reading and language studies, it exists for all subjects, even math and science. And though they tested data from across the world, the Voyers found the gender gap was largest in the United States.
What's most striking is that the gender gap held across the decades. If the boy crisis existed, they would have seen boys' performance peak and fall over time. That wasn't the case. "Boys have been lagging for a long time and ... this is a fairly stable phenomenon," the paper concluded.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Covalent on Friday May 02 2014, @12:39PM
As a teacher, I can (anecdotally) support this:
I think the data will show that the variance across the male population is greater than that in the female population, but that the average female "intelligence" (whatever that means) is higher than the average male intelligence. That is certainly what I have seen in my career.
Result: Women outperform men, on average, but unusually brilliant and unusually unintelligent people are more likely to be men. That is not to say there are not brilliant (and stupid) women, just that the outliers are slightly more likely to be men.
That said, all of this data brings up a more pertinent question: Who cares? If we eventually find that the hypothesis above is correct, or that it is wrong and women are both smarter on average and more exceptional, or that men are smarter, or whatever...so what. What are we going to do with that information? Are we going to ban men from jobs because they, as a group, are not as smart? Are we going to segregate education? Are we going to deny education to people based on their base intelligence (or lack thereof)?
No. People rise above their limitations by utilizing other skills, particularly in the intelligence department. There is so much to be said for communication skills, interpersonal skills, motivation, work ethic, etc. that these variances far overshadow whatever differences exist between the intelligence of the sexes (which we know for a fact are small, if they really exist at all)
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 02 2014, @01:01PM
That's exactly what the studies show, a flatter curve. It's been to long for me to remember where though; I'll let someone else google it.
That isn't. The peak and mean of the curves* are functionally (within the margin of error) identical. Going strictly by IQ score on both replies.
* I find it exceptionally odd that the peak and mean are exactly the same as each other as well as the same for both sexes. The high side and low side are essentially exact mirrors of each other.
Absolutely. You left out wisdom and creativity though, the abilities to use what intelligence you have to its best effect. Wisdom, creativity, and drive are the differences between being a wage slave and creating a multi-billion-dollar company. And they are the only differences. To quote the light bulb guy "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration". Without both the one percent and the ninety-nine, you're a wage slave.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday May 02 2014, @10:37PM
My ex-girlfriend's cousin is currently getting rich after pulling a few million from his trust fund to set up a company selling bottled water about five years ago (ie, LONG after you could walk into any gas station and find a dozen brands of water already.) Hardly an inspired idea; and it certainly wasn't founded on *his* perspiration either. Any idiot lucky enough to have the money can make a hell of a lot more just by throwing it all at whatever's popular...
The skills you mention are the skills that it takes to move beyond your birth class. Those skills, and a LOT of luck. But they are neither necessary nor sufficient for success in general. Any idiot can make themselves rich if they're born into it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 02 2014, @11:27PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Saturday May 03 2014, @12:21AM
Hah. I'm quite privileged myself. I've got more money than I know what to do with, work exactly 40 hours a week, including right now while I'm posing on Soylent. Life is good :)
But that doesn't mean I'm blind to the failures of our current society either. All you've gotta do to prove that is look at a graph of wages vs. productivity over the past few decades. People keep getting more and more work done -- but getting a smaller and smaller portion of the profits for doing so. Or look at all the CEOs who run their company into the ground then get rewarded with their "golden parachute." Or all the ISPs charging higher billing rates for the same service, which they can do not because they've got great innovative ideas, but because they're big, wealthy, and powerful.
We're an oligarchy, and there are now studies to prove it. America's class mobility is far lower than many other industrialized nations. So, what, all Americans are just stupid and lazy...? Or are there other factors that are more important -- like luck of birth?
If hard work and perseverance are all it took, then it would be just as likely that someone born to poor parents would end up a millionaire as someone born to rich parents. And there are a hell of a lot more poor parents than rich parents, which means if that were true you'd expect the vast majority of wealthy Americans to be first generation wealth. They get rich, then they die, then their kids slowly fall back to middle class or something. Instead, we see most wealthy families stay wealthy; most poor families stay poor; and only the extraordinarily lucky move between.
This also happens to be why I find capitalism to be such a horrible system. It's all about the momentum of inheritance. Eliminate inheritance, put every newborn at an equal start, and capitalism would be great. But eventually wealth and power concentrate and lock everyone else out.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 03 2014, @05:19AM
Except for the part where most of that isn't remotely true, I'd agree. Most of the rich in the US have become rich since the 80s. Most of the poor stay poor because they lack two of the following: wisdom, inspiration, or drive. Most of the middle class only lack one. Hard work and perseverance alone will get you nothing if you don't have the wisdom to know you need marketable skills and the drive to get and sell them.
