Are boys worse at humanities because they are never taught how to write properly?

aussietoads · 2016-05-05T06:21:15+00:00

Boys may be, on average, untidier writers than girls when they are young. But content is another aspect of writing altogether. If boys are writing crap, it's generally because of the content they are told to write about rather than being allowed to write about the things that interest them.

For me personally, writing as a young boy was a great physical challenge. When I first learned to write, we were still using inkwells and nibbed pens. Ball point pens were available, but we still had to write using the old ink and nib method.

As a left hander, the challenge was enormous because all your work would get smudged as you wrote because your hand followed the writing instead of leading it.

Even worse than that, until 1966, it was still government policy to try to force left handers to be right handers. Every time a teacher would see me writing with my left hand they would hit me across the left hand knuckles with a ruler.

So I'd change hands until they were no longer looking, then revert back to my left hand. I learned to tilt my paper at a 45 degree angle and write slightly upwards, with my wrist bent almost 90 degrees, so my hand was above and ahead of what I was writing, with pen almost facing backwards towards me, instead of the usual straight left to right across the page.

Ironically, in 1966 they dropped the right handed rule and also introduced ball point pens into all schools. In spite of all the harassment and violent knuckle blows, rising to the challenge of writing left handed with nib pens and ink turned me into the best (neatest) writer in my primary school.

mwobuddy · 2016-05-05T05:22:56+00:00

The question is, how or why are girls "taught to write properly"? Does the method of teaching it favor girls? Do teachers spend more time with them because they enjoy helping girls with penmanship over boys? Do boys naturally have a less effective penmanship due to motor cortex learning differences?

Lethn · 2016-05-05T09:09:37+00:00

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, I can tell you now that I for a long while thought there was something wrong with me because I kept on getting low grades in the big tests and couldn't do maths very well.

For maths in particular I didn't even know my timestable at a later stage in my education so my parents had to get a private tutor because my teachers hadn't bothered making sure that I knew it. Then as time went on and I started learning about economics towards my teen years I realised that I actually knew about certain maths already and that it seemed there were significant gaps in my knowledge.

It's not just humanities or writing and so on, for a lot of people, their education was extremely shit and they simply didn't realise it. Whenever I get people asking questions about autism and so on and wondering about whether they have it I always tell them to first actually have a look at what they're trying to do and learn it fresh because it may be just shitty teaching that is responsible for them not knowing how to do certain basic problems that they should have been taught in school.

I think that while it can certainly be that some genders and so on are more naturally inclined towards subjects. I think much of what is going on with education now where there's an autism epidemic is a convenient scapegoat for the shitty teaching that has been given in education.

I don't ever dispute these conditions exist and that biology for example won't have a part to play here, because teaching is definitely skewed to girls currently. However like I said, I think this is very often a convenient scapegoat especially for crap teachers to dance around so they can keep their paychecks and their pensions. Many teachers in education aren't there to make sure children learn anything, they're there to get their pensions at the end of it all because it's a stable source of income.

Be sure to take a look at stuff like this to try actually learning about it before you think it's something to do with you particularly. There's tons of resources on the internet even for stuff like humanities I suspect though I haven't searched for it myself.

TheDude41 · 2016-05-06T02:58:06+00:00

I've always preferred to type on computer.

You could make these days a greater argument that it is a problem that proper typing technique is not given as much emphasis early on as handwriting.

Although, with voice recognition, that may soon change as well.

For me, the problem was lack of emphasis on proper language, not handwriting. There was too much emphasis on "Artful" prose, and not enough emphasis on clear and effective communication.

The same is true of the overemphasis on literature, rather than non-fiction.

Title	Are boys worse at humanities because they are never taught how to write properly?
Author	MarcusHeliogabalus
Upvotes	8
Comments	6
Date	May 5, 2016 4:29 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/4hyekj/are_boys_worse_at_humanities_because_they_are/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/are-boys-worse-at-humanities-because-they-are.950237 https://theredarchive.com/post/950237

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