Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 17 submissions in the queue.
posted by janrinok on Friday May 02 2014, @11:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-fighting-here-please-children dept.

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.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by velex on Friday May 02 2014, @01:47PM

    by velex (2068) on Friday May 02 2014, @01:47PM (#38906) Journal

    Not only that, but elementary schools are openly, institutionally sexist against boys. They routinely implement policies that favor girls, such as allowing girls to use the gym and wander the halls during indoor recess. This is justified by the supposed male privilege that boys will enjoy later in life and also as a punishment for future rape and future sexism that the boys will invariably engage in. Girls are routinely given more interesting projects, and boys are given bland projects with studies like this used as justification, for example, for allowing girls to use proper tools like hot glue guns while restricting boys to paste.

    Later in schooling, the institutional sexism shows itself in other forms than outright policy. I remember once in "English" class, an assignment was to analyze a short story and identify how the house in the story itself was pregnant. The teacher made it a point to tell the class that none of the [assigned males] would be able to complete the assignment because males are unable to become pregnant and thus are incomplete beings.

    I don't think I even need to get into an incident where I started a computer club and was then set up by the [cis] female network administrator to be accused of hacking. Years later, a girl founded another computer club and the school district triumphantly trumped in the local newspaper that their first computer club was founded by a girl. Feh, if only I could have known back then what I was up against.

    In all seriousness, this study, if anything, shows that when you openly discriminate against a group based on body parts other than the one between the ears, that group tends to do more poorly vs. the privileged group.

    There is no more disgusting form of sexism than sexism justified by presumed sexism.

    I'll say it again. Fuck feminism. It's the beta of gender equality. And I'll add, if only I had a red creeper card for every. single. damned. time. I was reduced to the body part between my legs and openly discriminated against. And I wish I had a red creeper card for every. single. damned. time. I've had to listen to some [cis] woman go on about wild sex.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Friday May 02 2014, @05:16PM

    by BasilBrush (3994) on Friday May 02 2014, @05:16PM (#38975)

    And now those girls have grown up they won't even fuck you! Damn girls!

    --
    Hurrah! Quoting works now!
    • (Score: 2) by velex on Friday May 02 2014, @05:59PM

      by velex (2068) on Friday May 02 2014, @05:59PM (#38998) Journal

      I know, right! Because everybody is attracted to girls! hurr durr

      Because anybody who would dare criticize cis women must be butthurt about not getting laid.

      God, what a fucking stupid comment. I shouldn't even reply to you, but I am that fucking sick of this kind of bullshit.

      Although come to think of it I haven't had a good cock in me in about 6 months, though.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by BasilBrush on Friday May 02 2014, @06:21PM

        by BasilBrush (3994) on Friday May 02 2014, @06:21PM (#39012)

        I see there's been no lasting psychological damage...

        --
        Hurrah! Quoting works now!