Again, luck has nothing to do with it except to set your starting capital and that can only take you so far. Put every newborn at an equal start? Yeah, definite jealousy. Do you really hate yourself that much for having more than others? Give your money away then and leave what doesn't belong to you the hell alone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by metamonkey on Friday May 02 2014, @01:47PM
The problem I see is all of these programs that are targeted at girls while ignoring boys, when it turns out the boys have bigger problems than the girls. "Get young girls coding!" "How do we get more girls interested in science?" "After school math clubs for girls!" I just don't see the same kind of programs for boys.
I think if you tried to create a program specifically targeting improving the performance or interest level of boys you'd be screamed at for sexism, and promoting the patriarchy or whatever. And that's sad because according to this study (and other studies I've seen reported) the average girl is doing better than the average boy. As you say, the outliers are more likely to be boys, but the dullards are more likely to be boys, too.
If we're going for equality of outcome, we need to focus attention on average boys to try to get their scores up to the level of average girls. The brilliant boys can teach themselves. Just give them an open avenue to explore, create and learn and they'll take off all by themselves. As for the dullards, well, somebody's got to dig ditches. But it's the average boy who's falling behind, and all the programs are targeted at girls.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 02 2014, @01:48PM
Are we going to segregate education? Are we going to deny education to people based on their base intelligence (or lack thereof)?
We'd be much better off if we did. Mainstreaming has been a disaster in our public education system; just look at all the other people here complaining about being held back and being bored in school because the pace was too slow. Germany doesn't have this problem, because they DO segregate education; dumb kids go to different classes and schools than smart kids, and their economy is probably the most productive in the world.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Covalent on Friday May 02 2014, @03:08PM
Sadly, I have to agree. The "American" in me says "NO! Fairness for everybody"
But that was before the great state of Michigan made chemistry a graduation requirement for all high school students. Not everyone is cut out for chemistry, which has forced me to vastly dilute my course. This is to the great detriment of many students who could handle more rigor. Add to that the pressure to not fail any students (low graduation rates = unofficial bad evaluation = early forced retirement) and I've got a bunch of students earning 30% in an easy chemistry class and getting a D- anyway.
Maybe I ought to move to Germany...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 1) by MrNemesis on Friday May 02 2014, @04:11PM
I think that depends on your definition of "fairness". The culture when and where I was growing up (UK in the 80's) and one shared by almost everyone was that it was unfair to all concerned *not* to segregate education, so that people who were good in one subject weren't held back by the people who weren't and the people who weren't good weren't continually put to shame or marginalised by the brightest. There were even additional classes ("curriculum enrichment") for the very best in the subject where you'd be whisked off to another classroom for a whole day and given interesting free-form problems to solve. Conversely, people with learning difficulties were put in "special needs" streams where they'd receive more intensive tutoring.
From the context of your post, it sounds very much like state education in america isn't tiered at all, is this true?
No idea if the UK curriculum still follows the same principles, but personally I'd consider it essential for compulsory education. The terminology used here was "sets" - after the first year of secondary once they had an accurate measure of your performance you'd be put in a "Set" for each particular subject. School for me in the pre-sets days was full of interruptions from people who either had trouble understanding concepts that had been gone over many times before or were deliberately disruptive because they didn't enjoy or see the benefits in learning. Once you got a bunch of like-minded people together in the same class, everyone was able to go along at the same pace.
Surely fairness is giving everyone the same opportunities, but giving those with the will to surge ahead the means to do so?
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 02 2014, @05:02PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by BasilBrush on Friday May 02 2014, @05:02PM
The system you describe is called 'streaming" and then as now, some UK schools do it, some don't.
Many primary schools now do it, which was either unknown or at least rare back then. And it's not a good idea. Many kids true potential hasn't surfaced in the primary years, and in any case it's good for kids to learn early on how to mix with anyone and not just their intellectual peers.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday May 02 2014, @11:10PM
US schools do this to some extent. They call it 'tracking' I think. Lots of anger over it. But it's not even that huge of a difference between classes. The thing that gets people upset is it can become difficult to advance if you've been assigned to a lower level.
When I was in school, it stated out with three or four levels of each class, which began around 6th grade. High, Medium, Low, and sometimes Remedial. Same *basic* topic (ie, all years studied US History at the same time) but of course the higher classes would go into more details and cover more ground. In some classes (math, science) the top 10 or so students (wasn't a fixed number, that's just how many we usually had, out of ~300) would be placed in the classes for a higher grade level. Then in highschool you get AP classes as well in the last couple years, which are intended to be near college level. By senior year in some schools you can start taking college courses directly for half the day. Many of our schools also have trade programs where you can spend half the day learning welding, cosmetology, culinary, getting some IT certs, or whatever the local district happens to offer. Such programs don't exist everywhere though.
Personally, I agree with many here that we need more of that. I have some sympathy for those who oppose it as well though. The problem is that usually the teachers alone decide which track a student is placed in. In the earlier years the students themselves aren't even told, though they tend to figure it out. And they can't move to a different level unless recommended by their current teacher. THAT is a HUGE problem.
The root of the issue here is one of equality. Equality of WHAT though? Similar to what you said, there's a phrase that right-wingers tend to throw around that's quite fitting here -- though not in the way they use it. "Equality of opportunity, not of outcome." When THEY use it, it often means something like 'hey, you had just as much chance to be born to millionaires, not my fault you're starving!'. Beware of such false arguments. Education must surely begin "equal outcome", all on one track, but there is definitely a point where the students start to decide what they're going to be doing with their lives, and they certainly SHOULD be empowered to work towards those goals, even if that means some go to college, some go to trade schools, and some may even drop out.
We don't say it's unfair that not everybody gets a computer science degree, do we? Of course not! Not everyone *wants* one! It's only unfair if someone *other than the students themselves* get to make that decision for them. And of course, they should be free to make mistakes -- we need to make sure students can freely move between tracks as long as they're willing to do the work to catch up.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 02 2014, @03:23PM
The flip-side of that is by placing slower kids in with smarter kids, it encourages the slower kids to work harder. For example it looks like holding a child back a year before starting kindgarten so that they are among the oldest and more developed in the class actually retards their development. [newyorker.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 02 2014, @04:53PM
So you want to hold the smarter kids back for the sake of the dumb kids? You can't have it both ways; either you pace things for the dumb ones, and bore/alienate the smart ones, or you pace things for the smart ones, and lose the dumb ones who can't keep up. That's the whole problem with mainstreaming. If you want kids to learn at their own pace, you have to break them up.
It also doesn't help that the dumb kids like to bully the smart ones to make up for their mental inadequacy. Separating them into different schools solves that problem.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 02 2014, @05:37PM
> You can't have it both ways;
Black and white thinking is rarely true. In the article I previously linked to they found that as long as the differences aren't too extreme, the advanced children do not suffer a significant detriment by having the less developed children in the same classroom.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 02 2014, @06:57PM
No one said you have to have 30 classes for 30 different kids, since every kid is unique and doesn't learn exactly the same way or at exactly the same pace. However, taking 30 random kids and sticking them together is exactly what mainstreaming is, and doesn't work because the difference between the smartest and dumbest kids is too extreme.
It also doesn't help that some kids value education, while others don't, and sticking them together just yields bullying, and kids learning that it's not "cool" to get good grades.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 02 2014, @07:16PM
> No one said you have to have 30 classes for 30 different kids
So where are you drawing the line?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 02 2014, @07:25PM
Well in Germany, at around our high school level, they divide kids into 3 different schools: one for the dumbest kids, one for the reasonably-intelligent ones who will end up in trades or technician-type jobs, and one for university-bound kids. Seems like a good system to me, and seems to work quite well for them.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 02 2014, @08:01PM
And you think that is a significant factor in their economy's productivity? They aren't the only country with segregated educational tracks, most of europe has some variation on that theme.
As for bullying, it doesn't seem to make all that much difference with 29% of german students saying that bullying is a problem at school, [theguardian.com] putting them in middle of the pack for europe.
(Score: 1) by BasilBrush on Friday May 02 2014, @04:54PM
Taking the first results that came up for me in Google...
Nope._ GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by
Nope./ the-pursuit-of-happiness/ [forbes.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/10/30
Nope.L [oecd.org]
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVE
Nope./ [247wallst.com]
http://247wallst.com/investing/2010/06/28/72005/2
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Friday May 02 2014, @02:51PM
I think the data will show that the variance across the male population is greater than that in the female population, but that the average female "intelligence" (whatever that means) is higher than the average male intelligence.
The averages are the same; the difference comes because grading is such that you can only lose points -- there is no chance to get higher than an A, no matter how good you are. As a result, the low end of the male curve significantly lowers the average male grade, but the high end of the male curve cannot raise it in proportion to the drop.
Women being more toward the average, there are fewer women at the bottom to drop the average female grade as much as the males at the bottom, and those on the high end of the female curve score similarly to the males on the high end -- grades being insensitive to differences in this range.
This gets a lot more interesting when you consider salaries of working people, sorted by gender. The underperforming men can't earn less than the minimum wage, so they can't drag down the male average too much. On the other end, the most exceptional men stand to earn boatloads of cash, significantly raising the male average.
The women workers have fewer than men on the very bottom, but they didn't affect the statistics too much due to minimum wage. The women also have fewer at the very top, leading to a very different average salary.
This isn't to say that there is no discrimination, but analysis should take the above factors into account to be accurate. I'm getting this from the book "Is there anything good about men?" by Roy Baumeister. A free summary can be found here [denisdutton.com]